[domesme]

Long but worth reading (I hope)...

It all started about a year ago. I went to River Rock Casino in Vancouver, Canada, and sat down at the highest no limit table they had going - 3/6 (!!!) After a few hours of a real good table, Brad Booth walks in and sits down. Now, I didn't know who he was back then. I was heavily into school at that time and wasn't really paying attention to the poker scene (that that he was even that famous back then). Anyways he sits down and everyone around me is looking at him and whispering so I asked the guy next to me who he was and he told me he's a real good player and he won a bunch of tournies etc. I wasn't too intimidated.. how can I be scared of a guy carrying around a purse? So we get into one hand where I had AK and Brad had AA with position on me. He made the nut full house and didn't extract too much money from me but it kinda got me upset that it had to be him to take a pot off me, so I said "Hey buddy! Nice purse". He looked at me and didn't say a word. Meanwhile the guy next to me said "you know... he probably has over 100k in that "purse", so where's your purse?"
At the end of the night I shook his hand and introduced myself. The funny part is the last thing I said to him was "by the way, what's your name again?"
When I got home I googled him and realized I played with the best unknown player in the world.

Last night at around midnight I went to River Rock again. I sit down at 3/6 nl and after about 15 minutes Brad Booth shows up to everyone's delight. Why is everyone so happy to see him? I found out very shortly. Brad sits down and yells out "Alright everyone! Let's gamble!". For the next hour or so, Brad was going all-in every other hand. Sometimes he would go all-in without even looking at his cards and he just kept buying in again and again and again.. must have lost over $5k at $600 max buy-in table. I even won a few pots off him. At some point he banged on the table with frustration saying "I can't take this [censored] game seriously!" Some of the highlights were the following: He went all-in preflop and this one guy was thinking for the longest time. Brad looked at him and said "you look like a guy who has pocket 8's". The guy looked down at his cards and whispered under his breath "[censored]". He showed me 88 and mucked it. Another time I had AA, raised it preflop and got 5 callers (one of which was Yukon). The thing is I wasn't really paying attention to the pot cuz I was in the middle of a real interesting conversation with Brad, and when the flop came I said "wtf! 5 callers??". When the hand was over Brad said "I knew you had AA just because what you said on the flop". Another time Brad went all-in on the flop, needless to say for his whole 100BB. An old asian guy who really didn't know what he was doing called with a pair of 3's. At showdown, Brad looked at his hand and said "you gotta be kidding me" and mucked his hand.

The guy was really entertaining. This encounter was definitely a lot more friendly between the two of us than the previous one. We talked all about high stakes poker and the online guys and he told me a few really cool stories. One of them was: him, Barry Greenstein and someone else I forget.. might have been PA or Ivey, were taking a private jet from Atlantic City to Vegas. Since the flight was 5 hours long they got bored so they started playing 3000/6000 limit and 500/1000 nl on the plane. The problem was they had no chips. So they got the flight attendants to cut up pieces of paper that they used as chips. "It was a real hastle to raise $50,000", he said.

Btw, he told me his online name, which I promised I won't reveal, and also his opinion about young guys vs. old guys.. I won't name any names but the buttom line was he thinks the young guys can school the old guys.