Your Poker Stories

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What would you do? Call or fold? My thoughts were actually more about the consequences of my decision than about what I thought Tony actually had. Did I want to guarantee that I could play longer by folding? Then I thought that if I did fold, all these very good players at this table would start betting big into me thinking that I would fold again rather than risk being put out of the tournament. They would start putting me all-in every chance they got. Maybe that is what Tony was doing now. Maybe he bet with a bad hand with the belief that I would not call all-in no matter what kind of hand I had. A novice player won’t do that because they are afraid of a call. An experienced player might do it because it’s worked in the past. Because I didn’t want the rest of the players at the table to be betting into me the rest of the way I decided to call. Tony showed ten-ten for tens and treys and I won with queens and treys. The rest of the tournament was much easier. After two hours I had built my stack to 7625. At about 3pm I have 13,025 and Layne Flack, Eric Siedel, and T.J. Cloutier are still playing in the tournament. I find out that there were 358 entries and 27 places will be paid. 27th will pay $4,000 and 1st will pay $273,000. At 4:22pm there are 133 players remaining and I have 11,800 in chips with the blinds going to 200-400. By 5:45pm I have built my stack to 22,750. I had just won two big pots in a row from the same player. In the first of the two hands I had the ace of hearts and the eight of hearts. The flop was ace, ten, seven with one heart. The turn was the nine of hearts giving me top pair and a straight and a flush draw. The player put me all-in and I called and then caught a straight on the river. By 6:40pm we were down to 73 players and I had 22,050 in chips. I then hit a stretch of two hours where I got no cards at all. By 8:45 we were down to 43 players but I was down to 10,500 in chips. At 9pm we had a one hour dinner break (they let us go to the buffet for free.) We were down to 40 players and I had outlasted Tony Ma, Charlie Shoten, T.J. Cloutier, Men “The Master” , and Eric Siedel. When we started up again at 10pm I still couldn’t catch any cards. By 10:30pm I was out of the tournament in 38th place. Close but no cigar. After playing nine hours of no-limit poker I was pokered out and didn’t play again until three days later when I played in a 30 player tournament at Mandalay Bay. It cost $30 and paid 5 spots. I managed to finish 5th for $35 and after tipping $3 I profited $2 so I only lost $2078 playing poker tournaments this trip!

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