2008 Event #7 ($2,000 NL Hold'em) Recap

As as walked out of my hotel room today I made sure several times that I had everything I needed. Wallet - check. Tournament entry card - check. Extra money - check. Room key - check. It wasn't until I made it to the tournament area that I realized I'd forgotten something - I forgot to eat! Playing high stakes poker is not something you want to do on an empty stomach! I quickly dashed off to the Starbucks that I knew was close by and scarfed down a muffin and a some other sort of pastry. Not the breakfast of champions, but enough to keep me going.

I looked at my seat card as I walked into the tournament room and saw that I was at table 20, seat 6. So I walked up to table 20, sat down in seat 6 and when I showed the dealer my seat card she looked at me like it was a coupon for a free happy meal. Apparently I was at "Amazon Red" table 20 when in fact I was supposed to be at "Amazon blue" table 20. In past years the tables in the Amazon room were labeled simply 1 to 220. I'm sure they have a good reason for this change, but I have yet to figure it out.

I finally made it to my seat where I found a bottle of "All In" drinking water and a can of "All In" energy drink waiting for me. Right at noon the cards were in the air and my 2008 WSOP was underway.

The tables around me were noticeably lacking stars from the poker world, but there was one minor poker celebrity at my table - Dario Minieri. I actually have played with Dario at least 50 times since until recently he's made a good chunk of his living playing multi table tournaments on pokerstars.com which is my website of choice.

Dario's first claim to fame is he was the first player on pokerstars to exchange his frequent player points (FPPs) for a new Porche which is the most expensive thing you can get with your FPPs. His second claim to fame is he finished about 30th in the main event last year and was featured heavily in ESPN's coverage. If you watched any of that coverage you'll remember him as the young Italian guy with the goofy scarf. In person he is shockingly short and looks like he's about 15.

Now on to the poker action! Here is a phrase I hope to never say again about a WSOP event - the key hand in this tournament for me happened 30 minutes into the first level.

Before the key hand, I'd seen two flops (I folded on the flop both times), stolen the blinds once and folded every other hand. The blinds were 25/50 and I had about 3,500 of my starting stack of 4,000 when I picked up AK in the small blind. Dario raised to 150 one off the button, the player on the button called and I reraised to 600. As soon as my chips were in the pot the big blind moved all in and both of the other players folded.

I stopped to think for about 60 seconds. There was 4,400 in the pot and it would cost me my last 2,900 hundred to call so I was getting about 3 to 2 odds. The only hands I was really worried about were AA and KK since I'd be a big underdog to both. Against any other hand I'd be at worst 45% to win. Interestingly enough in an earlier hand the player in the big blind had raised with AA and then after a call and a reraise he just called. That told me that if he had AA he'd likely just call in a spot like this as well. Furthermore, given that I already had one of the aces and one of the kings the chances of him having AA or KK was greatly reduced. I figured there was about a 10% chance that he had AA or KK, an 80% chance that he had either QQ, JJ or AK and about a 10% chance that he had something else. I'd almost certainly split with another AK and I'd be just under even money to win against QQ or JJ. Since the pot was offering me 3 to 2, I decided to call.

When the cards got turned over my opponent also had AK. He had the A of hearts and the K of spades, while I had the A of clubs and the K of diamonds. The only way we wouldn't split was if the board came with four of a suit. The first four cards off the deck were all spades and I was out. My opponent was not gracious about his victory.

Given the stakes and the likelihood of the given outcome, this might have been the worst bad beat of my entire poker career. There was a 95.65% chance of a split and we each had a 2.17% chance to win.

It really sucks to have all this anticipation and build up and come all this way to lose to someone who had a 2.17% chance of winning the pot. But, the good news is that I actually feel OK about it. Of course I'm disappointed, but I think it speaks to how far I've come as a poker player that I'm not crushed. If I'd lost in a $2,000 tournament in this was a few years ago I wouldn't have been right for a few days. In this case I moped for about an hour. I played some pai gow and had a shot of Grand Mariner and now I feel fine. It helps that I've gone over the hand in my head 100 times now and every time I come to the conclusion that I did the right thing.

Poker is all about making the best decisions with the incomplete information that you have and letting the chips fall where they may. In this case I made a good decision and it just didn't work out. That's poker.

Luckily one of my biggest strengths is putting the past behind me and moving forward! Tonight I'm going to play a $340 buy in tournament here at the Rio. While there is zero prestige involved, there still money to be won and I expect a weak field. I have no idea if I'll be facing 40 players of 400, but I'll put up a short recap along with a preview of my next event either later tonight or tomorrow morning.

Fucking 2.17%! Crazy.