PART TWO: EVEN MORE TLDR
Bob has also gotten through day two, with a stack in the mid-200s. We have another gap day as flight 2C plays, and Bob and I end up hanging out at a cabana at the Encore with a couple of DC players I know and their wives – Justin and Tim. Both are very pleasant. We talk a bit of poker, drink a bit, and generally take it light. Under pressure from Chopstick and others, I call Kabuto and try for a reservation, but they tell me they’re booked. I’m scouting up another reservation when my phone rings with a 702 area code, and it turns out that Kabuto has a cancellation and we’re in. Bob’s sushi range is not exactly wide, so I have to make a deal with him to order omakase: he can switch out any dish he doesn’t find appealing for one of mine. I’m fine with that, so I get an extra monkfish liver amuse bouche, which I wash down with an absolutely delicious apple aperitif, and I raise a glass of sake and give a short toast to OOT in general and Chop in particular. The sashimi and nigiri courses are delicious for both of us, but then Bob steals my stunningly good toro hand roll after I’ve taken a single savory bite, so I ask the chef to make another. He swipes that too, so I hit him with: “we’re splitting dinner, and I’m richer than you are hungry. So you might consider stopping that **** RIGHT NOW.” That calms him down and I get another roll from the obliging chef. Kabuto is definitely excellent and is on the list for the next time Mrs. T and I are in Vegas. I check in on the tournament as I go to bed, and even after the giant 1C field has played, I’m fifth or sixth in the overall tournament. I can at this point almost certainly blind off to a mincash, but I’m no Alan Kessler and that’s not happening.
Day Three.
I’m staying at an AirBnb at the condominium units at Palms Place. The units are comfortable, with high water pressure, deep baths and, best of all, balconies. The desert is sufficiently dry and hot that I can wash my Budweiser shirt with soap in the sink and dry it outside overnight, and with two minutes under an iron it’s good to go. Thusly attired, Bob and I have breakfast at Palms Place and walk over to the Gold Coast to meet Andrew Brokos: he’s half of the Thinking Poker podcast and my coach. The podcast has a meet-the-hosts get-together every year at about this time. Eight of us have a geeky poker conversation for a half an hour or so, and then we all walk over to the Rio. I can’t compliment Andrew enough: working with him over the last eighteen months has improved my poker massively, largely by imposing a GTO-based structure and process for thinking about each hand. He’s generous with his time, smart as hell, organized and funny, and he and I have found common ground on dozens of issues. I pick up a free “I love Carlos” t-shirt, which refers to their number one favorite podcast guest Carlos Welch, and we head over to Amazon. The room is a little more tense: we’re playing down to the bubble today, and it’s clear from the first few hands hand that five of the nine guys at our table are primarily interested in getting to the money.
A few minutes into the day, I get a tap on the shoulder behind me. I turn, and a short man with a cast on his foot says, “Hi, I’m Norm. I know a friend of yours.” The friend turns out to be an accountant and poker player I know from my LA days, but it takes me an embarrassingly long time – at least ten seconds -- to recognize Norman Chad. He’s very pleasant, and asks about my tournament so far and a little about my life. Mrs. T tells me later that he came up with a quip at my expense on the telecast: “[Howard] is a lawyer in Washington, D.C. who used to live in Los Angeles. It turns out we have the same accountant, so I’m surprised that he has any money at all.” It’s a cute quip. Norm and Lon aren’t exactly deep poker analysts, but I admit to a soft spot for Norm’s sense of humor, and he’s definitely charming in person. I don’t get the hate around here for their coverage. It keeps poker in the public consciousness, which is a good thing for all of us.
I don’t give a rip about cashing; I want to run deep. So too does Alesssandro Borsa, a young Italian pro one seat to my left who looks to be about fourteen years old. He’s tricky and smart and has a pretty good record in EPT tournaments. I think I remember seeing him from my Malta journey in 2015, but can’t be sure. He starts the day with about $150,000 and likes to play back to late position-raises. Even so, I build my stack a fair amount, to about 900,000, playing mostly by stealing blinds from people that just want to make the money and whose only goal is not going bust. I’d prefer to stay away from Borsa, but he’s one seat to my left and he has much more control over that issue than I do. I send a message to him by showing him a four-bet bluff after he three-bets my small-blind raise; I want him to understand that he’s going to be playing for all of his chips if he plays back at me too often. He slows down a little against me, but bad news one seat to my right then arrives with three hours to play in the diminutive form of one Ben Yu.
Yu three-bets the first hand he plays at the table, and quickly makes it clear he’s raising every hand from the button, cutoff or hijack that’s folded to him. I need to find a spot to play back at him, or he’s just going to keep doing it. I three-bet him with Ah4h out of the blinds. He four-bets me big and I need to fold it. I three bet him again on the next hand and he mucks it. The metagame issues here are huge. There are six players at the table who are playing shortish stacks and who can clearly feel the pressure to cash. As with Borsa, I want Yu to understand I’m not playing that way, and that he’s at risk of playing for all of his chips at any moment and that there are no circumstances where he can take my chips for free. That said, I feel a little as though I’m trapped between Scylla and Charybdis: Yu is playing fast and willing to four-bet light, and Borsa is cut from similar cloth and the three of us are the only ones with deep stacks. It’s an interesting spot when the other six players are either very low on chips or clearly recreational players just looking to cash.
The dinner break comes. I’ve swapped one per cent interests with 2p2er Crazy Joe Davola, who busts in the morning of Day Three. He swings by to rail me, and offers to go get Bob and me a dinner table to avoid the crowd. It’s a generous offer, and Bob and I head over to Ping Pang Pong at the Gold Coast, which is surprisingly good.
Playing 2500-5000 during the fifth level of the day, Yu has 650,000, I have almost a million, and Borsa has 450,000. Yu raises to 11K from the cutoff. Overreacting to Yu, I flat QdJd from the button. I hate letting Borsa into the hand from the small blind, but I don’t want to get four-bet off this one. Borsa calls and the short stack in the big blind folds. There’s 42,000 in the middle to Jc 5s 2d. I check, Borsa checks. Yu is continuing with a wide range and he does so here, betting 15,000. I call, totally willing to let him hang himself with another bet; I’ve got an overcard kicker and my hand doesn’t need much protection on a dry board. Borsa calls. Borsa isn’t likely to have a better jack. I believe he’d have squeezed against my call with AJo/s or KJs and perhaps offsuit combos as well. Borsa knows the width of Yu’s range and Borsa will want to play heads-up in position against me if he can. 55 and 22 are certainly possibilities, although that’s just six combos. Cold overcards aren’t likely given Yu’s bet and my call, but a slowplayed premium pair isn’t out of the question. My flat pre basically carves out the top of Borsa’s range and not much else. So the three of us see a Jh turn with 87,000 in the pot. That’s certainly helpful. I lead for 40,000 but Borsa raises to 85K. Yu folds. Borsa’s raise is a bad development. It’s a tiny raise – less a fifth of the pot – and I’ve got ten outs and could still be best. I take the time to think it through and call. The old me might have spewed here, but this has got to be a call. The river is the Kh, and I check. Borsa bets 71,000, and I tank, irritated with myself for letting Borsa into the hand preflop. I think long enough to abandon my irritation, consider the possibilities, and finally call. Borsa shows me 22 for bottom full. Nice hand, sir.
We’re getting near the end of the day and the five hundred dollar chips are coming off. The floor tells the big stack at the table to buy them all and Yu and I count down; he’s at 865,000 and I’m at 866,000, so I get the honors. Ten minutes later, it’s folded to Yu in the small blind – a position where Borsa has already folded. He raises to 13K and I flat in the big blind with KhJd. I can three-bet this but all Kx are in Yu’s range and I dominate most of that. There’s 35,000 in the middle to Ks 2d 4d. Yu leads 11K into 35. This is an easy call, which I make. Turn Tc. Yu leads 35K into 57K. I call again. The river is a horribly ugly 6d, **** **** ****. Yu leads 125K into 127K and he is completely polar here. I’ve underrepresented top pair third kicker and have a diamond blocker, and Yu’s preflop range is 80 per cent of the deck. He understands balance, so he has both bluffs and value in his range. I think it through and decide I have to call. He shows 3d 5d for the rivered straight flush. FU Ben Yu. I’m down over $300K in ten minutes.
Yu stacks up one with KhQh when one of the other players fails to bet TT for two streets on 8 4 4 9 and pays an overbet on the K river. The man was on twenty-two big blinds and then complains about his bad luck. I say nothing but note mentally that fear is your enemy. We’re fifty players off the bubble.
One round later, the table folds to Yu on the button, who naturally raises. I’m not letting Borsa into this one, and raise to 35,000 with 8c 6c. Borsa folds, Yu calls. The flop is Ac 7s 2d. I check, Yu bets 25,000. Prior me would not necessarily think to bluff in this spot, but any 8, any 6, any club, any 5 or any 9 materially improve my hand, which is just about half the deck. It’s a fine bluff spot against Yu’s range. I raise to 75K and he snap-folds. I do not fear Yu.
I do some more damage control when I bust a 20BB stack when he jams from third position with 88 and I find JJ. I end up the day with 777,000, good for 94th out of 1182 remaining. I can’t help but think I left some chips on the table with a bad calls against Borsa after I let him in but the likeable little devil shakes my hand and says “you play well for an old guy.” Yu says “it’s fun battling with guys like you,” which I take as a mild compliment. It’s clear to me that the three of us were playing one game, while the rest of the table was playing another.
Day three was exhausting. We took a break after five full two-hour levels to take off the 500 chips, then came back to play to the bubble. Hand-for-hand with 120-plus tables is painful, and it’s 1:45 by the time we’re done – that’s a fourteen-hour day of stress and concentration. I’m home and in bed at 2:30 after a scotch on ice with Bob, but I don’t have it in me to wash my shirt and set it to dry.
I’m rocking my I [heart] Carlos t-shirt for day four, with Chris Moorman one seat to my right and nobody else I know. The day starts well when I bust a short stack to my left on an a no-brainer race, but worsens when Chino Rheem moves in. I’ve run into Chino several times over the years and I know all the stories about him, which I am sure are true. But he’s one of those people who, while entirely untrustworthy, is very easy to like. He’s quick-witted and funny and charming. Scammers and hustlers often are. I’m not fond of playing between these two, but it turns out to be entirely uneventful because our table breaks early in the day.
I know one person at the new table: a circuit grinder named Robert Hankins who is an absolute gentleman and who once gifted me a set of headphones when I was in need. He’s aggressive. The other really tough player is an Argentinian fellow named Andres Jeckeln, who is two seats to my left. To my right sits Victor Pedote Dos Santos, who I immediately nickname “Victor From Brasil.” And finally, the day three chip leader, In Seung Gum, is off to my left. He’s clearly a friend of an old acquaintance of mine from my LA poker days, Young Phan. Alas, a yapper moves in one seat to my left who keeps up an unrelenting stream of utterly meaningless chatter. I tune him out with headphones, but his expression of his inner monologue is incredible. It was so bad that I took a surreptitious picture and text it back to my DC support group, several of whom are madly refreshing PokerNews and WSOP.com to see how I’m doing. Nobody knows the guy.
I run hot in the third level and chip up from 777,000 to about a million and a half, and I get the table laughing when Victor from Brasil busts the yapper and I say “You’re doing God’s work there, Victor from Brasil!” I then lose about 600,000, or forty per cent of my stack, playing 8000-16000 on a late-position QQ versus AA against Victor, one seat to my right. Getting it in against him preflop was a little bit of a spew, but the flop was all undercards and I console myself that it couldn’t have been avoided anyway. On the next orbit, I raise from second position with 55 and the nine seat, some guy named Kevin, three bets me from one of the blinds. I peel one. The flop hits us with J 3 6 no suits. He continues and I call. The turn is a 4, putting two hearts on the board. He leads the turn with a pretty big bet – something like a pot-sized 200,000 with about 350000 behind. I cover him, but not by much. I think for about ninety seconds and jam. His immediate cry of frustration is a good sign, and after he thinks for thirty seconds I know he’s going to fold. He does, and he and Jeckeln ask me to show. I agree on the proviso that I can ask them for a show one time in return, and each agrees. Kevin puts his head down on the table in anguish. I suspect he had AK and was sizing his bets to jam the river, which would have put me in a really tough spot if my straight draw had bricked off.
A bit later, I raise from small blind with AJ off. A player has gone bust between us, so Jeckeln three-bets me from the big blind. He has a big stack and is bullying the crap out of the table. Three or four seats are just trying to survive, and not many people are trying to play back at him. Given that I’m in position, I just flat. The flop is Ah 7h 6d. I check, he bets 45,000, and I check-raise to 120,000. He calls. I pray for a good card, but the gods, as ever, don’t answer: the turn is the Qh. I check and Jeckeln bets a third of my stack, making it clear that he’s jamming the river. I reluctantly fold. I call in my chit and he shows me the Th 9h. Jeckeln then gets in a mild tiff with the curmudgeon next to him because Jeckeln has two friends right behind him on the rail, and they’re speaking Rioplatense Spanish. In reality, the curmudgeon is simply pissed at Jeckeln for playing fast. Jeckeln speaks almost no English and doesn’t understand the complaint; I end up explaining it to one of Jeckeln’s friends and they quiet down.
Crazy Joe doesn’t like my line on that hand and politely tells me so on a break. After thinking about it somewhat, I think he’s right. My A is strong enough there that I can check-call the flop and re-evaluate the turn. As much as I want to play back at Jeckeln’s bullying, the better line is to hang his aggression with value.
Some random number has been calling my phone all day, but I don’t answer it because it’s probably some dumb marketing call. I finally answer it when it rings during the last break, and it turns out it’s the owner of the Airbnb unit I’m renting. As it happens, I was due to check out that morning at 11 am, but was so distracted by an eleven-hour poker day that I entirely forgot about it. This guy has rented the unit to someone else and called security and metro police, because this idiot was afraid I might be dead in the room. He told me that all of my stuff was with Metro police because I had prescription bottles with me, and casino security refused to hold those. Worse yet, the guy is incoherent, and starts ranting at me about how badly I’d ****ed up his day. I apologize, admit my mistake, and try to guide the conversation towards the location of my stuff, but he doesn’t seem capable of answering that question and instead keeps yelling at me about what an ******* I am and how bad his day is and how he is on the East coast at the moment and how many phone calls he had to make to deal with my stuff. And he is quite literally almost incoherent. If it’s possible to mumble and yell at the same time, this guy can do it. I can’t get a clear answer from him as to who has my stuff or where it is. No toothbrush, no clean clothes, and worst of all, no ambien. Thank God I have a couple of spare contact lenses in my backpack. I cut the call off because the tournament is about to start again, and I take half a dozen deep breaths and put all the collateral stuff out of my mind. It’s a test of will. I don’t care much about any of my clothes except for my Budweiser shirt, but losing my computer would be a huge pain in the behind.
Even with all that in my head, the final two hours goes okay. Jeckeln, two seats to my left, continues to bully everyone. I’m not afraid of busting and play back at him a couple of times; the battling is fun. We hardly speak a word of the same language but chips and cards and motions do the talking. He’s a skilled player and understands who he can push and who he can not, and at the end of the day he comes up to me, hugs me, and has a friend who speaks both language tell me that I’m a tough player and a gentleman. I finish the day with 1,178,000, still in the top third of the field. We’re coming back to 10,000-20,000, so I still have almost sixty big blinds – a relative ton of chips for any tournament.
Jack Effel decides to play an extra half-level, so we finally clear the Amazon room at about 1:30 in the morning. I’ve had another exhausting day of concentration and stress. Crazy Joe gives me some moral support and drives me over to the Palms so I can talk to security there, which I do. The fellow at the security kiosk is very pleasant and helpful. He’s able to tell me that casino security went up to the room and there is a report on it, but they do not have my stuff. They doubt that Metro police have my stuff either; they tell me that under Nevada law, the owner must keep my stuff for thirty days and give it back to me at my request. While he’s on the phone with his manager, I get a $99 room at the Palms casino, just down the block from the condo units, and buy some toiletries and a clean shirt. There’s some logo on it I don’t recognize, but at least it’s clean.
Still dizzy with exhaustion and worry about my computer, I come out of the boutique and some guy I’ve never seen runs up and hugs me. He shouts “I’m CARLOS!” and after a moment, I realized what shirt I’m wearing as my bleary synapses connect, so I decide to go with it and I hug him back and high-five his friends. Walking to the elevator, the world turns a little surreal, and I wonder what sequence of bad decisions has led me to this time and this place: Although I’m as sober as a judge, I’m sweaty, exhausted, stressed and need to be up in five hours to find my stuff that some dickhead has locked up on me. Vegas, baby.
I call Metro police when I get to my room, and they’re also quite helpful. They explain that yes, they got called to the room, but given that there was no body there, there was no evidence of any crime and there is no circumstance in which they would take my stuff. The operator explains that it’s just a civil issue between the owner and me, and that the owner would either have to have taken my stuff himself or authorized a third party to do so. Given that it’s 2:30 in the morning at this point and 5:30a on the east coast, I don’t want to call Mr. Incoherent. So I send him a message through the Airbnb message function that explains that neither Palms security nor Metro police have my stuff and that both of them tell me that he has it. He calls me two minutes later and stars yelling at me again. I politely explain that I made a mistake, and simply want my stuff back. He now changes his story from the idea that Metro police has it and ultimately tells me that someone he knows has it and he’ll send it back to me. I explain that I’m in the middle of the World Series main event and there’s 8.8 million at stake, and to please send it to the Palms casino in my name first thing in the morning. He says he’ll send it to me but then starts yelling at me again for texting him at 5:30 in the morning his time. I slowly and carefully explain that I sent him traffic through Airbnb rather than calling him directly because I knew he was asleep and I was trying to be considerate of him. He actually seemed to understand this point and told me he’d try to get my stuff back but wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me who had it or exactly where it was.
I walk over to Palms Place to quiet down and see if anyone there knows anything. The very polite manager tells me that Kiki was the manager on shift when the whole thing went down and she’ll be back in at about nine the next morning. I suggest to her that I’m not the only idiot to have made this mistake before, and she laughingly agrees – “I won’t say it happens every week, but we’re certainly no strangers to this sort of thing.” She gives me some confidence that it’s all going to work out reasonably well.
By the time all this is done and I’m in bed, it’s 3:30 in the morning. Without ambien, my head is still spinning, and I merely doze rather than really sleep, images of cards and chips and poker lingo churning around in my brain in a way that only approximates reality. Dreams finally come, although I do not remember them now.
