MAGYAR VERZIÓÉRT KLIKK IDE
Hello everyone,
here I go again blogging away... Last couple days have been a whirlwind really in my life. As you could have read in my previous posts WPT Malta was going on and I had a special opportunity to work with some very accomplished people thanks to PartyPoker.
Tony G challenged Phil Hellmuth to a triathlon and they were set to clash in Malta. My role during these events would be to bother P.H. and get him "tilting".
A couple back-stories that are needed to understand the whole concept of it all
1. Phil was bit by an insect on his neck last year, that he claimed to be a spider. Needed medical attention and was taking steroids during some of the WPT (most likely it was a tiger mosquito tho as their bites cause serious swelling)
2. there was a thread on twoplustwo, where someone found a picture of a guy riding a boat/hot dog. Happens to be that guy looks a lot like P.H. (he still denies it that it was him, but we know better ;))
Day1A WPT Malta
We had a brief talk about the whole concept with Tony G's manager, what he wanted to do and that there would be a lot of improvisation involved as these guys are a bit random (as most poker players are). After that did a little filming for a concept that later got trashed I believe.
Anyways, Phil showed up to play 30 minutes past dinner break leaving him with just 1,5 levels to play (90minutes). It also meant - cameras, lights, action! Got into the spider man costume and came up to Phil's table to hang out. Was about to explain to him, how there's no venomous spiders on the island, but he got into some action and spider man has perfect manners :)
Action went such: P.H. raises, gets called by the bigblind. Flop T92r. check bet call. turn 9 check/check. River I think it was a 3 (some random blank), bigblind leads and Phil starts thinking. After about 2-3 minutes someone calls the clock on him, that wasn't even in the hand. Phil starts pointing fingers and is upset (reasonably so in my opinion) and goes on to telling the tournament director. These are the parts of his speeches I find the funniest usually.
Anyways, spider man gets credited on live-reporting sites for calling the clock. Running great in trolling I guess :)
Day1B
The plan for the day was something like: go pick up Tony from the airport, shoot some footage on the way back in the limo, figure out rules really quick for the triathlon, do the swimming event and start playing early afternoon in the event.
Instead it went like this: went and got Tony from the airport, but the limo was late. On the way back shot some videos and talked a bit, then we were waiting in the lobby for Phil to show up. After about 20minutes of wait we decided just to go into his room as he was jet-lagged and possibly could have overslept. It was time for me to put on the hot dog costume and get some ammo in the water gun. More shooting on the way to the room and by the time we got to his room I almost had no water left, as basically every person that I saw was getting sprinkled :) It just shows that if you are a giant hot dog, you can walk around and shoot people with water in the Hilton without having any problems.
So we get to Phil's room, he yelled out something after the first couple knocks, then proceeds to open but didn't want to let us in. Well that didn't quite stop us and we finally breached enemy territory. There is a lot of discussion and hustling going on, I help them with estimated times of what each event should take and propose that instead of shooting 10 shots, and somehow converting that to time, just have a certain number you have to make and you time that. It was quite an experience to see how Tony hustled Phil with the basketball part of things. With rules being such I wouldn't say it wasn't a fair bet, but the person that is more competent in basketball would have a massive edge as if you have to swim 100meters, there is only so much time you can gain against someone and the same goes for running a mile. Even if 1 person walks the mile it will not be longer than a certain amount of time, so it caps it, while in theory it is possible that you won't be able to make 10 three-pointers in a day's time.
When we got that out of the way, there has been issues about when we could do the events as it had to fit with the tournament and sleep schedule. I called and talked to the Basketball Association's president and have previously arranged that we would come and shoot in their gym sometime. Since the times proposed didn't fit with the availability we started brainstorming and just agreed that we'd go and shoot it outside. The nearest basketball court was 30 minute drive away, so I ordered a minibus and off we went on a "school trip". Only thing that was missing was the sandwiches from our parents.
So we rode down to TaQali and set up the banners and figured out the spots they'd shoot from. Meanwhile Tony and Phil took a couple shots and I was actually really impressed with Tony. He made 4 in a row, would miss one, then make 3 in a row and just kept hitting like crazy. During the event he didn't shoot so well anymore as I think the "getting your own rebounds" part knocked him out of his rhythm.
Phil won the coin toss and decided to go first, which was a horrid choice obviously. Then he couldn't make a shot for the last good couple minutes, I kept telling him to move to the top of the key, but he kept going from baseline to baseline. Normally the baseline 3pointer is the easiest as it is the closest, but that's for people that actually play. For a person not playing regularly top of the key will always be easier. After 7 minutes or so Phil moved to the top and started making, should have listened to the hot dog I guess :)
The two Royal Flush Girls that were at the event split up to support Tony and Phil. I think a rule was added on the go that after you pass the 9 minute mark your girl can help you rebound. Tony didn't get to that mark, Phil passed it by a lot but gave us all the chance to watch Violett run around in super high heels getting balls. I don't know how she or anyone can run in those shoes, it was for sure some sight...
Tony was up second, he made a side bet with Phil for 2k that he's make all his shots in a certain (short) amount of time. I think it would've happened if someone was rebounding for him, but as soon as he missed the first shot and ran for the ball, his technique became a little shaky. 2 minutes in I noticed and told him to bend his knees a little more as he had no base anymore, so the ball kept going a lot flatter than on his previous makes. He took the advice and starting knocking them down, so I was obviously super happy about myself.
The amount of laughs we had on court was just silly at some point my face started to hurt from all the jokes and laughter.
With basketball out of the way we jumped back into the minibus and were on our way back to the hotel for event#2 the swimming. On the way a bottle of home-made törköly pálinka jumped out of my bag and the tasting began...
When back at the hotel the idea was "don't ask the hotel cause no one will want to make a decision and it will drag out" so we just headed for the indoor pool. A group of 10 is walking in with 2 sets of cameras and the lady at the spa area's reception tells us "just don't take pictures, OK?". All of us nod and carry on inside. As we set up shop some guy comes in that works for the hotel and the instant reaction of the crew is "fck, it's going to get complicated", but the guy just walks up and says something along the lines of "hi guys, if you need help with anything just call me on that phone on the wall". Everyone starts laughing, how we are stressing about all of this, but it's Malta after all and it's usually not a very problematic place.
So swimming competition goes down and Tony gets hammered by Phil. Have to say that Phil's turns looked solid (I am no expert); he later told me that he used to swim, so it actually makes sense. A lot of extra recording after and the whole crew is tired and hungry and it's almost dinner break, so we decide to go and eat.
As all the shooting and work was dragging out I talked to the nice people of Partypoker and WPT if it was possible that I'd play some other event instead of this one as if I late register and start after dinner break I will start with 70bb instead of super deep, where obviously I would have a lot bigger edge as a cash player against the weak field. They manage to pull out my buy-in and I'll be sponsored for one of the upcoming WPTs. It's either going to be Morocco or Prague, depending on my fiance's schedule as I figured if she can manage to get time off, then we could go and do a short vacation in Morocco. If she decides she can't or doesn't want to I'll just fly and play Prague instead and possibly go home from there for a couple days to Hungary.
Dinner was great, excellent food and it was really great being able to talk to people that are so deep in the industry and the media side of things. It was a chance to see a different perspective of things, which is always a positive things. Also the topics ranging from the future of FTP, to the future of poker to some random gossip.
After dinner Tony rushed and started playing, while we stayed for desert. I will rather not go into details, it was for sure a special experience.
Day2
As planned we met about an hour before day#2 started and needed to record the third event in the triathlon. We decided that I would run with Phil and "troll" him along the way. Quite a large crowd gathered outside to see this event and when it was all said and done Tony crossed the finish line first making him the triathlon champion.
Rest of the day just hung out with the media guys on scene. The most exciting for me was I think watching Mantvydas (Lithuanian cameraman) go to work and do his magic with all the footage. One of the 4 minute videos was being edited for 5 hours. Cutting together all the perfect scenes, changing the colors, the angles, the lights, picking the perfect music for it. It truly impressed me. He previously worked on a cop documentary show for Lithuanian TV, where he went around with two cops and was filming their everyday and had a lot of fun stories to tell from that. He also worked such sports events as the EuroCup2012 and the EuroBasket2011 from which here's a video that they made about themselves. Gives you an idea that it's not all business with these guys.
Anyways it was a fun day of hanging out with a lot of laughs and all the media people on scene were an absolute pleasure and a lot of fun. Kristy Arnett is a wonderful girl to be around, way too much fun.
To cap off the day WPT threw a players' party that ended up being an absolute blast, made our head spin, kind of like this: (that's actually my fiance and I)
There is a video of it that you can find on YouTube somewhere, but I can't post it. The part itself was hosted at Bar Celona lounge and after getting pretty drunk there we decided that it's time to move on and while some people went back to their hotel rooms, since they were playing the next day, a group of 16-20ish people decided to hit the road and keep the party going. The locations are undisclosed and the events of the party I rather not mention, but everyone had a blast and as Jason Mercier said later "craziest player's party I've been to".
I got home around 6, if I am not mistaken, but really it's blurry :)
Day3
Nothing significant happened, hung out a bunch more, everyone was in a lot of pain from the night before so the jokes slowed down a little bit. Was waiting around for Tony to bust, so we could record some more stuff, but luckily he went deep into the money and ended up busting only after dinner.
Day4
The final table was going on, learned a lot about the production side of it which is really exciting, then met Adam Pliska, the president of the WPT. He looks a lot like B. Obama, but I didn't tell him "4 more years, 4 more years! as suggested by one of the media guys :)
Hung out, talked about the future for me with some people and if everything falls into the right place I could be seen on a televised cash game next year, so I am super excited about that obviously already.
As I was already packing my stuff and ready to head home Warren (Tony's manager) came down from the booth, that I can go upstairs and do the live commentary for the stream for the Heads-up stage of the final table. Grabbed my things and was upstairs in no time, sitting with Phil Hellmuth and Jesse May shooting the sh!t :) The heads-up was fairly short, the players were clicking buttons (as most of the final table), randomly doing things that don't necessarily make sense and in the last hand the winner made a pretty bad call with A3 high on T42 against T9, to river an Ace and end it all. His opponent broke down and in about 8 minutes, when we got down to the tournament area was still on the floor holding his head.
They made a deal 3 handed with about even stacks, and went on to stay 3 handed after the deal for over 2 hours. That part was very weird.
After we got done there Phil, Warren, Jesse and myself decided to go eat something really quick before will head to a reggae bar to meet some others. All the restaurant I called were fully booked, so we just went and improvised to end up in one right outside the reggae bar. Had some pretty serious conversations with these guys and got a lot of advice on handling certain situations. And I kept hearing the same thing that I have been hearing every day till then also, that how impressed they were.
Two complements that stick out to me are when Phil told Tony something like this "Tony, you know we get it done. But there is not very many poker players that do. They talk about it, they want to, but it doesn't happen. Andras gets it done, that's why he is so impressive"
and the other one that I heard from a lot of people "when talking to you I don't have to explain, because you simply get it". I received a lot of positive feedback from guys that have done it before. I was trying to soak in as much as possible as information is power and I rather learn from others than on my mistakes.
Later Kara Scott then arrived with her boyfriend Giovanni. We started talking and it turns out they are thinking about moving to Malta so talked a lot about the pluses and minuses and what they'll need to watch out for when moving here. Giovanni and I hit it off from the start and realized how much we had in common, while talking about totally random topics, so I do hope they come down here and see a lot more of them in the future.
A funny piece of conversation was when Florence was brought up and somehow we started talking about a movie that was shot in Florence, but couldn't come up with the name... We all remembered that there's a famous actor in it, and Phil remembered a hot actress. After about 15 minutes of laughing around we started googling and found this one movie on IMDB, that we all have seen but realizes it was a different one everyone was talking about, so we kept searching. Then we realized it was Russel Crow's 'A Good Year'. We were all happy, except for Giovanni, he starts reading the IMDB page and tells us it was not Italy it was France that the movie was shot at. The reaction of everyone came about the same time, waving at him and saying "come on, same thing!"
After we finished our meals and drinks, we headed inside the reggae bar and a round of frozen strawberry mojitos was ordered. This is when I learned that I like Giovanni even more as he ordered 2 rounds of Tequila also. I think it's safe to say we got really messy quick, I ended up having 11 tequila shots and 3 mojitos I think. Hell of a night and great couple of days.
Overall I am very happy how this whole experience went. Had a crazy amount of laughs, met a lot of very nice people and made some contacts that hopefully will paid dividends in the long run.
Also I am very excited about the Partypoker relaunch that's coming up. The highstakes tables should be back and the new software is made so that they can give Pokerstars a run. Should create a better market for sure, so I hope all the best out of this.
Unfortunately I made the mistake of reading the comments on here under the video. First of all thank you all for the feedback, secondly I wore a hot dog costume and yet it was a lot of you that made an idiot out of yourselves.
I am comfortable with what I have achieved in my life, as I have worked for it. And I worked for it fucking hard. I understand that I am more successful than a lot of you in poker and probably other aspects also, but let me tell you this: "just because I will do worse, it doesn't make you do better" So instead of wasting your energy trying to drag me down to your level, try and climb up to mine. Those people that have contacted me I rarely turned away or did I not give a helping hand. So if you want to hate, go ahead.
As for the hot dog costume, just because I put it on it doesn't make me a bitch of anyone. You watched ONE fucking video and you make the assumption I was sucking up to someone. (well in a way yes I was doing stuff, that I was asked to do, but I was not once asked to do anything degrading. It's usually how it is in a JOB. Maybe some of you haters should get one, so you'd know) I do not believe I did anything that was offensive or idiotic, I did not say anything dumb for sure (at least not on camera) and suggesting that if I was paid 2000 euros more I would hand out hand jobs is way over the line. It seems tho, eventho I am a Pokerakademia Team Pro (which really is just a title and nothing else) I am put out there to be trashed and it's ok, for that congrats. These media things are done, so that more fans are brought to the game and to gain attention to poker, so I don't see where I did anything wrong, unless putting on a costume is such a horrible thing. Anyways thanks again for everyone for the support!
And as a side note, Phil asked me for both costumes and took them with him to Cannes for the WSOPE, as he needs an outfit for his entrance, so before you start requesting home videos done in them I am sorry, but I don't have them anymore.
Till next time,
bigacsiga
