Your Poker Stories

 What would you do? It was the toughest decision I’ve had to make in ten years of playing poker.
Here’s the situation I was in - put yourself in my place: You just arrived in Las Vegas this morning. You rented your car and got to the Bellagio at 11:30am - just in time to sign up for the $2000 No-limit Hold’em Tournament set to start at noon.You actually pay $2080 ($80 for the house, $2000 prize money minus 3 per cent for the dealers.) For all that hard-earned money you get a slip of paper that says you can sit at seat 8 at table 11 of the main poker room at the Bellagio. You start out with 4000 units in chips and the blinds start at 25-50. Each level of blinds lasts for 60 minutes. The next level will be 50-100 and starting with the fourth level antes will be added to the pot from each player starting at 25 units. This is a very slow tournament considering the blinds in relation to the amount you start with. But they will play as long as it takes today to get down to 9 players who will come back tomorrow at 3pm to play the final table The tournament starts promptly at noon. Seated at your table are Charlie Shoten and Tony Ma - two of the top 50 poker players in the world. You lose about 300 units trying to catch a flop over the first twenty minutes. It is now 12:20pm. You are dealt the King of Diamonds and the Queen of Diamonds. The blinds are 25-50 and you are in late position. There are two or three calls before the action comes to you. You have about 3700 units in front of you. You raise to 300. There are two callers - guess who: Tony Ma and Charlie Shoten. The flop is Q-3-3. It is checked to you and you bet 500 this time. Tony Ma calls, Charlie Shoten folds. The turn is a 5. The board is Q-3-3-5 and you have QK. You bet 800 and Tony just calls again. The river is a 6. You’ve put a lot of money into this pot already and you’re not sure if Tony is trapping you with trips or if he has AA or KK. You think he would probably have raised your 800 bet if he had anything like that but you’re not sure so you check. Tony goes all-in. You ask for a count. It’s about 2400 and you only have 2125 left. If you call and lose you will be out of the tournament after playing for just 20 minutes. You just forked over $2080 in cash to play for just 20 minutes? And 2125 is still a lot to play with. If you fold you will still have a chance to build up that stack again.

Next

Copyright 2005 Derby Lane.  All rights reserved - DLP Privacy Statement