I feel bad for Joe. I really do. He didn’t choose me, I invaded his turf and caused nothing but headaches for him. His only crime was throwing a fantastic poker tournament. For his sins, he got my big mouth and bad attitude.
It started simply enough. I was working at Microsoft and I stumbled across the mspoker alias. Joe stated he would be holding the second ever Microsoft World Series of Poker. A slow blind structure event designed to see who was really the best on the alias. I emailed him to ask if it was OK for contractors to play the tournament. I received a one word answer. Yes.
I showed up and I undeservedly won. Winning encouraged me to play more and for the next few years, I did my best to learn the game. At first, I came from the “tight is right” school of play. I waited patiently for good hands and bet hard. Any experienced player observing me would know instinctively when I had the goods and when I didn’t. I could get pushed off of mediocre hands by bluffs, get my good cards cracked by drawing hands, and never got action when I had aces. I would see crazy, loose players constantly making final tables or winning tournaments and think that, because I was tight, that I was the better player. I was wrong.
Rather than stick stubbornly to my original strategy; I watched the better players, learned from them, and borrowed elements of their style. I learned about pot odds, implied odds, and Level 3 play. I play position as much as I play my cards. I improved.
A side effect of my improvement is that my already loud and obnoxious mouth got louder and obnoxiouser when I was at the table. For those of you who know me and think, “I already knew you were in asshole.” At the table, I am far, far worse.
In 2007, I was at one of Joe’s World Series events. I’m playing my game and having a good time. I am confident and relaxed. An unknown player gets moved to my table. Shortly after he sits down, I engage him in conversation.
“Patriots fan?”
He is wearing a New England Patriots hat and the team is on their way to an unprecedented undefeated season. He nods but does not say anything. He is trying to give off some kind of badass impression. I decide to bust his balls a little.
“So... Did you just hop on the bandwagon?”
The Pats fan physically moves his chair back and looks like he is about to jump across the table and take a swing at me. I don’t flinch or move a muscle. I just sit there, staring back at him. Eventually, the Pats fan sits down and the game resumes, but it is tense.
I don’t say anything further, but I start raising his blinds and playing any hand with any two cards when he is in the pot and I have position. He is on tilt and I know it and take advantage of it. He doesn’t last long and eventually busts out and goes home.
We are on a break and I am sucking down a Diet Mountain Dew, my tenth of the day. Joe comes up to me.
“What the fuck was that?”
“I really have no idea. Joe, I’ve been playing your tournaments for a long time and I can honestly tell you, I’ve said a hell of a lot worse. That was my C-Level trash talk, not even remotely close to my A game.”
“Yeah, I know. I hate to see what would have happened if you were your usual self!”
It is one of my last tournaments at mspoker and I decide to play the annual “Big Baller” tournament. The buy-in is higher than usual, $250 and it attracts a fairly large crowd of almost forty players.
We get started and nothing is going right for me. I don’t make any mistakes, but my chips are gradually spewing away. I make calls with the right odds and miss my draws. My good cards are cracked. My bluffs are called. I’ve lost 20% of my starting stack and am trying to keep it together.
“The Emperor” shows up an hour late and sits down at my table. He is talking on the phone, loudly, and not paying attention to the game at all. When the action comes to him, I get impatient, I pound the table tell him to make up his mind. I am annoyed that he is slowing down the game and he is annoyed that I’m busting his balls.
“The Empreror” decides if I’m going to bust his balls about slowing down the game, then he’s really going to slow down the game and take a full minute every time the action is on him. This goes on for a good twenty minutes and the game (at our table) is brought to a painfully slow grind. Eventually, poor Joe has to separate us two children. Even after “The Emperor’s” removal from my table, nothing goes right.
A few players bust out and I’m still at less than my starting stack. I get AQ in late position and decide to raise it up. The flop comes Q high and it is checked to me. I bet. Kumar check raises me and I have to make a decision. Is he trying to push me off my hand? The trouble with Kumar is he could easily have two pair, a set, or a draw and play the hand the exact same way. With my stack, I could easily wind up all in and I have to make a commitment. Do I want to risk my tournament life with top pair top kicker?
I could say that I have a read on Kumar, but that would be lying. In actuality, I decide that he has an open ended straight draw and that I am pretty far ahead here. I call his raise and the turn offers no help to me or to Kumar - if he is on the open ender. Kumar bets out which is exactly what I would expect him to do if he missed his draw, but unfortunately it is exactly what I would expect him to do if he had two pair or a set. I had already mentally committed myself and I raise him. Kumar is pot committed and goes all-in. I quickly call. We flip our cards and I see that my read was not wishful thinking, he has an open ender. Kumar bricks the river and I double up and for the first time all day, I am above my starting stack.
The sense of panic subsides a bit after that hand. I am a little more patient and continue to avoid making any big mistakes. I am in late position when I get pocket queens. I raise. An aggressive player re-raises. I decide that I am ready to go all-in preflop and hope he doesn’t have kings or aces. I re-re-raise. He goes all-in. I call.
He shows AK and my heart sinks a little. I show my queens and his heart sinks a little. Statistically, I am a 55% favorite to win the hand, but the odds are so close that this scenario is called a coin flip. I use the power of negative thinking and start planning on picking up some take out food for my family. If I bust now, I can still have dinner with them. Miraculously, I do not bust and double up again.
We get down to the final table and I have a slightly below average stack. I stay patient. I stay disciplined. Players continue to bust. I have never played the biggest stack at the table, but I start to realize, he is not very good. I put on a clinic and take his chips from him. By the time it is down to three players, I am the dominant chip leader.
Jeff is in the final three. Jeff is famous at mspoker for having made a final table at the World Poker Tour. In a group of alpha males who are constantly trying to metaphorically measure their penises amongst each other, everyone knows that Jeff is one of the best. I might be as good a player as Jeff. I might not. I don’t let him intimidate me.
Jeff’s fiance (now wife) volunteers to deal to help speed up the game and make it easier on the remaining players. The tournament is mine to win and Jeff goes all-in preflop on my big blind. I have King-Ten, which is not much, but he’s a small stack and I’m a big stack. I look at Jeff and I think that he is making a desperation move.
I sit back and I smile. There are rows and rows of chips in front of me. I have so many chips that it is actually hard for to reach around them to get my cards. I have over 700,000 chips and to call Jeff it’s going to cost me 50,000 more. I neatly pull out five stacks of 10k chips without committing. I look right at him.
“Do you see those chips? If I call you, it’s only going to cost me these chips,” I point to the neat stack, a pittance compared to what stands behind them. I continue, “Even if I lose, I still have all these chips left.”
Jeff is a pro and his expression tells me nothing. I have to go on my gut instinct. There was something about when he raised that made me think my king might be good for a 65% chance of winning.
Jeff’s fiance’s jaw drops a little. She places the cards back on the table. “Oh my god! You are such an asshole,” she says. She is no stranger to poker or alpha meals and yet she is appalled by my little speech. I have that effect on people.
I call and Jeff shows Jack-Ten and I am way ahead. Jeff needs a Jack to win the hand without me getting a King. Sure enough, he gets it. I shrug it off. I made the right call and I can’t control luck.
It goes on for a while. I keep on thinking that I have Jeff on the ropes, but I keep on losing the coinflips. After a few coinflips, Jeff is ahead. It is late and Jeff offers up a deal. I take second place money along with the other player. Jeff is awarded first place, but loses some of the first place prize to make us go away. We shake hands and call it a night. I pocket nearly $2,000 and even though I didn’t win, I still feel very good about how I played.
Joe, who usually knows better, tells me, “That was the most patient and disciplined I have ever seen you play.”
I thank him for the high praise. Now, ordinarily, I don’t think there are many life lessons that can be gained from the poker table. However, as I drive home, I can’t help but think of how the day played out. I started out slow. I could not get anything going. I get a little on tilt from a confrontation with another player. Instead of throwing in the towel or getting sloppy with my play, I regrouped. I am a control freak and I had a moment of clarity. I couldn’t control the other players in the game. I couldn’t control the cards that I got. All I could do was play my game and make adjustments. I had to stop worrying about everything else and put my head down and grind it out. Wait for the right opportunities and then pounce with conviction. I vow to bring this level of zen to all future games.
Here in Australia, I have unofficially retired from the game of poker. That is until Carson’s doctor mentioned his home game to me. I can’t help myself, my ears perk up. “Home game you say? I’ve played a couple of times, do you have room for one more?” He laughs and invites me.
I drive to Caulfield at 9:00 on a Wednesday. There are nine players altogether with a maximum buy-in of a whopping $20. These guys would have been eaten alive by the mspoker players. They can barely deal the cards. The game crawls at a snail’s pace. There is a furious debate about whether or not to burn a card before dealing. I can’t believe they are even having this conversation.
Once upon a time, I used to make fun of some of the better players for playing the Wednesday night tournament. Of all the tournaments to play, it is the lowest buy-in and attracts the worst players in the community. They would always respond that to be a good player, you have to be able to adjust your game to an extraordinarily bad player. If you only play good players, you will be absolutely flummoxed by a bad one. This debate replays in my mind as the game starts.
I fold early and often. I don’t even make a secret of it. They are playing No Fold ‘Em Hold ‘Em. Bluffing is pointless, they will call out of stupidity. I sit back and wait for cards or wait for position in a family pot. Even though I don’t play many hands, I still get action when I have the goods. Even though I all but state outright that I am not bluffing, I still get called.
I want to take control of the game. I want to assign myself permanent dealing responsibilities. I want to demand a second deck to speed up the game. I don’t. I drink a Budweiser that I brought and sit back and let the game play. I patiently pick my spots. I don’t make any scenes and no one tries to fight me. I walk away $40 richer and who knows, they may even invite me back.
As I am leaving, the good doctor catches up with me.
“That must have been hard for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think anyone else saw it, but I could tell you were struggling with your inner control freak.”
I laugh. “Yes, it was a challenge. But I’ve learned, I can’t control everything. Sometimes, you just have to sit back and grind it out.”
And I guess that has been my struggle since my earliest memories. The world is populated by 1/7,000,000,000 me and 699,999,999,999/7,000,000,000 everyone else. Yet I expect the world to play at my pace, by my rules. Such thoughts and desires truly are futile and if it took several years of wasted time playing poker with a bunch of well meaning degenerates to figure this out, then maybe it was time well spent after all.
