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And more than anything, because the 39th annual World Series of Poker begins in less than a month. And there are some pros out there who are hungrier than ever with the mentality coming in: “This will fi nally be the year.”
But because there are so many “professional poker players” out there these days, instead of rehashing that story we’ve all heard about that guy, who had this brother, whose friend went to Vegas last summer, and played a $2k buy-in, and was the chip leader, until some crazy guy names Paul “X22” Magriel “quacked” him right outta there… (deep breath)…, instead let’s take a look at the great “Greek” poker tragedies — the players who not only deserve to have captured a bracelet by now, but if the WSOP were handing them out based on pure talent and accolades alone, they’d own an entire drawerful.
“Every year I come in and, sure, all my guys tease me about not winning one yet. But it’s all in good fun. In reality, it’s nothing more than motivation for me,” said seasoned and well-respected pro Erick Lindgren, the one player’s name that continued to come up over and over in conversations with pros when they were asked, “So... who’s the best player not to have won a WSOP bracelet yet?”
“But I don’t need extra pressure from anyere one to win one. All the pressure I have I put on myself, and I can handle it. I hate to lose just as much as anyone.”
Sadly, when the poker gods handed out poker justice, somewhere along the way they forgot about Lindgren and his $4.6 million in tournament winnings, three World Poker Tour titles, and numerous top fi nishes in events that are home to fields full of the world’s best.
But where there’s misery, there’s company, right?
And Lindgren is certainly not alone. What about Gavin Smith or J.C. Tran? What about Nam Le or Lee Markholt? Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi or Tuan Le? Some would say Eugene Todd, Peter Feldman, Tim Pham and Nick Shulman probably should’ve won by now.
Anyone heard from Gus Hansen? He seems overdue. Waaaaaay overdue.
Yet, year after year, outside of two casinos — Harrah’s and the RIO — and for just a few months, all the aforementioned players don’t just mop up (the multiple WPT titles and more than $50 million in total lifetime winnings can speak volumes to that), they crush. Yet, year after year, they come back newly rich and positively glowing from Monte Carlo; back from Melbourne, Australia; back from Paris; back from Foxwoods; back from The Bike; and swagger right back into Las Vegas for ninety days of the most intense poker tournament action anywhere in the world.
And time and time again, they come up just short.
“To be honest, I don’t know why it hasn’t happened for me yet. But I do know one thing… I’ve blown it a couple of times,” said Smith, who has had plenty of success away from the WSOP, winning more than $3 million in tournaments, including a WPT title to go along with the coveted “WPT Player of the Year” award in 2005 after reaching two fi nal tables in Season 4. “What it boils down to for me — and I’m sure for some of the other good players out there who haven’t won bracelet yet, as well — is simple: I haven’t played well when it counted most late in the tournaments. And to be honest, sometimes I feel that when it’s all on the line, I’ve choked.”
For Smith, who’s been playing professionally almost ten years now, surprisingly that feeling of regrettable angst didn’t come when he fi nished second in 2007 in the WSOP’s $1,500 Pot Limit Hold’em Event #4, losing to novice Michael Spegel; and it still marks the closest Smith has come to draping the gold-and-diamond-encrustedmonkey- off-your-back-Super-Bowl-ring-of-pokerbracelet on his wrist.
He even says he was okay when he took runnerup at the WSOP 2005/06 Harrah’s New Orleans Circuit Event (that woulda counted for something, right?).
No, the moment Smith feels like he let his proverbial “white whale” slip away was in 2005, during the $5k No Limit Hold’em Event, when he took a big chip lead with fewer than fi fteen players left.
“It had been folded around to me in the small blind and I had (well-known pro and eventual sixth-place fi nisher) John Hennigan in the big blind to my left. I looked down at ace-queen and raised, and he reraised me,” Smith said. “I had quite a few more chips than him at that point and moved all in, and he called immediately with ace-king.”
Smith lost, then spiraled to fi nish tenth as T.J. Cloutier — a seasoned veteran with six bracelets — went on win.
“In WSOP events, especially, I beat myself up when things like that happen. I can lose knowing I played my best. But in the World Series, if I get close and make a mistake, it eats at me,” Smith said. “When I fi nished second (in ’07), I walked away feeling like I had done everything right, and in the end my opponent just had cards I couldn’t overcome. I was okay with that. But you also hate to walk away knowing you had that chance and now it’s gone.
“And most of all, you ask yourself: ‘When is the next time I’ll get that opportunity again?’ The notknowing is what’s tough.”
For Lindgren, it seems like everyone else out there but he knows when he’s going to win one.
When many in the poker community were polled recently, whether by email, phone, or in person, the consistent comment of something like “I think E-Dog is due any time now — probably this year” seemed to rise time and again.
And while Lindgren — who also has been playing professionally for ten years, while going to the WSOP for nine of those — has said he’s fl attered by the praise from his peers, he’d gladly trade half of any compliment for another shot like the one he had in the 2006 $5,000 NL Hold ‘em Short-Handed Event #30, when he lost heads up to that year’s WSOP Wonder Boy, Jeff Madsen.
Madsen went on to make four fi nal tables and win two bracelets in his fi rst-ever WSOP. Hardly seems fair, eh?
“Outside of running like God and having a WSOP like Jeff’s, I don’t really know what to say about why I still haven’t won: Maybe I need to… play more tournaments??” Lindgren said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “I’ve gotten to the fi nal tables and I’ve had my chances, but like anything in a poker tournament, you’ve got to have a few things go your way and, so far, they haven’t for me.
“But I plan to rectify that this year.”
Lindgren, like Smith, also has a few stories about when he was on the verge of taking a commanding chip lead into the fi nal rounds of play — but he has no desire to share any of them, instead planning to create new stories that end with him winning a bracelet to fi ll the empty space on his wrist.
“I’m not giving up a single bad-beat story,” Lindgren said. “I don’t relive those for anyone.”
While Smith’s strategy this year will be to play a full slate like he has for the past two WSOPs, Lindgren’s is slightly different: He’s not playing anything that’s less than a $10,000 buy-in — some-thing he says has nothing to do with his swollen bank account, and everything to do with giving himself the best chance of taking home a WSOP title.
“I think some of my struggles have to do with the format of the World Series in the past because, unlike the WPT where you have a chance to start with more chips and see more hands, one mistake in a WSOP event early on and you’re done,” Lindgren said. “They’ve gotten better about that this year because they’re adding more $10k events. I think the tournaments where you start with a bigger stack allow more play, and will give me a better chance of winning.”
The latter part of Lindgren’s statement — “winning,” — is what it’s all about for Le, who amazingly only started playing poker less than three years ago in 2005, but has already won a WPT title and banked more than $4 million in tournament winnings.
“The drive to win a bracelet — it’s what all poker players want,” Le said. “And because I swear I am addicted to winning, I won’t stop until I do.”
Le, like both Lindgren and Smith, has come as close as one possibly can to the bracelet without actually wearing it home; for him it was the 2006 $2,000 No Limit Hold ‘em Event #6 in which he fi nished second to Australian pro Mark Vos.
“When I fi rst started out (playing the WSOP in 2005), it was more of a drive not to be the guy in that group who hadn’t won a major tournament, because Tuan and J.C. were all doing well,” said Le, whose buddy Tuan Le has captured two WPT titles, including the tournament many consider to be the true Main Event — the $25,000 WPT Championship — and Tran, who has been to more fi nal tables than anyone of the history of the WPT, capturing one title and a “Player of the Year” honor in 2006.
However, between the three, there’s not a single WSOP bracelet.
“Eventually, for me, it got to where I was sick of thinking about trying to win, or coming close and not winning — either way,” Le said. “It still hurts to talk about the one I lost to Vos. It disgusts me, in fact, to think about the mistake and the coin fl ip for basically the tournament, and I just wish I could go back and do it over.”
Le, like Smith, also remembers an even more painful time than his second-place outcome — and it’s a truly remarkable story. His other “I-saw-the-fi nish-line” moment came in the WSOP’s 2006 $5k Pot Limit Hold ‘em Event #32 with ten players to go.
“It would’ve been my fi rst TV fi nal table and I had the chip lead, being aggressive and just building my stack to about $320k,” Le recalls of the event that was ultimately won by Mike Gracz, who also owns a WPT title. “I raised in the small blind with two queens and, because I had been pushing people around with my stack, (veteran poker player Chuck Thompson) thought I was bullying, so he moved all in with jack-ten.
“And, of course, I called.” What happened next without a doubt qualifi es as a pretty horrendous bad-beat story: Thompson’s J-10 caught a gut-shot on the fl op, needing runner-runner or one of four eights left in the deck to make his straight. The only problem for Thompson? Pro player Tony Cousineau told the table he had pocket eights, meaning Thompson had just two eights left. It turned out all wrong for Le, who watched an eight fall on the turn. And to add insult to injury, the fourth eight fell on the river. “It was brutal,” Le sighed. “I never recovered and went out in tenth.”
However, what Le alluded to in how a professional player recovers is the one thing all those missing WSOP hardware seem to have in common: They never give up — never say die.
This year, Le also will play a full slate of events like Smith, while all three say they’ve come into the 2008 WSOP — just as they have every year prior — with a fresh approach and changes to both their games and lifestyle.
But more importantly, for those who haven’t been lucky enough to capture a WSOP title — yet continue to nearly beat down the door — it’s all about patience.
Meaning if 2008’s not their time, there’s always 2009, and 2010, and 2011…
“What’s my prediction for this year?” Smith repeated the question. “I mean, I come in every year thinking, ‘Ok, Gavin ... this is the year.’ And while some may point to this as getting ahead of myself because I haven’t even won one yet, I would say that by the time I’m done — because I’m gonna be around for a long time — I’ll feel disappointed if I haven’t won at least ten.
“I mean, it’s what we all want — it’s the Holy Grail of poker.” Lindgren, meanwhile, couldn’t agree more.
“Things are going to change this year for me. I know it. I used to advocate a lot of post-fl op play, taking the pot away with a read. Forget that shit this year. This year, it’s all pre-fl op for me — take-no-prisoners-poker. And if I think you’re weak, I’ll just gonna take the fucking pot from you right there or bust you,” said Lindgren, who like many players, will once again have side bets galore on whether he wins a bracelet this year. “I think this is the year. And if I don’t win one (soon), I’ll begin to think I have some issues to deal with.”
A little less hard on himself, but nonetheless equally concerned about fi nally getting the monkey off his back, is Le, who has vowed not to stay cooped up in a hotel room like years past, playing night and day with little sleep or reprieve between tournaments. This year, he’ll rent a house, develop a healthy diet, and even hire an assistant to take care of everything that would otherwise take his mind off his game.
Yet, like that pitcher who doesn’t want to jinx any future success he may have, Le tries to look and talk about his quest for the elusive WSOP bracelet like a win-vs.- loss scenario, rather than trying to foreshadow what is ultimately the fi nal stamp on any player’s résumé.
“The desire to win — the need to fi nish fi rst — keeps you on your toes; and right now in everything I do in life, that’s my approach,” Le said. “Because winning — it’s better than any high you’ve ever experienced. When you win, you sleep better. The air smells fresher. The food tastes better. And then after it’s over, you don’t stop trying to win. You fi end for more, and more and more — and you never want to stop.
“After all… winning never gets old.”
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