USPC #-1

Toto Leonidas will NOT repeat as the U.S. Poker Champion in 2004.

I know this because I saw him get knocked out.

Welcome to the 2004 U.S. Poker Championship at the Trump Taj Mahal.

(as spoiler-free as possible)

When I arrived, there were 21 players left and Huck Seed went all-in with two queens on the board. I want to know what he had. Seed turned out to be the last player there who I knew just by name. What's left are your mid-level players, your "That Guys" of poker for you Bill Simmons fans out there. I think I saw Johnny "World" Hennigan there, but he wasn't entered. It's a drive through the tunnel for him, at any rate. (For the record, here are the Famous Poker Players I missed: Chip Reese, Layne Flack, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, Josh Arieh, Scotty Nguyen, Erik Seidel.) The field for this event is smaller because, unlike he WSOP, you can only qualify through a live tournament.

Right after the dinner break, Michael White was talking about a hand he had earlier in the tournament. He had A-J with 13,000 left in early position. He bet 7000, a second player raised, and a third player went all-in. White went all-in by calling.

Player #2 turns over K-K. Player #3 turns over A-A.

The flop? K-Q-10.

White flopped a straight and the poor bastard with Aces got bounced. He held on to win the hand and triple up.

There's a lot of sitting around at a live tournament. One thing I saw a lot of was somebody raising the pot - didn't matter where - and everyone else just folding.

There were two tables still in play when I got there. The setup wasn't what I expected - I knew the feature table was in the concert arena at the casino, but it's just that one table. And it's a small area - closed in with curtains and about six rows of spectators for a "live crowd" feel. It was probably done this way because the tables in the actual poker room at the Taj are so close together, there's really no room to stand around anywhere or to put a crowd in. The "outer" table was in the poker room proper, and they had a lesser camera setup. They'll stop to move people from table to table to keep both looking relatively full.

One thing that threw me was during the sessions at the feature table, there was a small group of people in the audience who were cheering for EVERYBODY. It wasn't until after the session ended that I found out what this was about... AUDIENCE COORDINATION. Or, Plants. And they... got their parking validated for their trouble? Talk about working cheap.

There was a Norman Chad sighting at about 9:45.

Funny moment: On one of the screens behind the feature table, they were showing the other table, and at one point when there were only 11 players left, about five people sitting in the "standby" area, including myself, all jumped up and moved over to get a look at the screen. Everybody at the other table was standing because there was an all-in, and if the guy was eliminated, everyone was coming over to the feature table.

The guy was eliminated.

I'll try to get back tomorrow. But it's the final day, and they expect the place to be packed.