After about a decade of playing the game seriously, and after years of vacillating back and forth on whether or not to do it, this year I am finally crossing an item off of my bucket list by playing in the World Series of Poker. The real thing, a major poker tournament with a $1,000 buy-in, and the chance - if everything goes right and the cards fall my way for three days straight - to bring home a real champions' bracelet from Las Vegas.This is a story you may have heard before, at least partially, if you've ever played the game of poker seriously enough to wonder how - maybe if you went out to Vegas just once, and somehow got incredibly lucky while you were out there - you might actually compete among some of the strongest players in the world. It's what happens just before the closing credits of "Rounders", after Mike McD breaks Teddy KGB's spirit and crushes his pride. It is the kind of pipe dream spoken across many a low-stakes home game, and it's the reason why lots of true amateurs play satellite tournaments (even now, in the post-poker boom years) just for the chance to buy into a real Las Vegas World Series of Poker tournament.
**************************
So here's how I fell in love with the game of poker: it started, I suppose, with card games for nickels and dimes against a few family members when I was about eight years old. I was then greatly assisted by Hoyle Casino, a PC game released by Sierra Entertainment about twenty years ago. This game taught me how to gamble digitally for play money, and it also taught me aggression - it's very easy to gamble all of your chips on one hand when they don't count for anything.
And you can't forget the incredible influence of the Jersey Shore arcade culture. I don't know if it's like this anyplace else in the United States, but if you grew up anywhere near a beach in New Jersey, you were almost perpetually exposed to arcade environments that were everything but an actual brick and mortar casino, except the cigarettes were made of candy and the video poker games gave you tickets, instead of money, for a made hand.
While other six-year-olds played Skeeball or Pole Position at the Bev and Wally's arcade at Keansburg Boardwalk, I was playing some medieval predecessor to Triple Double Bonus Video Poker. Gambling (like other vices, I suppose) is a culture, and if you grow up in New Jersey and don't gamble, it's something like growing up in New Orleans and not eating gumbo (or drinking hurricanes). Your parents must have been really lame, or evangelically opposed to the act, or some combination of the two.
Then, finally, for my 21st birthday, I received Doyle Brunson's "Super System" - which was, by then, already established as a book of gospel in the canon of poker literature and strategy - as a gift. I couldn't get through more than half of the book because it focused on Texas Hold 'Em, a game I barely understood, even though I'd recently started watching ESPN's nearly non-stop coverage of the World Series of Poker. With time, though, I started to understand the game enough to compete for real money.
***************************
Lost, now barely a footnote among the various hyper-televised sports fads of the very early 21st century, is the fact that for several years in the early- and mid-2000's, playing poker and being a poker fan was an incredibly, openly cool thing to be. ESPN's television coverage of the game (which recently debuted hole card technology allowing casual viewers to view the exact card holdings and strategies of the players) was a major factor in this.
So was the considerably culturally subversive nature of the game; the fundamental idea that the assortment of sociopaths, social misfits, math geniuses, criminals, cokeheads, and general unwashed that we all collectively called "poker pros" could somehow consistently win money through bravado, deductive reasoning, and luck. There was an inherent logic to the game, that the odds favored the strongest players over time, and that with patience, prudence, and better than average luck, a regular guy or lady off the street could even make it big themselves as a poker player in Las Vegas.
To me (and maybe only to me, given how poker participation has been declining over the years), there's something that remains fundamentally attractive (in the general, non-sexual sense) about all of this. Even if the poker boom has already faded, with the easy money provided by regular guys and ladies drying up, and the Department of Justice's 2011 crackdown on major online poker sites uncovering the thin truth that the most popular online gambling site used by American casual gamblers was actually a massive Ponzi scheme orchestrated not by Bernie Madoff but instead by some of the most famous "poker pro" faces you or I had seen on the television screen. Poker still remains a beautiful game, at least to me.
Perhaps it's my countercultural streak (which, admittedly, runs too deep), but even now, years after interest in poker passed most casual fans of the game by, I still have the itch to find out how I'd do in Las Vegas. And in just a couple of months, I'll be able to scratch that itch.
*****************************
My career as an amateur poker player is, objectively, slightly above average, and that's it. On a good day, I can walk into a poker room rusty as all hell and take money off of experienced and practiced player; on a good day, I really can read the entire poker table, the game moves in slow motion, and I can sometimes legitimately feel as if I am printing money (in a cash game) or tournament chips (in a tournament).
The massive problem with my game is that, most of the time, it's difficult for me to know whether I am having a great day or a terrible day until it's too late. By "too late", I mean that on my terrible days, I can't stay at the poker table long enough to figure out which side is up. After years of deluding myself about this weakness, I now understand it better, and imperative among my goals for the World Series of Poker is to play with enough patience, particularly in the early going, to understand (a) what kind of day I am having, (b) how I am feeling, and (c) how I should handle the game in response to (a) and (b).Over the years, I've had some large cashes, most notably a cash for $3,000 in the summer of 2009 and a separate cash for $2,100 in the summer of 2012. I also made a final table at a poker table on a previous trip to Las Vegas (though for very little profit). I am reasonably certain I am "up" (i.e., profitable) over the very long haul, though this assumes that I invest 100% of my winnings in my poker bankroll - more often than not, they are reinvested into rounds of drinks for my friends at the casino bar. I am just as certain, though, that my game is flawed and I will need to get fairly lucky in order to play deep and be successful in a $1,000 buy in event in Las Vegas.
*****************************
Here are some things I know to be true:
- The caliber of poker player is stronger in Las Vegas than anywhere in the Northeast. Simply put, many players travel to Las Vegas in an attempt to make it big playing poker. Vegas then chews up and spits out at least 80-90% of these folks, and sends them back home (to wherever home is for them), flat broke. That's pretty much a Q.E.D. right there.
- I'm best served treating this event as a gamble than as a truly serious venture. This way, even if I push all-in with kings in the second round and come up short against an unfortunate pair of aces, I can at least dust myself off, say "Oh well", take a walk around the casino, and enjoy the rest of my trip.
- I should still study and practice my game, a ton. Fundamentally, if I start playing this tournament and do find myself getting broadly lucky, I need to be certain my game is optimized, fine-tuned, and spit-shined. I need to be sure that when I bust out of the tournament, it is on a decision I don't hate myself over in the coming weeks or months. More than winning or losing money, I want to play a solid game of poker throughout the tournament.
- I should also practice the physical aspect of the game. I've played enough poker over the years to know that stamina is not my strong suit. Some poker players delight in playing one, two, sometimes even three days straight, barely breaking for a cigarette or some nutrition. I tend to crap out and get tired or bored after six or seven hours, tops, which pales in comparison to the 30 hours of poker I'll (hopefully) be playing over two straight days in order to make it to the final two tables of this particular tournament. So in addition to the endurance training I am currently doing for my half-marathon, I am also endurance training through extended sessions at local casinos and poker games.
- I should have fun. Because after all, it's Vegas, a place were dreams come true, and I'm fortunate enough to be able to play in the grandest poker tournament in history. As a fan of the game, it's incredible that I can do this, and I intend to have fun in the process.
- I should try to relax. Easier said than done - I can be anal retentive and a bit high strung - but hopefully the $47 first class ticket to Vegas (thanks, US Airways award travel!) will help. A complimentary, pre-flight Jack and Coke should help, no?
My first training session was last Thursday at Sands. I played $1/$2 no-limit because I felt, in terms of absolute level of talent, the caliber of player I'd be seeing in Las Vegas would be about the same as that of a daily grinder at a $1/$2 table at an above-average casino. Truth be told, most of the table did know each other already from daily competition, which is never a good sign when you're an outsider who doesn't have much confidence in his game. Regardless of my jitters and some early sub-standard play, I did take $200 in profits off the table. I will have to play again soon.
As the tournament approaches, my plan is post again with a training update and some more random thoughts. I'll also post Facebook updates on my tournament play in more or less real time, as the competition ensues.
No comments:
Post a Comment