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There’s a really dark place that I can go when I take a bad loss at poker. If you, too, have played serious poker, you know the place I am talking about. It’s that place where you can’t sleep because you are tortured by the “what ifs” and the “what could have beens.” If you’re lucky enough to get to sleep, your dreams are a tortuous montage of poker hands and situations that go badly. Going to that dark place is not useful. It’s not productive or positive, and when you are in that place, staying away from the poker table is the best choice. But not allowing yourself to wallow in your nightmares is an even better choice. I thought I had taken that place out of my playbook a long time ago. That is, until the Main Event at the WSOP this year.
The event started out very poorly for me. I made a horrible call in Level 1 with Q-Q versus my opponent’s K-K. My opponent played the hand well, flat calling with kings; so when the board came ten-high, I couldn’t put him on such a big hand. I knocked myself down to 2,800 in chips with that call. Luckily, it was right before the first break, so I got to recharge and think about the fact that we were only playing 50-100 blinds and that I had enough chips. I quelled the panic in me and rallied to an end-of-day chip count of 27k.
I came back Day 2 to a table full of very talented players. They were all a pleasure to play with and no one was really doing anything crazy. That was a very lucky draw for me because I was extremely card dead and, had I been at a crazy table, I surely would have been out of the tournament. Instead, I was able to end the day with 67k, despite never making better than one pair. I didn’t feel like I was destined to have a huge chip count at the end of that day, so I was extremely happy that I increased my stack so much despite the dry run of cards.
At 6:30am on Day 3, I was awakened by the sound of jack-hammering at the house next to the one I was renting. I can’t think of anything worse than trying to sleep through that noise on Day 3 of the Main Event. I was a wreck. It actually sent me into tears: tears of exhaustion and frustration. I got myself ready to go into play and discovered I had been moved to the TV table. I was sick, incredibly exhausted on only three hours of sleep, and unable to eat from nausea caused by the exhaustion.
The result was one of the worst poker sessions I have had in a long time. I played horrifically. I was unable to overcome my nausea, which, frankly, at this point in my career, I feel like I should have been able to do. Tired or not, I should be able to demonstrate a little mental and physical toughness. Not so on that day. Had it not been for a lucky ten on the river, I would have been out of the tournament through my own bad play. I got all my money in the pot late in the day on a 9-9-2 board against 9d 3d when I had 10-10. My opponent played his hand great; I took a terrible read, and there I was with a 92% chance of being eliminated from the Main Event. The miracle ten on the river saved my sorry, bad-playing butt. It also gave me enough of an adrenaline jolt that I was able to play pretty well for the rest of the night, and ended the day with 180k. I was feeling good about coming in for Day 4 after that, mainly because I felt like my play could only improve from there. God knows, I couldn’t play worse.
Day 4 began with a quiet morning and no jackhammers. Things started off well pretty quickly, as I doubled up with Q-Q versus 10- 10. That put me at 360k. I won another huge pot with queens when I flopped top set and had a guy move in on me. The rest of the day was quieter, but I steadily built my chips up to 919k.
That is where the nightmare really started. Up until that point, I wasn’t thinking about how close I was to winning. In a field of 8,733 players, you just can’t think about anything but the next hand you have to play. But now my chip count was good, I was feeling great, and I let my expectations rise. Only 130 players remained of the original 8,733 and I was feeling like I had a good shot at making it very deep.
So Day 5 begins and it’s just one of those days when absolutely nothing goes right. I lost a big pot with K-K early to knock me down to about 500k. Then Jeff Lisandro knocked me out with two button hands in a row. The first, he raised the button and I reraised with A-10 out of the big blind. He moved in and I was forced to fold. He later told me he had 10-10. The very next time Jeff was on the button, he raised and I looked at an ace in the big blind again and moved in. He called instantly with 8-8 and I was on the rail. Just like that. Eighty-eighth place.
I left the RIO immediately after doing my interviews and headed home to LA. The long drive was torture. I kept wondering if I could have done things differently; if I could have been more protective of my chips. I started second-guessing everything I did in the event, and five days-worth of hands to second guess is a lot of mental anguish waiting to happen.
By the time I got back to LA, I was exhausted – I’d gotten very little sleep over the course of the last week and had been playing long hours with intense concentration. And yet I could not sleep. Every time I would start to drift off, my mind would go to that dark place that gnaws away at you. I was up all night.
By the next night, exhausted, depressed and having hardly left my bed, I finally took an Ambien and got a good night’s sleep. The sleep made all the difference and I was able to start gaining perspective on the event; perspective that had been sorely lacking. I finished in the top 1%. I had a great run at it and things went badly on Day 5. But if you had guaranteed me a top 1% finish at the start of the event, I would have been happy with that. That is a heck of a lot people to wade through. Don’t get me wrong; I am still deeply disappointed, and still wonder what I might have done differently. But now I am mulling over these things in a healthy way and thinking more clearly about whether I could have applied a different strategy to Day 5 – one that might help me when I am deep in future events.
Healthy perspective is one of the most important aspects of being a successful player. We have chosen a game in which a lot of losing is an integral part of what we do, and without a healthy perspective, we will be in a constant state of mental torture. I’ve seen some great poker players go broke or fall into drug use just because of this. And even once you gain a good perspective, it can be difficult to maintain. We all still fall into those old traps sometimes, especially when the stakes are very high. For two days, I became one of those tortured souls. Now I am back.
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