World Series Dreams (and Nightmares)

As I write this I’m in the middle of packing to travel to the 2008 World Series of Poker. I mean literally in the middle of packing by the way. My room looks like someone threw a clothing hand grenade into it. Some items have made their way into the case but I think that’s more due to chance than anything else.
Every year the day before I leave for the Series is a familiar repeating pattern; a mixture of panic to finish all my outstanding tasks (actually having some relevant possessions in a bag being one) and a creeping excitement that I’m hours away from the promised land. When my friend Simon showed me his Christmas presents under his parents bed and finally ended our debate having scientifically proved Santa wasn’t real he killed my Chistmas eve feeling forever. The night before I leave for the series is a pretty good substitute.

The WSOP has a magic for me that’s hard to communicate to you. When I first heard of poker it was stories of the series, the event that was the pinnacle of poker. The more I got into poker the more the series obsessed me. When it took place every year and I was stuck thousands of miles away it would be like a wave of sadness. Not only did I feel I should be there but also that I should be competing – being the son of a bitch that puts a move on Chan.
The extent of the obsession became clear when I cancelled spending time with my girlfriend to sit in my flat and watch very slow text updates of Chris Ferguson winning the main event at the hands of my then poker hero TJ (hey I was young). This would have all been fairly reasonable had my girlfriend not been moving flat that weekend; on her own. If memory serves the conversation went something like ‘are you saying that some poker thing in Vegas is more important than helping me’, ‘well I wouldn’t put it like that but..um…yes’. It wasn’t the last time in my life I’d had a conversation like that – they almost never end well.

There is, however, one horrible canker sour on my beautifully toned body of world series of poker pleasure. That being my utter failure to ever play in the main event. There it is; I’ve said it, it’s out in the open. Now don’t get me wrong I’ve tried… certainly plenty of my money has been ‘played for’ in the main event. But with the 10k buy in out of my reach, if not in terms of bankroll then certainly in terms of my lack of profligacy, the seat has remained elusive. In fact I’ve renamed June as ‘let’s see how much Nick spends trying to qualify this year’ month; it’s not catchy but it’s accurate.

For those of you with similar frustrations it’s worth remembering that you are trying to win at least $10k in a poker tournament which isn’t easy to do. It’s mitigated slightly because there can be multiple prizes (seats) but it’s still no mean achievement. The real pain of failing to qualify is that the standard of play in almost all the main event satellites, both online and live, is just horrendous. Wait what’s worse than horrendous… it’s crap, it’s risible, it’s toilet, it both blows and sucks, it’s shockingly terrifyingly abject… and apparently I can’t beat it!

The closet I came was in a multi table live satellite in Binions and it’s still a little painful to write about. We were down to about 7 or 8 players to go before the seats were awarded. I found myself in the classic satellite situation of not being crippled but being short enough that I couldn’t sit still and coast to a seat. The blinds were big and I figured if I could pick them up two or three times, or double up with a big hand, I’d have enough. After all when the pressure gets applied quite a few people make mistakes and go out when there’s no need; survival is the key here. In a hand I’ll remember until I quit playing I picked up 99 on the button. Needing to pick up some chips with the action passed to me there’s an argument for me moving in with any vaguely playable hand, especially as the blinds aren’t supposed to want to play (anyone guess what’s coming…anyone?).

I push my – a bit too small to just sit there – stack into the middle. The small blind folds almost before I take my hand off my stack and the big blind begins to think. Now he’s been playing relatively tight and doesn’t have much more chips than me. In fact I guess the call will cost him about 70% of his chips. I’m figuring out his stack while he’s thinking and he’s still thinking. At this point I begin to get worried. Obviously he has a hand of some kind and I start really rooting for him to fold. With the way he’s thinking and the seats so close he probably has overcards and I’m just not into racing right now. After an age he says something about how I could be stealing and calls. I have about a second or so to indulge the brief fantasy that he has a dominated 88 rather that the A10o he actually has. I mean really Ace Ten offsuit… The flop was safe but a 10 on the turn rolled off and brought a world of disappointment with it. I think his call was probably a mistake given the situation but it certainly wasn’t as horrendous as I made out when the 10 hit – poor fella. Then again he was ripping my heart out and stamping all over it pulping my main event dreams so he deserved some middle class English trash talk.

As I head out west once again instead of the ‘years of hurt’ I’m going to remember the most important thing of all. Years ago I used to spend hours at my desk dreaming of poker and Vegas and the WSOP. Now I get to go write and talk about it as a “job”. I should really get out the bitter barn and go play in the hay.. or at least the 103 degree sunshine.

Originally published in Poker Player magazine.

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