What happened on my way to the WSOP

By JB Bruhns
8-12-06

I have been playing Poker a lot lately as a hobby here in the US, the good old land where everybody dreams of making it rich. And some do. With producing or writing movies, with hard work (sort of outdated), with savvy deals, with cheating investors or employees or both (very in), and with POKER (super in)!

A game that had a dirty reputation as a game full of sharks and hustlers for a long time, but is actually a fun combination of psychology, math, strategy, and, yes, luck.

No, I am not a gambling addict, though I always was aware that I am a candidate, but my inner accountant protected me so far. I don’t smoke, do drugs or drink excessively, but gambling with strategy has always been thrilling for me. However, I actually make some money off it in the short time I have been playing seriously, not much, but it is profitable now, after I first paid my “tuition” and spent about $2500 before I learned what worked and what didn’t. Others learn faster and lose less before they find a winning style, but I was always impatient and wanted to speed up the learning curve. Poker is a game of skill mostly, but of course luck is a part of it and you need some to win the big tournaments. That’s why many pros bust out in the WSOP and more “amateurs” win as more and more players play there every year.

I had a great chance to get to the Big Dance in Vegas at the WSOP where a record number of about 8000 people play this year. It is every player’s dream, the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, the best of the best! And 800 people or so win big (ten percent of the field). The final 9 are instant millionaires (although a million Dollars isn’t what it used to be anymore – hell, it barely pays for a starter home in L.A. these days, but still - not too shabby).

So I played with 3050 people in a $500 online tournament on Full Tilt Poker where I won a seat with a meager $24 satellite tournament (by beating out about 100 players and I took first prize, which was the $500 satellite seat, where I realized - Hey, I am actually quite good at this!). I won the $500 seat early on in March and few people had won seats for this, so I thought naively I had a good chance to qualify. However, then I realized they have to get at least 2400 players to make a profit out of this; after all, they guaranteed at least 100 seats for $12,000 each ($10k entry fee plus spending money). I was excited that they only had roughly 250 people for this huge prize pool back in March and signed up about 50 or so a week, so we were on pace to only play with 1000 people, maybe closer to 2000 as they sold the event harder. However, they sold more and more seats and had more satellites to fill out the max 3600 seats; the curve grew exponentially and on Sunday July 16, they had just over 2000 in the morning. Still a lot, but not bad. However, by 3 PM, the time of play, another thousand signed up on top, making it a whooping total of 3050. Even the largest tournaments usually have no more than 1200 players at the site. Did these maniacs all risk $500 to play literally thousands just for a chance to play thousands and thousands more at the WSOP? That meant I had to make it to the first 127 in this bigger satellite to get a seat to the WSOP. Okay. As they say, anybody can win.

First my computer decided to sabotage my poker career and simply stalled, showing me the endlessly spinning “ball of death” just when the tournament started, making me watch how I got AK suited and I could do nothing but click like a maniac on “Raise”, but no, the computer locked me out and folded my hand. Was the server overloaded with this many people or was it the new software? I never had such a drastic hangup before and lost the first fifteen minutes of the tournament trying to log in again. You remember the scene with Ben Stiller in ZOOLANDER where he pounds on the keyboard like a monkey? That was me.

Then I got in finally after booting the software on my girlfriend’s slightly faster computer, calmed down, and remembered to just play solid. No big deal, it was just one prime hand I lost out on. And it could have been a blessing in disguise. After all, AK is the most overrated hand and easily loses to other hands, which is why Poker Great TJ Cloutier actually claims he just folds it, because it gets him into too much trouble. Then again, that’s a problem I don’t mind having.

Either way, I did well , but it was a roller coaster - my stack went up and down, I sweated it out, dutifully stole some blinds, folded a pair of Queens even when faced with an All In reraise (a prime hand I’d go All In with any day usually), and hung around to get closer to one of the coveted 127 WSOP seats. I even got lucky once and busted AA with KQ, but I wasn’t completely All In then, so I was going to survive anyway. And tournaments are all about survival, especially this one where the prizes were pretty much all the same.

“Celebrity Poker” host Phil Gordon, who plays exclusively at Full Tilt Poker Referral Code, and a dozen other poker pros busted out before me and I could taste the beginning of my first glorious poker appearance at the World Series. I inched closer and closer, was even among the top 50 at one point with just about 250 players left, but then my nice safe spot kept creeping up, just out of reach. I just couldn’t catch any hands and also couldn’t risk making moves since the guy to my left was a huge stack and played loose, often calling or raising with medium hands. I was hoping he or I might get moved to another table, but no such luck (luck comes in many different ways in tournament poker). I finally was down to a fairly short stack, about 30k, where you have no choice but to wait for a good hand. Then I had AQ, another prime hand. Not suited, but the best hand I’d seen in a long time and the blinds were getting dangerously huge, eating away at my stack. I was in a bad spot in second position, but I had to make a move if I didn’t want to go out with a whimper and went ALL IN.

AND THE TWO TALL STACK BULLIES FOLDED!

BUT THEN I GOT CALLED by a guy with the same size stack!

HOLY CRAP!

I WAS IN TROUBLE!


I hammered on the table when the other guy called and I knew I was probably dead, dominated with AK or AA. I was hoping for him to have KK, as absurd as that sounds, since then I could at least hit an A. But no such luck. My hand was dead when I turned it over and saw the AK. I needed a miracle, which I didn’t get.

And yes, I LOST and BUSTED out as number 151!!!!!!

Out of 3050!!!!!!!!

Can you say AAARRRRGGGGHHHHH?


If I had gotten only 24 more to drop out, then I, too, could be a happy idiot getting lectured by Phil Hellmuth or Mike Matusow on ESPN (or most likely bust out the first week – the WSOP is so big now that it takes TWO FULL WEEKS and you won’t gain anything if you don’t make it to Week two, so maybe it just saved me a lot of time and agony for now).

Some other idiots just waited around and hoped for the best and they got in.

Did they ever. One guy was shortstacked and would have been dead probably if anybody just called his Big Blind, but he begged, yes, begged people to please fold to him so he can go to the WSOP. Unbelievably people did, although he got help from his neighbor, who claimed to have a pocket pair, indicating he’d call, but then folded miraculously. He probably won’t make it very far with that pity strategy at the WSOP, but it was bizarre to see a player beg his way into a spot in a game where you have to be cut throat. He went into the WSOP with a whimper.

So what is the lesson here?

Play like a whimp? No.

Practice makes perfect and you have to learn from mistakes.

I was at 70k in chips and could have just sat it out from there with about 100 more to drop out, hoping I’d get there before the blinds and antes ate my stack. But that’s a lousy and risky way to try to win a spot. I ended up losing with 28k to a similar size stack , with a hand, AQ, that could be dominated and was. At least a high pocket pair can have a coin flip chance, which is why I don't like AQ. Especially not now.

Because that is why the Queen sucks. She always has to bow to the King.