Friday, 29th March 2024 09:59
Home / Uncategorized / LAPT6 Chile: The price of parenthood

On the LAPT spectating is a way of life. The staff do the best they can to enforce the rail but as tournaments rooms are often large and players look exactly like spectators, the policy of “spectators on the rail” is a loose one. Several times today the staff have had to get on the PA system to chase spectators to the rail. Those people have always dutifully moved off the tournament floor, but only long enough for the staff’s attention to be turned elsewhere. After a few minutes their assault on the personal space of today’s players always resumed.

One spectator today, however, stood apart from the rest. That’s what a bright orange shirt and black tennis shoes with fluorescent yellow laces will do for a man. Despite an unshaven face, this man would never be mistaken for a young online grinder. His salt-and-pepper hair belied an age more than double many of the players in the room. Cargo shorts and a gray backpack slung low on his back gave him the look of a hippie but a pot belly on which he could place a beer while standing up suggested he was someone who spends a lot of time in bars or at home.

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This is NOT Mr. Orange

Mr. Orange was here all day. Earlier he was slowly wandering up and down the aisles on the right side of the room, stopping here to watch a hand or turning there at a shouted word. During Level 9 he appeared quite interested in Tables 1 and 5, in the far left corner of the room. With his hands tucked underneath the straps of his backpack, he slowly paced back and forth between the two tables.

For a reporter’s taste, he stood far too close to the players as he spectated. Tournament reporters try to stand close enough to the tables to see what’s going on but far enough away not to crowd the players (not that players still haven’t irritatingly “waved me along” every now and again).

Mr. Orange violated that bubble of table space. But despite his proximity to the action, there was nothing untoward going on – no attempts to glance at anyone’s cards, no apparent signaling to any player.

After observing Mr. Orange for the better part of a half hour, I decided to learn a little something about him. Yet before I could move in and ask him so much as “¿Cual es su nombre?” a hand developed at Table 5 that caught his interest. A young man in the 1-seat faced a decision for all of his chips. The hand was at the turn; the board showed a ten, an eight and two diamonds. The young man agonized for a few minutes, then declared “Pago” and added his chips to the pot. He showed A♦ 8♦ , a pair of 8s and a flush draw. He was drawing against his opponent’s Q♥ 10♣ , top pair.

The river was a brick. When the stacks were counted down, the 1-Seat was left with a single ante. He put it into the pot, was dealt J♥ 3♠ , and ran smack into pocket kings. It was all over by the turn.

Mr. Orange pulled out a smartphone and started typing. The 1-seat, whose blood relation to Mr. Orange was all but confirmed when they stood next to each other on the rail, sighed and slumped his shoulders. I left them to their privacy as Mr. Orange offered a few words of consolation to the disappointed son whom he had sweated all day.

Dave Behr is a freelance contributor to the PokerStars Blog.

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