ANOTHER VIEW
Playin' poker with the big boys
Press Democrat baseball writer finds it's skill, luck and like chess with exploding pieces
nosale
Players try their luck during the second day of the World Series of Poker at the Rio hotel and casino Saturday in Las Vegas .
ISAAC BREKKEN / Associated PressPublished: Sunday, July 30, 2006 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, July 30, 2006 at 1:56 a.m.
No matter how good a golfer you are - or how good you think you are - you can't show up on the first morning of the U.S. Open, plop down some cash and say you want to take your crack at Tiger Woods.
Facts
INSIDE
Record-winning player dealt early exit at World Series of Poker / C7
But anyone can play with the best at the World Series of Poker.
Even me.
And on the right day, anyone can beat the best.
Even me.
This story, one that ends with an ordinary baseball writer from California outlasting 97 percent of a field dotted with poker professionals, started three years ago.
I was one of the millions of people who watched ESPN's poker coverage and got hooked. It became a hobby/obsession for me. After a few years of practice, I decided I was good enough to take my shot at the WSOP.
The WSOP is actually a series of 45 tournaments over the course of six weeks, with a variety of types of poker and a range of entry fees, from $1,000 on up. The Main Event, which began Friday and will run through Aug. 10, is the climax. The buy-in for that one is $10,000.
Although I believe I could hold my own in that event, I didn't feel like spending $10,000 to find out. I instead played in Event 27, which was a no-limit Texas Hold'em event with a $1,500 buy-in.
No-limit hold'em is the most popular of all forms of poker for tournaments. It requires a great amount of skill and luck, sort of like playing chess with randomly exploding pieces. You can do everything right and still - boom! - you're done. In order to get any money back in this event, I would need to avoid the booms for about 10 hours, outlasting 90 percent of the field.
Heading to the tables
That was the prospect I faced on the morning of July 18, as I entered the Rio Hotel and Convention Center in Las Vegas. During the seemingly endless walk from the hotel to the convention center, the snippets of conversations I overheard left me no doubt where I was going.
" ... I've got ace-king and the flop comes all rags, so I push ... "
" ... I had seen him make a check-raise semi-bluff on a flush draw ... "
" ... This donkey was calling raises with king-nine off-suit . .. "
Dozens of merchants lined the hallways, trying to entice the poker players with scantily-clad women. The major online poker sites each had hospitality rooms, where they would ply you with food and drink and give you free shirts, hoping that you'd make it on TV wearing one of them.
Once I got through all of that, I entered the Amazon room, which is more of an airplane hangar than a room. About the size of three football fields, the Amazon room is a ballroom that was filled with more than 200 poker tables. In the front of the room was the ESPN featured table, equipped with cameras to record the hidden cards for the subsequent telecast.
Hundreds of spectators milled outside the ropes, gawking at the legends of poker as they played. As I found my seat at Table 141, I looked around and saw, fortunately, what looked to be nine regular folks like myself.
At noon, all 208 tables were filled with 10 players apiece, with alternates waiting like vultures to take the seats of eliminated players. By the time they stopped accepting entries there were 2,126 players.
1,500 chips for starters
Each of us started with 1,500 tournament chips - eight green 25s, eight black 100s and one pink 500. The chips have no cash value. They are simply a way of keeping score. When your chips are gone, so are you. Three days later, one person would have all 3.2 million chips, along with the $655,141 and the coveted champion's bracelet.
The trick in this sort of tournament is to identify the players who are playing not to lose. They will fold all but their very best hands, so you take pots away from them simply by making big bets. Good cards are not required. Just courage.
As players were eliminated, the regular schmoes at my table were replaced by more threatening players. Huck Seed, a pro who won the Main Event in 1996, sat to my immediate right. Padraig Parkinson, an Irish pro who had once finished third in the Main Event, was across the table. Tuna Lund, a retired pro, sat three to my right.
Eventually we were joined by none other than Mike Matusow. If you've seen any poker on TV, you know "The Mouth." He's a big hit on TV because he talks nonstop, often insulting the other players for their play. Immediately I thought it would make a great story if he would start ripping me.
Beating 'The Mouth' one time
"See that guy on TV? He called me a donkey."
I did beat The Mouth out of one pot for about 2,000 chips, after which he stared at me for what seemed like a solid minute. I pretended not to notice, but it was pretty cool.
As I accumulated more chips, I continued to use them to bully the table. I added to my stack mostly by making bets that forced everyone else to fold. Although that is the proper strategy, it is also fraught with peril. Bluffing with trashy cards is one thing when you can easily determine you are beaten and then cut your losses. The problem is when your trashy cards actually turn into something almost good enough to win.
Next thing you know, you've thrown away all your chips on a hand that should have been tossed away immediately. You don't want to be that guy.
But there I was about five hours into the tournament, having raised with a queen and a nine, a rather meager holding. Rather than simply raking in the chips after everyone else folded, as I had planned, I found myself with some opposition. Another player had called my bet and we saw a flop - the first three community cards in the middle of the table.
Good news and bad news. The highest card on the flop was a nine, pairing the nine in my hand. Against a player who may very well have called me with a pair of 10s or jacks in his hand, or with two cards that matched one of the others on the board - giving him three of a kind - I may have been staring at a hand just good enough to cost me all my chips.
Cool on the outside ... only
As we went through the motions, me betting, him raising, I was trying to look cool and detached on the outside. Inside, my heart was ready to jump out of my chest.
The voice inside my head was screaming: "You idiot! You are going to bust with queen-nine! You are going to throw away five hours of near-perfect poker!"
My opponent - a middle-aged dude wearing sunglasses - didn't have the decency to put me out of my misery by pushing all his chips in at once, which would have signaled to me that I could fold.
Instead he was bleeding me slowly as we saw each of the last two community cards. Each bet was just small enough that I had to stick around - there were still no cards higher than nine on the board - but just big enough to make me sick inside.
Was he betting like that because he was weak, or because he wanted to give me just enough rope to hang myself?
When all the cards were out, he bet 2,500 and I grudgingly stacked up 20 black chips and put one pink one on top, then I shoved them toward the middle of the table, ready to say goodbye to them forever.
And then ... a miracle.
Mr. Sunglasses flips over an ace and a king, for a measly ace-high. My pair of nines was a winner, and the dealer shoved me a 12,000-chip pot.
My heart still racing, I say to Seed sitting next to me: "I don't know how you guys do this for a living."
From there I was sailing. I had more than 17,000 chips by the dinner break. I easily cracked the final 200 to make the money.
By the time we bagged up our chips for the night at 1:30 a.m., only 121 players were left, and I was in 46th place with 31,300.
As we began Day 2 at 2 p.m., I was guaranteed $2,902 - nearly double my $1,500 entry - even if I busted immediately, but I began to believe I had a chance at some serious money.
Problem was, at this point in the tournament the blinds and antes - the steadily-increasing forced bets - were growing so large in relation to the stacks that there wasn't much time to wait for good cards.
At that point, it's a game of chicken. You try to find an opportunity to shove your chips in first and hope everyone else will fold and you'll win enough to keep afloat.
If you pick the wrong time, and someone else wakes up with a real hand, you're toast.
I peaked at 53,000, but then I dwindled back to about 19,000 after a couple of my "steals" failed. With the price of poker still rising, I was at the point where my chips would be gone within about 20 hands if I didn't make something happen.
It had to end sometime
I looked down at a king and a jack. Good enough. I pushed all of my chips in. Unfortunately, another player had an ace and a jack and he called my bet.
I was about a 3-1 underdog as we waited for the five community cards. An ace came on the flop and that was that. See ya later.
I was ushered away by the floor manager, who told me I had finished in 54th place and won $7,255.
They took me over to cashier's cage and cut me a check - I requested a check instead of cash, so I couldn't do anything stupid with my winnings - and filled out some paperwork so the IRS can send me a note of congratulations in January.
Although I felt like an idiot for losing all my chips on a mediocre hand like king-jack, I took solace in the fact that 2,072 people had felt like idiots before me. For a first foray into the WSOP, not bad at all.
Now I can't wait until the 2007 WSOP.
I'll be back to defend 54th place.
This story appeared in print on page 2
All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.
Comments are currently unavailable on this article