How I Spent My Friday Night

No, I didn't spend it on the couch watching TV like my alter-ego Homer Simpson there.

I was up all night long on Thursday, watching movies because I couldn't sleep. I finally went to bed around 7:00 am, and woke up at noon with my phone ringing. It was the poker room. Thankfully, they weren't calling me in for Friday, but telling me that I had to work on Sunday morning. That's ok with me--I need the cash and I forgot to make my football picks for the week. And I certainly didn't want to drive back down there if I didn't have to.

Anyhow, I was still tired, so I dozed a bit more before getting up, taking a shower, and getting dressed. I had a couple of errands to run, so I fought the Friday-afternoon traffic for awhile while I went to the bank and such.

I had some dinner and thought about playing some poker, as I got back on track yesterday. I considered going down to Planet Hollywood and taking some money off the tourists, but I decided to stick around at home an build up my PokerStars bankroll.

So I found a good $15 tournament that had open registration, and as it turned out there were 471 players. Quite a bit of difference from my usual single-table sit-n-go tournaments where I only have to knock out eight other players.

It started at 7:00 pm Vegas time, and I just finished up a few minutes ago. Here are the results:

PokerStars Tournament #107235184, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $15.00/$1.50

471 players
Total Prize Pool: $7065.00

Tournament started - 2008/09/12 - 22:00:00 (ET)

Dear T2V Mikey,

You finished the tournament in 3rd place.
A $724.17 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

Yep, five and a half hours later, I busted out in third place. I know, I should be more excited, but honestly, I'm kind of pissed off about the results. When we got down to three-handed, I had an overwhelming chip lead (more than double the chips of the second place stack), and got a pair of fours on the button. The short stack went all-in, and I called. He had King-Jack offsuit. Nothing came on the flop, but he caught two pair on the turn and river.

So that knocked me down a bit. He then hit the other guy for a big pot, so he had me covered a few minutes later. Then I pushed all in with Ace-Jack suited, and he called with Ace-Ten. Of course he caught his three-outer ten on the river to knock me out. It was a sick suck-out. It felt like a kick in the nuts. And first prize was $1300, so that stung a little too. Had that ten not come on the river, I would've had about a half a million in chips, and both of the other guys would've had less than 50K each.

I'm still shaking my head. That was a bad, bad, costly beat.

On the other hand...

I still got my money in with the best hand, and that's all I can hope for. And I've turned it around as far as my earlier running bad goes, so I'm ok. Oh, and seven hundred bucks helps take the sting out a little, too.

So the first thing I did was cash out $800 from my account--I've got a truck payment and electric bill coming up next week, and I've been making NO money at work, so I'll gladly use my winnings for that. Plus I'm going to Phoenix next weekend, and that's a couple hundy just for gas.

Anyhow, I had kind of an epiphany the other day when I was playing badly. It's one thing to get knocked out of a tournament when I've got the best hand, but it's another thing entirely when I get beat by making a bad call. I could see myself making bad plays, not paying attention to my table position, and just 'guessing' too many times.

So I said to myself, That's it--no more poker until you start playing up to your capabilities. There was more to it than that, but that's the gist of the self-conversation. I just had to kick my own ass and remind myself to play better. I was thinking, What's the difference between me and all those poker pros on TV? I mean, besides fame, fortune, and bracelets... Hey, I'm just as smart as most of them are (138 IQ baby!), but there's something else too. Part of it is fearlessness. I'm not quite there on that one, but stuff like figuring pot odds, taking advantage of position, reading my opponents tendencies, using measured aggression, and above all, patience are all things that I can do pretty well.

Well, patience has always been an albatross for me. Rather, the lack of it. But I'm learning. I just keep telling myself to 'think like a pro' and it seems to be working--I've cashed in five out of six tourneys since then.

Part of it is practical, too. I *really* don't want to go back to dealing in the pit, but the poker room is dead slow and I'm lowest guy on the totem pole. If it gets much worse, I will get laid off. I harbor no illusions about that--casinos treat employees like meat, and if the bottom line is affected, they start throwing bodies overboard with no remorse. And there are just no poker jobs out there in this town right now, so if I were to lose this job, I'd be well and truly fucked.

I have to treat playing poker as a part-time job. At least for now. But hey, at least it's a fun job. And I don't have to wear a name-tag or hair net, either.

So I'll play a little more today, once I get some sleep, but then, it's time to get serious. Starting in November, the Venetian is putting on their month-long Deep-Stack Extravaganza, and the buy-ins are $330 for each tourney. So I need to build a little bit of a bankroll for that. My goal is to cash in a couple of those, and maybe have enough scratch to play in the World Poker Tour events at the Bellagio in December. No, not the main TV event, but some of the preliminaries. I figure that will give me the experience it takes to play in the World Series next summer.

We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I'm just trying to make a few extra bucks and take the pressure off at work.

Mikey