Monday, July 23, 2007

Sa P1,000 nga kinakabahan na 'ko...

In poker parlance, “dead money” means money being gambled on the table that the player is bound to lose. This happens when said player is a fish (inexperienced or just plain stupid) or when he is playing way out of his league. Dead money is also nervous money, which is often the case when someone plays stakes higher than what he's used to.


A home game player such as myself who plays for a few hundred pesos on game nights tightens up considerably in casino tournaments with thousand-peso buy-ins. The idea of losing a significant amount of cash on a single hand is a sobering thought and throws my game off. The general rule is to gamble with money that you're comfortable losing. Anything more would just be dead money.


Which is why I salute the Manila-based poker crew who joined the 2007 World Series of Poker main event. With a US$10,000 buy-in and a field of more than 8,000 players, the main event means gambling with almost half a million pesos which you can lose in a single hand. Here I am nervous over anything over P500, while they're playing with a thousand times as much.


The highest placer is local rounder Neil Arce, who placed 222nd, taking home over US$51,000, which in pesos is not bad. Hop over to Pinoy poker godfather nickg's blog for details.

3 comments:

Boom said...

as in the neil arce from tapat?

missingpoints said...

Yup. He's been playing high stakes here since before the poker boom and even owns a card room. Deadly combination: smarts to play the game well plus more than enough money to gamble with.

Ben-Ariel said...

Why am I NOT surprised to find out that Neil is into high stakes? Wild.