Big Phan of Hand-For-Hand

If you made it through to the end of my last, epic blog, you may remember me discussing Hand-For-Hand coverage. You may also recall that when it got down to one table Andy and I traded off transcribing the hands. We could have done more than one hand at a time if we had liked, but trading off every other one kept us from having to stand for long stretches of time...or at least, in theory that was the plan.

On occassion, I run well. Very rarely do I run well at something that matters, like poker for money or my love life. I run well at relatively useless things like fantasy sports leagues in which no money is on the line, free poker at bars, games of tic tac toe, or finding pennies. On this fine day in July though, I began to run well at Hand-For-Hand. How do you run well at Hand-For-Hand you may ask? Well, here's how...

In poker, sometimes hands are over very quickly. Bob raises from the cut off and everyone folds. He wins the blinds and antes. Other times, hands take longer. Heck, every once in a while we even see flops, turns, and once in a blue moon a river. I have been told sometimes there is even a point in the hand where the players involved turn over their cards and a winner is declared.

I did not encounter many of these situations during Bellagio Cup Hand-For-Hand experience. Most of my hands were over preflop after one raise and, if I was unlucky if I encountered a reraise with some thought before the initial raiser folded. Andy, on the other hand, had to deal with the wrath of John Phan. Many of you may know that Phan is notorious for just how long he takes to make decisions. I often wonder what a day in the life of John Phan must be like. Does he tank on everything? If so, can you imagine him at McDonalds? How long does John Phan stand in front of the closet every morning, contemplating what to wear? What about really important decisions like who to marry or what to name your kid? Do these types of decisions take him literally years, if not decades, to decide upon?

Sorry about the John Phan tangent, I am just morbidly curious. Anyways, I would literally not even write down half the hands because it was easier for me to just verbally dictate the hands to BJ. I would tap Andy and he would look at me with indignation and say, "are you serious?" I would then sit down and 10-12 minutes would pass before Andy would return with the previous hand. I'd get up, watch the next hand, and return less than 30 seconds later, provoking Andy to become more and more cranky.

"I used to like you, you know."

"I was going to say it will be sad working without you until December, but I take it back.

"I hate the new girl."

At one point Phan tanked for, I kid you not, over ten minutes. Granted, it was a fascinating hand that I later learned was a pretty ballsy bluff on the part of Mike Watson, but that entire time Andy was languishing in Hand-For-Hand hell while I sat at the table sipping on my strawberry julius, reveling in the fact that I may not always win many coin flips in poker, but at least I run well at something.