The Reunion
Hi. Welcome back. I’m sure you’ve read one of my columns before… and if you haven’t, I’m sure you’ll read one in the future. Why do I say this? Well, I’ve noticed recently that life is just a series of reunions, and most of the time things kind of just come full circle at the most appropriate (or inappropriate) times. The circle is either glorious or vicious… sometimes both.
Example: poker. For me, the World Series of Poker last summer began to seem more and more like a dream as I continued on a dry streak in the months following. I started to wonder, even though I felt like I was playing well, if my success last July was based solely on fate, or if it was really me just playing my game. Only recently, when I was reunited with that same feeling I had during the Series, did I realize that I hadn’t lost “it.”
Enter the $2,500 buy-in tournament at Bellagio’s Five Diamond World Poker Classic. Things started out well, I was making good reads, playing my aggressive game, and making as few real mistakes as possible. I coasted into the money about average in chips, and then... something happened. There was “it” again. I knew I had come in contact with “it” during the Series, but only now did I realize I had missed “it” very much.
But what was “it”? This was clear now. “It” was confidence. “It” was not only believing that I was a good player, but knowing that nothing could stop me from being successful in any tournament. And although the cards can run bad and get in the way, I had a sort of karmic notion now that as long as I had “it,” the cards would be my friends at the right times.
This Bellagio tournament certainly proved that for me. After making the money, I became comfortable, confident. All of a sudden: A-A versus A-K, AA versus A-K, Q-Q versus A-J, all in close proximity. More hands came, and all of a sudden I had the chip lead, with two tables left and twice as much as the player second in chips. This was the World Series all over again.
I eventually came in third, but it was irrelevant that I didn’t win. I was reunited.
This brings me to my second example: New Year’s Eve. Where could I be other than Las Vegas? This crazy amusement park of a city was starting to feel like more of a home than a weekend vacation destination.
Some high school friends came up to party with me, which made me feel good. I had felt that in the last few years while in college, these people were slowly fading from my life, but the truth is that certain people will always be there despite the new paths my life has taken.
The plan was to party at the club Pure at Caesar’s Palace. As my “entourage” (ha-ha) and I stood in line to get in, one of the VIP hosts at the club notified me that Chris “Jesus” Ferguson was coming to the club, and was wondering if he could be included in my group and party at my reserved table inside the club. Of course I agreed.
Inside the club, surrounded by friends from school... and Jesus... I had an epiphany. Well, a belligerently drunk epiphany, if anything: Jesus was an alumnus of our high school (Pacific Palisades)! Was this a coincidence that I was partying with friends from high school, which I had not done much lately, and the one poker player who shows up has the same roots? I didn’t think so.
A couple columns ago, I said that the only place I could be comfortable and feel like a normal person was at college in Santa Barbara. I now realized that I just had to be confident in my abilities and I would be comfortable wherever I was — my hometown of Los Angeles, college in Santa Barbara, a club in Las Vegas, or the poker table — it didn’t matter. “Jesus” was just like me; he was once just Pacific Palisades High School student Chris Ferguson, and undoubtedly he had to have the same epiphany that I had: Nobody is really “normal” unless he convinces himself he is… why did I think that I was that much different from any other professional poker player, no matter how famous? I was just good at convincing myself of that.
I now sit in a hotel in Melbourne, Australia, for the Aussie Millions tournament. I came with the entire Full Tilt Team. Now that I realize that everybody is just human, and not some sort of superhuman poker being, I feel like the friends I have already made in the poker world and on the Full Tilt Team are people who will be around for a long time, just like those certain people from high school who I thought might fade away.
At first, I thought that the poker world was some sort of vortex that sucked you in and didn’t let you return to a normal life. I was wrong on all counts. I create my own world, with pieces from different places and people and things, and eventually the pieces come together to complete that glorious (or vicious) circle.
Here in Melbourne, reunited as a group with friends and that certain “it” still somewhere in my body, I feel like the circle is almost complete. But really, I think it will be the 2007 World Series of Poker when I see where this year has really taken me. After all, the house I am building in Vegas will be complete by June, and I will be graduating from school around the same time as well.
Until then…
