It’s been a long time since my last broadcast – which was a few hours after I busted out of the main event of the WSOP. I haven’t had a lot to report on the poker front, since I’ve been largely preoccupied with other things since returning from Vegas. I have been playing some poker, but not as much as usual, and I’ve had some successes, but nothing to write home about.
I did take one weird-ass bad beat that I was going to whine about here, but I got distracted. I’ll give you the abbreviated version … playing in a $2100 buyin Step 6 single-table tournament on Pokerstars: 9 players, 3 of us get $5200 in tournament dollars, 2 of us get $1200 in cash, and the other four get nothing. I play well and make the first cut when we get down to 5-handed, so I know I’ll get $1200 at least, but that would still be losing money on the deal. When we get to the true bubble at 4-handed, I battle & steal my way from being the short stack to being slight chip leader. I’m thrilled to see the two shortest stacks get all-in against each other, with AK and AJ. At this point the tournament is basically over – if the shortest stack is eliminated then we’re done, but even if the shortest stack doubles up, the other guy will have such a tiny stack as to have virtually no chance of recovering, and the tournament will likely be over after a hand or two. The flop brings a Jack, so it looks like a nasty suckout in the making … but I don’t give a crap who wins, as long as it’s me … and then the turn brings a King, so perhaps there’s some justice after all and the AK will emerge rightfully victorious … but again, I care not at all … oh but wait, there was also a Queen on the flop, and when the STUPIDEST TEN EVER lands on the river, they both make a straight and split the pot, and we’re back where we started. More scratching and clawing ensues, until I have an obvious shove with 88 and run straight into KK, and I’m pretty badly wounded but not dead. I get my remaining chips in on a pretty good spot to triple up and be right back in contention, but the board doesn’t help me and I’m out on the grossest bubble with $1200, a net loss of $900 in equity. That STUPID TEN cost me $4100.
OK so that’s some bad news. There’s some other bad news that I feel weird about slipping into a poker blog post, but some of you who read my blog don’t know about it and will want to, so here it is … apologies for the weirdness of reporting it this way … a couple weeks after I returned from Vegas, my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer. It is basically inoperable, and given her general condition and her philosophy, we are all in agreement that it doesn’t make sense to pursue options like chemotherapy or radiation. She is not experiencing major symptoms of the cancer yet, and all tests indicate that it has not spread to brain, spine, or other organs. The only real prognosis we’ve been given is that we’re looking at something in the ballpark of a year, but my sense is that that’s a very wide ballpark, and the phrase that keeps popping out of doctors’ mouths is “but you never know with cancer”. All things considered mom is in pretty good shape and spirits – my eldest sister has stepped up to the plate in a huge (no pun or self-reference intended) way and she and her husband are currently spending 5-6 nights a week at my mom’s house, and we’ve increased the caregivers’ schedule, and the other three siblings are doing what we can to support and give #1-sister a night off once in a while. So the silver lining in all of this is that mom now has someone with her 24/7, which she might pretend to be grumpy about sometimes, but is pretty clearly a good thing for her spirits, her health, and her safety. We’re all sad and scared sometimes, but after the initial panic of the diagnosis there is some calm now. It may be the calm before the storm, and the coming months are likely to bring a lot of challenges and some more sad-and-scared. My mom will turn 82 years old on Monday.
OK, so if it was a little freaky to put that bit of personal sadness into a poker blog, I guess it’s even more weird to follow it up with more poker news, but I’m doin’ it anyway. I’ll start with the sad/scary/aggravating poker news so as not to give you too much of a jolt and so I can end with the good stuff. About a week ago I got an email message from Pokerstars (the biggest online poker site, and where I have spent the majority of my online playing time in the last three years) saying that due to the recent State Supreme Court ruling, they will no longer allow residents of Washington State to play poker for money on Pokerstars. The policy change was effective immediately – when I got the message I was looking for tournaments to play on Pokerstars to nail down the necessary frequent player points to secure gold VIP status for the month, so I went from Gold VIP to persona-non-grata in the blink of an eye. This is a worrisome event, since playing online has been a significant source of income for me over the past four years, and playing on Pokerstars made up the bulk of that. Everyone is holding their breath right now to see if FullTilt and other sites follow in the gorilla’s footsteps. If Fulltilt leaves, my online poker career will effectively be over. So that sucks HARD.
OK, I’ve hinted at it, I’ve distracted you from it, you might not be in the mood for it, but there is some light at the end of the rainbow with the tunnel and the leprechaun. Last night, when I clearly would have been playing in the 11:40PM $109 turbo tournament on Pokerstars if the Washington legislature had not branded me a Class C Felon (same category as “Child selling” and “Rape in the third degree”), I was left with the only remaining option of playing in the Midnight “turbo hundo” on FullTilt. I mean, just because one den of iniquity has closed its doors to me doesn’t mean I’m going to just give up my degenerate life of crime! YOU CAN TAKE MY ONLINE POKER GAME AWAY FROM ME WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!!! OK, maybe that doesn’t quite work, but you get the drift. The turbo hundo on FullTilt is so named because it costs a hundred bucks (plus nine) to get in and it plays fast. I played it … I nailed it … I got lucky along the way, but I also played pretty well for the most part, and took advantage of some very weak, scared play once we got into the money. At the final table with four players left, a guy – I shit you not – with 80,000 chips and the blinds at 5,000-10,000 plus antes … he raised under the gun to 30,000, and then folded when I shoved (I had AQ and more chips than him, and I felt happy to tangle with his stack). He then with his remaining 50,000 posted the big blind and folded to a raise, and then with his 40,000 chip stack he GAVE ME A WALK. I wanted to kiss him, but instead I called him an idiot in my player notes and laughed heartily at his expense. The heads-up battle was a bit of a see-saw for a while, but I felt like I had a decent edge on the guy. The crucial hand came when I flopped a set of tens (OK, not all Tens are stupid) and trapped him into stacking off when he was drawing dead – and then wiped up the rest of him on the next hand.
$109 entry, 215 players, 1st place finish: $5590
This would normally trigger a scramble to try and win myself another triple crown, since this victory easily qualifies as the first of three, but with Pokerstars gone and me in rehearsal most nights, the number of $10K prize pool tournaments available to me anywhere other than FullTilt is pretty close to zero. I’ve got some time off this weekend so I’ll give it the old college half-assed try – but I’d basically have to win tournaments on both Ultimatebet and Bodog (both smaller sites with not a lot of higher buyin tournaments on their schedules) over the course of two days. I don’t like my chances, but I’ll try.
What am I rehearsing, you ask? I’ll put out another announcement and more info closer to our opening on October 22, but for now I’ll just leave you with the poster that just got finalized today … check it out:
So sorry to hear about your mom. I’ll keep her and you and your family in my thoughts. I went through a similar situation with my mom a long long time ago. Sigh….