I've had a spate of good results lately, a lovely and lethal combination of running good and playing better has brought my results back in to the realm of acceptable for 2012.
First of all, I took down my home game tournament in October. Though it was a slightly smaller than usual group of 16 players and thus only $240 (plus another $30 in bounties) it still was very gratifying to finally take one down after three years. The last tournament I won in my garage was September 2009!
My other big win for the month was at Hollywood Park Casino. I half reluctantly signed up for their Sport of Kings main event, a 100K guarantee for only $100 and two $50 rebuys. This was a two day event with 10 heats over 5 starting days. Only the top 6% of each heat would advance to day two, but the top 10% would make the money.
I've played in a couple of these before, and they are not only exceedingly hard to cash in but almost impossible to advance to day 2. Dog, from my home game, did it last winter though, so I figured if I could learn to not be such a spew-tard when I got around 20 bigs and be more disciplined like him, I might squeak into some monies.
123 runners. Almost as many rebuys too, but crazy enough I didn't rebuy. My tournament started off with a bang - I tripled up in a 3 way pot when my set of tens somehow quadded up on the turn with a flush draw and aces also committing after the flop. Boom. Didn't bother to use my re-buys in the 2 hour period before the break, I sat on over 60K at one point, well over 200 big blinds. I always rebuy as many chips as I can as soon as I can, but for some reason, for a mere 30 more bigs at the break, the spirit didn't move me here. It was probably a mistake, bullets are bullets, but what are you going to do.
After the break I small balled a bit, which is always fun, and I was shocked to see the money approaching after only about 6 hours.
I was card dead for a long while, which would have been okay but I got moved pretty early on to a very aggressive table, and my stack couldn't help but dwindle to about 30 bigs as the bubble approached.
I woke up with kings in the big blind after the cutoff had raised and the small blind had shoved. They both had me covered so I called off and to my horror so did the cutoff. I figured he had to have a monster, but he had A10 sooted. The small blind had AK.
Flop was A 10 4. A beautiful case king peeled off on the turn and the river blanked. Big exhale.
I was okay with just folding to the money after this. Almost everyone at the table was short and was folding or jamming. My cards were so bad that I didn't have room to do much. I probably stole the blinds twice out of four attempts.
Then this hand happened. I was back down to about 25 bigs on the big blind with a pair of red eights. A fairly rude fellow in MP who had been inactive for awhile opened for 3x and I defended. The board came all low cards with two spades. I checked and he fired a teeny and shitty bet.
I had seen him do this twice before and shove the turn only to have his opponents fold. I simply determined at that point to snap call if the board remained safe after the turn. It was a spade. Yuck. I checked and he shipped it.
I actually, genuinely tanked a bit. For him it was a massive overbet. He had me covered, maybe by twenty bigs. It was really a shove that made no sense if he had made the flush. It kind of made sense in a stupid way if he had flopped a set, only his flop c-bet was waay to small to give me the wrong price to draw on a wet board. I concluded I was for sure seeing monsters under the bed, so I called and fast rolled my pair.
He incredulously turned up a red ace and a red queen. "I don't believe this guy..." he muttered in disgust. The river paired one of the flops sixes and I had doubled through him. Back around 50 bigs, feeling pretty great. I may have not played the hand expertly, by any means, but I had really thought through the sequence of the hand, reflected on what I had seen him do before and come to a correct decision.
The money bubble burst just before the 7 hour mark and I was glad to see they were advancing 7 of us to day 2. Before I knew it, I was at the final table. There were a couple of HUGE stacks to my left, so I expected them to pillage the table with the 2 day bubble looming large.
Surprisingly, they were absurdly tight. We played for almost 3 hours, nearly midnight (after a noon start) before things finally started happening.
Let me pause to say this. I have often berated not just other people's play on this blog, but sometimes the players themselves. Occasionally it has been justified, such as the drunk in Vegas who wanted to punch my lights out at 1am, but for the most part I have been out of line.
Tommy Angelo, a great poker writer who is all about Zen at the table, has put it beautifully. To paraphrase - "You don't want to insult other poker players. Not because you want keep them happy and keep them in the game, but because it's not right to insult people. They are just fellow travelers. Be nice because it's the right thing to do, not because it's profitable."
I have always appreciated this truth, but I've had a hard time always living by it, especially when writing. Whether it be snidely berating someone's play or even going so far as to call them an a-hole. It's not right, but I do it on a somewhat regular basis.
This is likely to change after my experience at the final table two weeks ago at Hollywood Park.
We were a final table of 10, and one of the players 5 to my left was in a wheelchair. He was young and fairly quiet. His body was a bit bent and his arms were twisted and hands rather balled into fists with what looked to be symptoms of cerebral palsy. Hollywood Park of course let him play his chips out of a rack, he had just enough dexterity to do this fairly well and he could also look at his cards with a medium amount of effort.
All the same I couldn't help but feel sorry for him - what a shitty deal in life. I was instinctively happy for him that he had made the final table.
Like I said, he was very quiet and seemed friendly enough. He played a grand total of three pots in the 3 plus hours of final table play.
He had no problem speaking clearly, so he I thought he maybe did slow roll his aces the first time he played a pot and another player got it all in against him, and I don't mean physically, he took forever to tell his opponent that he had rockets. But it was probably just my cynical poker imagination, right?
The second time he played a hand, he shoved, he again had aces. This time all folded and he showed.
After almost 3 hours into final table play, 8 players remained with only 7 advancing. Wheelchair dude was not the short stack, but for sure one of the smaller ones. I was too, with probably 8 bigs. He open shoved from under the gun. I released my pocket 5's and it folded to the button who was one of 3 monster stacks, though now he probably had under 40 bigs.
He had actually been the chip leader for most of the tournament, and I had not been impressed with his play. With so much ammo at his disposal he had managed to spew quite a bit unnecessarily. On this, what would be the final hand of the night, he hemmed and hawed and then finally called with AJ sooted.
It wasn't the worst call I've ever seen, but it was reasonably lousy. Wheelchair guy disgustedly turned up his Jacks and looked rather pissed off.
The flop came all hearts. The chip leader indeed had flopped the nuts.
After the rest of the board ran out harmlessly the wheelchair fellow leapt out of his chair - or rather he would of if he had been able to. He was SO angry his whole body shook and turned and twisted - "How the FUCK can you call there! That is terrible! You are absolutely terrible! Jesus Christ!"
He was beyond angry, he was both furious and crushed.
"You are right man, that was a lousy call..." said the chipleader, to no avail. Wheelchair guy kept pouring it on for a good five minutes as the rest of us sheepishly waited to bag up our chips. "I mean, you've seen me play two fucking hands in 3 hours, both times aces, how the hell can you call there? God!"
No one said a word. Everyone at that table felt lousy for the same reason. Here was a guy who had been fucked by life, and now he was getting fucked by poker. Make no mistake, we were all also glad to be advancing to day two, but the normal jubilation that would have occurred was kept in check.
Finally he wheeled away. Everyone breathed a small sigh of relief and most guys allowed themselves a little smile at having advanced.
Then he wheeled back and started in again.
The chipleader, to his credit, had been pretty rude to everyone else during the tournament but kept his cool and apologized again.
I at this point began to feel that wheelchair guy was out of line. Had any fully able bodied player acted in this manner, he would have long ago been reprimanded and very likely escorted off the property had he continued.
But as I said, it was plain to everyone that this guy had been dealt a shitty hand in the game of life. So we all put up with it. Eventually he did run out of steam and by the time I had bagged up and left it looked like he wanted to cry in the worst way. I thought he had for sure acted like a childish dick, but I wasn't the least bit mad at him.
It got me thinking. No one said much to him because everyone knew a big part of his story just by looking at him. But how many players in that room also have stories, some very possibly far more horrific than this fellow. Yes he's boned from a disease, but he likely has many people in his life who love him. (Since they listed wheelchair guy's name under tournament results on the HPC website, a quick check of him on facebook actually confirmed this. He has twice as many friends as I do.) I know for sure there are men at Hollywood Park that don't have anyone.
So really, even though the rude guy that I snap called with 88 earlier in the tournament came off as an arrogant douche - he could have a really bad story that I can't see. I just don't know. What if he had been molested as a child? What if his daughter had been murdered? What if? If I knew either of these things to be true I would see him as I saw the guy in the wheelchair. I wouldn't be angry at his anger, I would feel only compassion. Isn't that how we're supposed to feel about everyone?
Poker is a funny game, in that you think you know your opponent. The better player you are the more you can get into his head. But you'll never really KNOW someone just by playing cards.
Tommy Angelo's words rang in my ears on the drive home. I also reflected on my faith. I for sure believe that everything happens for a reason. God allows all manner of horrible things to happen, and many of them can't be explained. But in this case his plan was pretty clear - I had learned a lot from wheelchair guy. Not really about him or how shitty his disease is, but how we should all strive to remember that not all scars are visible.
Anyway, I advanced with 8 big blinds, but they rolled back the levels on day 2 to what had been the lowest levels of the many day 1's, so I actually started with 16 bigs.
I folded for an hour until I got AK on the big blind. I 3 bet shoved the button's raise and he snap called with aces.
I had folded long enough to make a pay jump to $910, which is my best result of the year both in amount and percentage of buy-in. Hopefully I can bink one or two more before the year is up and get out of the $1000 plus hole that I'm in. But if not, that's okay. I've been very lucky in my life to be able to play this silly game a lot and never more than this year. It's been a great experience and I know my game is sharper than it's ever been.
The future is bright.
