| www.e-scott.net | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Home | Hockey | Pictures | Poker | Weblog | Wiki | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
As I sat down at my table at 1:00 PM on Sunday, May 23 of 2003, my palms were wet with perspiration. Getting caught up in the throngs of poker fans, it was tough to make my way to one of the 120 tables crammed with ten players a piece. As I took my seat and counted out the $10,000 in tournament chips before me, I forced a smile to the nine competitors that I would be playing for millions of dollars in prize money. "Shuffle up and deal" the tournament director said. And we were off.
My journey to the 2004 World Series of Poker (WSOP) began very late on a Saturday night in mid-April. Coming home from a birthday party up in the city, Krisztina and I were lacking any entertainment for the night. As she lay on the couch watching TV, I fired up my laptop and joined an on-line "satellite" tournament for the WSOP.
To give you a little flavor for how seriously I took this game,
just check out the empty beer bottle and (not empty) bottle of
Vicodin on the coffee table with me. And let me tell you that the
content of that bottle of beer wasn't exactly all by itself in my
stomach, if you know what I mean.
The structure for this game was simple: any number of people could
buy-in to the tournament for $25 a piece and could rebuy chips as
many times as they liked in the first hour. This encourages wild
play during this early "rebuy" period and also raises the prize pool.
With 398 people playing on this particular Saturday night, the
buyins and rebuys totaled about $17,000. First place would get one
seat in the WSOP (worth $10,000) plus $2,000 spending money. The
next three people would divide the remaining money with higher
placings taking a larger share. Four hours after the first hand was
dealt, I knocked out the last player in the tournament and won the
grand prize WSOP seat.
Woo-hoo! It's only 1:30 AM at this point! Wake your ass up, Krisztina, we're heading to Safeway for a $20 bottle of champagne!
The WSOP is a 30-day extravaganza of poker. There are 31 different poker games that are played that vary in the rules of the game and the buy-in paid by each competitor. There are dealer-only games, women-only games, games with $500 buy-ins and the main event, which has a $10,000 buy-in. Some of the events are played with Omaha, some with Stud, and many with Texas Hold 'Em.
The WSOP's last game, the championship event, has had a $10,000 buy-in since the first game in the early 1970's. The first game had only a handful of competitors but as the word got around that the very best in the world were competing, the game increased in size every year. Last year ESPN televised the game, and Chris Moneymaker's shocking victory in a field of nearly 800 opponents enchanted poker players all across the country. Showing this newfound popularity, the 2004 WSOP contained nearly 2600 competitors looking for the same fame and fortune.
In No-limit Hold 'Em (NLHE) each player is dealt two cards before the first betting round. Upon that betting round's conclusion, three cards are placed face-up in the middle of the table and another betting round ensues. A fourth card is followed by a third betting round and a fifth card is followed by the fourth, and final betting round. The player with the best five-card poker hand among the seven cards available to him (the two in his hand and the five on the board) wins the pot. The game is called "No Limit" because any player can bet every one of his chips at any time.
Prior to the television success of poker, most people layed "limit" poker where set increments of betting were applied to each round. Most poker books say that limit poker is a science while no-limit poker is an art. Given the ability for one hand to end someone's game, it is less important to have good cards in a no-limit game than in limit. You literally could bluff your way to to top.
The combination of the success of the World Poker Tour with the circus-like atmosphere of the WSOP made finding poker easy but playing it very, very difficult. Every casino downtown has a poker room. Some were made out of tents. However, they all had waiting lists that reached multiple-hour waits.
Another interesting part of our trip was the hotel room we stayed
in fo the first few nights. Krisztina and I really had no interest
in spending a money on a room that we wouldn't be in so we cheaped
out and stayed at the "Downtowner" a couple of blocks from Binion's.
Listen, downtown Vegas is pretty decent. The Downtowner, two blocks
off of Fremont street looks like the setting of every episode of Cops
that you've ever seen. Hooker and dealers owned our corner so I was
none-too-thrilled about Krisztina making the walk back to the room
around midnight.
Our last night was a little different, though. Through some
strange bit of serendipity, we ended up in the high roller room
of Binion's. Krisztina didn't request this room, nor was she
informed by the front desk that she was receiving it, but we got
it. This room was a 15th floor, two bedroom, three-bathroom beauty.
Damn, I wish I had been able to enjoy it longer.
Back to poker. As the big day approached, I knew that I was going to be outclassed at the game. Sure, I am a very good poker player. I clean up in private games, regularly make money when I play in the local card houses, and have been able to cash out some money in on-line games, too. However, true poker greatness is not born, it is learned. My analytical skills and good memory can carry me through most poker games. But the very best at the game have logged thousands of hours at poker tables and have developed uncanny skills and processing facial expressions, hand movements, posture, and other poker tells. I knew I couldn't compete with experts that possessed this wealth of experience.
My strategy to counter this experience deficit would be two-fold. First, I'd do everything possible to disguise my play. This means not only wearing glasses and a hat that would cover my face and eyes, but learning to always act consistently. Always move chips out with the same speed and timing. Always stall the exact same amount of time between looking at my cards and acting. Always say the same thing before taking action. This consistency would mask my actual hand and would guarantee that I didn't fall into the novice trap of putting on a performance to display qualities my hand didn't possess.
The second part of my strategy was that I would have to demonstrate exceptional discipline for the duration of play. Containing almost 2600 players, the main event would be played out in approximately 80 hours of poker. In any game of chance, the vicissitudes of fortune can be extreme. Every experienced poker player has had a bad run of cards that necessitated folding two or three hundred hands in a row. One of the qualities that separates great players from good players is realizing that three or four miserable hours of poker aren't even ten percent of the entire WSOP main event! As such, mental conditioning to allow me to fold for two or three hours straight and essentially watch poker--as opposed to playing it--would serve me well at this event.
There's an old saying in poker that I'll paraphrase here: "If you sit down at a poker table and can't spot the fish (least skilled player) in five minutes, you're the fish." Trite as it may be, this rule is golden. Every money game I sit down at I quickly determine whom I want to stay away from and whom I want to focus my money-taking efforts on. At my first table at the WSOP, every player out skilled me. It was exactly the fear of this situation that had started my profuse hand sweating moments before and the realization that my fears were well-founded that kept my hands wet for two more hours.
Parenthetically, let me tell you how hard it is to play poker with sweat-drenched hands. On a firm table, trembling, moist hands simply can't peel back the corners of cards to see their faces. Uneasy hands can't manage stacks of clay chips for betting. And stacking chips from a won pot is nearly impossible. When I won my first massive pot about sixty minutes into the first day, it took me nearly five minutes to stack the chips I won. Let me tell you that every player at that table quickly knew who the fish was.
As I sat down at my table on my first day of WSOP play, I was
surprised to see poker professional Paul Magriel sitting directly
to my right. For those of you that are fans of the World Poker
Tour, you may have notice Paul (known as "X22") belting out his
now-famous "Quack quack!" during play. Annoying as he may have
seemed in that WPT episode, he was great to play next to.
I won't bore you with the play-by-play, but I'll sum up the general action here. My first day went very well for me. Two or three big hands allowed me to take thousands of dollars from my opponents. Several of the players at my table lost all their money and left. New players were folded in from other tables to collapse the total number of tables in play. I finished day one at about 1:30 AM on Monday with about $33,000.
At the beginning of day two the field had been thinned to about 1200 players. On this day the cards were not so kind. Very few good hands were dealt to me and I was unable to capitalize with any profitable bluffs. At the end of the second day, I put my last $18,000 into a very good hand that didn't get the cards it needed to beat my only opponent. Out of money, I wished everyone good luck and left the tournament floor.
My final position in the tournament was approximately 300. Since only the top 225 players were paid, I won no money for my effort. However, given that I had outlasted nearly 2300 other players--including many professionals, world champions, and poker savants--I was very pleased with my performance. The total cost to me was a $25 buy-in in an online tournament and couple hundred dollars in travel expenses. For that low cost, I purchased a tale that I'll be telling for many years to come and the experience that will make me that much better in next year's WSOP!