“Hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.”
Tom McEvoy’s definition of tournament poker holds as true today as back in 1983 when he won the Main Event at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), becoming World Champion. I was lucky enough to get Tom to coach me (full story in my second poker book, Getting Lucky)—with the result that I won a satellite into the Main Event.
I lasted three days that year, but did not cash, finishing outside “the money” (=the top 10%). Then, in 2011, after winning another satellite, I was back in Main Event, and finished in the top 10.2%, my Pocket Queens (QQ) beaten by Pocket Sevens (77)—grrr. I was an 80% favourite to win the hand and double up, but a 7 came on the flop and I was out, after several days of play (=hard but enjoyable work) with nothing to show for it.
Oh well, that’s poker. I was a 4-to-1 favourite, but even a 1,000-to-1 favourite is not a thousand to nothing. That 1 will happen—and, in my case fifteen years ago, did.
These days, the top 15% get paid. And, with the somewhat envious permission of my wife Jenny, who is an excellent poker player herself, and would love to have been there but had other commitments, back to Vegas I went.
A brief story about Jenny and poker: when I was writing Getting Lucky we were invited on the Party Poker cruise, from Los Angeles to Mazatlán and back. There was a tournament on board (the million-dollar first prize was won by Mike Gracz, who was clearly the strongest player at the final table). Afterwards there was a Press Tournament—a freeroll (no entry fee) with a $2,000 first prize. Sixty entrants—and there were nothing like sixty media people on board, so many of those entrants were good players, even professionals, who hornswoggled their way in. I was the second player knocked out, getting all my chips in with AA (the best possible starting hand) which got cracked. I went off to interview players for my book, and came back to see Jenny settling down at the final table with nine other players, all men.
She picked them off one by one—except in one hand where she busted two at the same time. She ended up heads-up against the writer from Playboy, who was no match for her. He was so far below her standard that he did not know what she was doing—writing, in his article, that Jenny was clearly an idiot. Jenny loved that article. She called her father with the news that every father wants to hear from a daughter: “Dad, I’m in Playboy!”
She thought the trophy ugly and wanted to throw it overboard, but I snaffled it and it has pride of place on my mantelpiece.
The other trophy I have up there is the Academy of Country Music’s Album of the Year (won by Jenny’s Dad for producing John Denver’s album Back Home Again in 1974).
Back to the present.
Flight Day 1B: From 60,000 in starting chips to 92,700.
Day 2 (after two days off, while Flights Day 1C and Day 1D played out): Some ups, a lot of downs. I was card-dead for the last two (two-hour) sessions. In the final session I had no promising situations, in which I could have made plays, and only one premium hand; and, as I had been folding everything, of course got no customers, so won little with it. These swings happen all the time in tournament poker. You just have to be patient.
However, I ended the day in 1,116th place, with 146,000 in chips.
Only seven players had to be knocked out before we made the money. Small-ish though my stack was, it was a comfortable twenty minutes before the bubble burst. Ironically, the ‘bubble boy’ was Chris Moneymaker, the internet qualifier who won the Main Event in 2005, becoming almost single-handedly responsible for the Poker Boom. Many “Recs” (recreational players) like myself thought, “If he can do it, why can’t I?” Well, the next year I didn’t, but got a book (Diary of a Mad Poker Player) out of my failed attempt to be the next Chris Moneymaker.
So, with a “Min Cash” of $15,000 guaranteed, I set to work. I built my stack up, whittled it down, built it up again, but never got much above 200,000 in chips—the average stack by then being nearly double that. So, as a small stack, I was a target, and vulnerable; and, this year, I was happy to be busted by a better player with a much bigger stack and a better hand—his AA over my QQ (again! Must be my jinx hand at the WSOP).
Result: not a Min Cash after all, but one level up.
Yes, I’d love to be in the tournament still, but many far better players than me ran worse than I did, so all in all I’m pleased with the result. Lots of big names have been knocked out, and I haven’t heard of most of the remaining players. It’s nice to have finished on the right side of the ledger for the first time.There will be a break before the Final Table on Monday (July 13th). The remaining nine players will regather in Vegas on August 3rd for up to three more days of play to see who ends up with the gold championship bracelet and the $10 million first prize.
It’ll be broadcast live, and I’ll be watching.
