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Melbourne, Australia. I am playing in the bounty tournament. I am a bounty. I have to wear a laminated card around my neck so people will know I’m the target. For this I get three hundred dollars knocked off my entry. What the hey! Three hundred bucks is three hundred bucks.
When I sit down, everyone looks at me hungrily. “You’re the bounty?” they say happily. After about half an hour I realize my bounty is a good thing. Everybody is trying to knock you out. You get action up the wazoo. But today I am like a boomerang bounty. Several hours later I have personally sent four people packing and have accumulated a huge stack of chips.
This tournament has one very interesting feature: You only get twenty seconds to think.
After ten seconds elapse, they start a countdown. If you haven’t made a decision in twenty seconds, your hand is declared dead. I used to get mad because David Williams would always call a clock on me, but now I realize my thought processes are pretty slow. Trying to make a decision under these time constraints is stressful.
Like right now. There is a kid at my table who looks about twelve years old. I recognize him from TV. He’s kind of a genius. He plays a lot of pots; he plays position; and he likes to defend his blinds. So when I raise one off the button with ace nine off-suit, I’m not surprised that he calls. The flop comes A-7-8, rainbow. He checks. Craftily, I check behind him. The turn, a queen of hearts. He bets out. I raise… big! There is now a flush draw; I might as well take down the pot now.
Okay, he reraises. I don’t like this one bit. He only has a little more left. If I call, I have to go all in. What is going on? He doesn’t have a set; he would have reraised with a pair pre-flop. He can’t have a better ace than I do, same reason. Did the queen help? I think he was slowplaying a bad ace, like an ace three… or maybe… ”
I am sitting there holding the stack that will put him all in, when the dealer says, “Four, three, two… ” BLLAAAP! And the buzzer goes off, startling me into dropping the chips. “All in… ” I say weakly.
The kid hits the table with his fist and looks upset. “Damn!” he says. I nurse a faint hope that even though he is pot committed and a genius, he will miraculously fold. But of course not. Shaking his head he calls, and then throws down his cards in disgust. “I only have sevens and eights; you have ace queen, don’t you?”
“You give me too much credit,” I mutter under my breath. I am embarrassed to turn my cards over but of course this is poker and you have to turn your cards over eventually.
Everybody is staring at me open mouthed as all my chips tidal wave their way over to the internet kid.
I put my hat on to block the pitying glances and grimly go back to work. I enter almost every pot, and eventually build my stack back up to almost its former splendor, but the only chips I want are my chips, that beautiful tall pink tower that has taken up residence at the internet kid’s corner. But he won’t dance with me anymore. He has my chips and, unlike me, he will protect them; they are not going anywhere.
When dinner break arrives, I am shortstacked. Phil is still in the tournament as well. Since dinner is only fifty minutes, we decide to buy some fast food and go to the room. I tell him the story of my bad hand as we walk. “Do you know this kid?” I ask. “The one who was sitting to my left?”
“I know of him,” says Phil cautiously, and I can feel there is something he is not telling me. In the room, we lay out our sushi picnic style on the bed, and sit facing each other. We eat quietly for awhile, and then Phil says casually, “After that kid whacked you, did you play a lot more hands with him?”
“Why?” I ask suspiciously. “Did you talk to him?’
Phil pushes his food guiltily around on his plate. “He came up to me,” he says defensively. “I didn’t ask him. He said, ‘Hey, do you want some tips on how your girl can improve her game?’”
I sigh heavily. “Go ahead,” I say.
“He said you were playing like there were antes, your hand-raising frequency was too high, and you called too much out of position. He thinks you should play those Sunday online tournaments, and also watch other players, like on PokerXFactor and CardRunners. I told him I agree. I can’t teach you much anymore. You need fresh blood. You need a coach who will yell at you.”
“Anything else?” I say ominously.
“Well, he thought you were pretty strong, and he can tell you’ve plugged some holes. He said you’re a good player but you could be a great player if you apply yourself.”
That makes me feel good until Phil continues, “He said tournament poker is a pretty easy game to learn. He said a monkey can be taught to play a good game.”
I don’t like the sound of that. “Is he comparing me to a monkey?”
“No, no, no… ” Phil backtracks. “He’s just saying the information is out there — even a monkey can be taught to play good poker. In fact he said he, himself recently taught a monkey how to play.”
“An actual monkey?”
“No, someone who played like a monkey.”
I am exhausted trying to follow this conversation. So I do what I always do when Phil is confusing me. I throw it back on him. “Well, I could get better,” I say petulantly, “if you reloaded my online account, and put CardRunners on my desktop like I’ve been asking you to.”
Phil agreeably goes into the next room to do that, and I stare at my sushi, thinking.
I remember he once told me a story of a player trying to teach his girl poker. Whenever he tried to impress on her the importance of pot odds, or the mathematics of when you should fold, she would say, “I know, but sometimes I just have a feeling!”
Am I that girl? Kenna James once told me to read The Secret. This was long before Oprah put it in her book club and it became a calendar, a workbook, a movie and a coffee mug. The book made it seem like all you needed to do to become good at poker is want it bad enough. At the time I agreed wholeheartedly. After all, didn’t I win the World Series bracelet by writing down on a piece of paper that I was going to do it?
Now I’m not so sure. I just did a movie with Andie MacDowell, and she was going on and on about narcissists. Narcissists indulge in magical thinking… they believe they can make things happen. Narcissists are pretty sure they are going to win when they have threes vs. queens, because, well, God likes them. I secretly wonder if I am a narcissist. Sometimes I think I have supernatural powers. There’s nothing wrong with ignoring the rules once in a while, but what makes me think I can get away with playing the way I do?
Position for example. I may have been overly infl uenced by that Full Tilt ad… you know the one — fingers shuffling chips, Phil Ivey jerking his eyes back and forth, some extra looking frightened... “We make our own position!” intones a sonorous voice.
Well, maybe if you’re Phil Ivey you can make your own position, but if you’re Jennifer Tilly, perhaps you’d better pay attention to the theory that 92% of poker pros subscribe to: Position is everything.
Phil comes back in the room looking pleased with himself. “It’s all done!” he announces. “CardRunners is on your desktop, and I just transferred ten thousand dollars into your online account!”
I feel all warm towards him. Phil just wants what’s best for me. I hold his hand on the way to the poker room and privately resolve to play tighter… no bluffing, only real hands... in position. I am out in less than an hour.
As I exit the poker room, I stop at the Aussie Millions booth to buy a copy of Lee Nelson’s new book, Kill Everyone. The Main Event is coming up. I need all the help I can get. Let the learning begin!
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