This is the story about why Mason stands no chance of winning this thing...
This is the tale of the time I played a homegame for 61.5 hours straight.
Rewind back to my livepro days, actually this wasn't that long ago, maybe 10 months or something. I was grinding 2/5 live, playing between the casino and a few different homegames where possible. I'd got the call up to play a "24 hour game" at my favourite homegame on a Thursday night. The game was advertised as being a 24 hour game but the host of the game said there'd be a "last man standing" bonus of $1000. At the time, I'm the only pro who played at this homegame and as soon as I got wind of a cheeky $1k in rakeback, I immediately declared the challenge over and that I would be the victor, and it wouldn't even be close! You have to remember, $1k is a decent chunk of coin for me when I was grinding out $30/hour playing lollivepoker.
I figured this game would just last 1 day and that'd be the end of it. Piece of piss. Walk in the park. But I need to come prepared just in case I meet my match... Hit up my boy for a few modafinals to keep me sharp and focused during the game.
So the game starts, it's a 2/3 and I'm running about as bad as possible. Down chunks, like $4k or something, so I really need the $1k rakeback! Anyway, every 8 hours or so I'm poppin a new modafinal, feeling great. The 24 hour mark rolls around... It's now 6pm on FRIDAY night, I've been sat at the poker table for 24 hours straight, only getting up for 20 mins or so for dinner break and then toilet breaks too. By this point there's 3 people left, my and two women. Great gals these two, play with them almost every night. But one of them is mad as fk because she has to work in the morning and says "it's been 24 hours, let's just chop the money" - they had played a 24 hour game previously at this homegame and the last couple players decided to chop the bonus. But I was like lolno we're not chopping, I'm $5k in the hole, and need the money. She's furious because she played like a nit for 24 hours straight thinking she'd get some free cash outta it. Not on my watch. The host takes my side and says it was a last man standing bet and I have the right to continue playing and keep all the money.
So she drops out and goes home empty handed, now there's just two remaining. Me and let's call her Steph. Steph is an absolute grinder. She's also got a vengeance against me now because she's kind of mad that I didn't want to chop the money and has basically decided, for her friend's honour, that she's going to take me down.
The game continues. We're now at the 48 hour mark. It's Saturday night. It's been 2 ****ing days and I've not left this table. One kid who played for a few hours on Thursday night is back, he's eaten, slept, looks refreshed, and sits down at the table and is like, "are you two ***** kidding me?"... he couldn't believe we'd been sat there playing this whole time.
BTW we were playing mostly 8 handed, but after 7am or so, all of the "normal" players had gone home and it was just me and Steph, the dealer and the host. But we couldn't stop playing. We're also playing rotation at this point now, kinda cool playing HU PLO, I don't mind it, at least not vs Steph. Here's the thing about Steph, she's the biggest nit in the city, and pretty well known for it. And she's up HUGE, she has like an $8k stack or something, in a 2/3NLH+1/2PLO rotation game. She's super money scared too, she's been taking long extended smoke breaks, barely playing any hands, she's pretty much locked up. But the brilliant thing is that when it's HU, she can't just fold, and whenever it was HU I would absolutely dominate her. You could tell she wasn't enjoying it, she had won $8k but was losing at a ridiculous lossrate when playing HU.
Anyway, I actually felt pretty good physically up until about the 48 hour point. The modafinal were really working quite well. I was tired but waaay too stubborn to give up. But at the 48 hour point, things took a turn for the worse. I started getting horrible stomach aches. Think it was the Indian we ate for dinner, but it was just the worrst - felt like mad constipation. After a few hours that seems to go away thank fk.
Fast forward to the 61.5 hour mark and things are bad, like really really bad folks. I'm suffering from acute depersonalisation-derealisation disorder, I'm basically falling asleep at the table too. At this point it's about 4 handed and I can barely keep my eyes open, I'm swaying back and forth at the table. Pop another red bull, because ****ing Steph is sitting there and she looks completely fine. She's shown not a single sign of fatigue and is just beasting it. But I'm absolutely farked. My play the last 10 hours or so has been atrocious, missreading my hand, missreading the board, etc. My brain is completely ****ed. Absolutely zapped. I'm definitely losing at this stage, but it's getting pretty late and after a while, it'll be HU again and even while half asleep, I figure i have an edge and can get out of the hole...
Then something reallly really scary happened. I remember at the time this was the scariest day of my life. I was no longer inside my body, but slightly to the left of it as well, observing as an onlooker. I was there but not really there, everything also looked really blurry. This had been going on for maybe an hour but we're playing HU so I'm not stopping til I'm dead. And then my whole world shattered in one moment. I had convinced myself that what was happening, the people in front of me (dealer/Steph/host), were not real. There was no possible way any of it was real. I was perfectly sure I was in a dream at this point because I had no short term memory - I don't remember how I got to the poker table or what happened beforehand or anything. I'm in a dream. And you know when you're in a dream and know you're dreaming, you can just wake up? I tried to do that. I tried to wake myself up but there was no mechanism that allowed me to break free from this dream reality and get back to normal reality.
At that moment, I realised this "dream" was REAL. This was REALITY. Imagine being in a dream, imagine some wild crazy **** is happening, and then imagine being forced into that reality permanently. I had, in every sense, lost my mind. I told the host "this isn't real right? Like you guys aren't real?" and she looked at me funny... I am trying real hard now to hold back tears and tell them I just need to get up and go for a walk outside for 5 minutes. I was really concerned that "dream world" would be my new reality forever, and things would seem dream like, very vague, permanently. All this stuff is very difficult to explain or describe.
By this point, the host is really worried about me and decides to call it off. She says she doesn't want to be responsible for my death. SHe says Harvey you can have the $1000, but you have to tell everyone that Steph won. I was like, lol of course. And she had won, in every sense, I was completely amazed how she was so composed after 2.5 days with no drugs or any assistance. All in all, i lost about $400 for the session. :')
Went home, slept, and woke up and everything was fine again.
Cliffs: played poker for 2.5 days straight, went crazy, will do it again if I have to.