luckyjimdixon
Pair
Joined: 15 Oct 2007
Posts: 21
Location: California
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 Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 1:55 pm Post subject: Aussie Millions Bloggers Contest | My Entry |
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The entries for the Battle of the Bloggers/Aussie Millions contest are in (the deadline was last night), so I thought post my fictional account of my fictional participation in the event to see what people think:
You can see the post in situ and with pictures at this link:
http://web.mac.com/tbpeters/pokerbooks/My_blog/My_blog.html
THREE LITTLE WORDS: MY JOURNEY TO THE AUSSIE MILLIONS
SUNDAY, JANUARY 20, 2008
Three little words: "I'm all in."
Poker players believe they know what that phrase means. They believe "I'm all in" means going for broke, no holds barred, putting your tournament life on the line, risking everything. But they are wrong.
They don't know beans about "I'm all in." And that includes you: yeah, you, the guy who logs 2,000 hands a week, who can tell you the exact odds of every major hand match-up, who knows what Phil Ivey had for breakfast this morning.
Let me make this perfectly clear: You have no idea what "I'm all in" really means.
You cannot fathom what "I'm all in" means until you've been in a major tournament and faced an "I'm all in" kind of decision. You cannot grasp either the power of those three little words or the mixture of fear and exhilaration they will invoke until you've been there, on the felt, sitting behind rows of neatly stacked, high domination chips, and you're looking down at two black kings.
Here's a little more stage-setting just so you can appreciate the full import of the phrase "I'm all in."
You're at the beautiful Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia. It's Saturday, January 19, day four of the biggest and most prestigious tournament in the Southern Hemisphere. Yes, the one Gus "The Great Dane" Hansen won last year. You've traveled about 8,000 miles to get here. You've plunked down 10,500 Australian dollars to play in the Main Event. You've made it through a grueling day one, and you're near the end of day two with just over 200,000 tournament chips: twenty neat towers of T1000 chips and a smattering of change for the antes. You're cruising. You've run well, picked up some good hands and--more important--you've raked in fat, juicy pots with those good hands. Your opponents have been weak. They've given you well-earned respect. You're feeling absolutely on top of your game. And then the following hand – excuse me, the following nightmare – takes place.
You're sitting in the hijack seat, and the action folds around to you. You look down at two black kings. You raise it up, and then you wait confidently for the button and the blinds to fold or call or whatever. (You've got kings! You want action!)
And then you hear those three little words: "I'm all in."
It's a small voice. You might call it girlish even. Which is entirely reasonable because it belongs to a girl: Annette15. As in Annette Obrestad, Card Player covergirl, 19-year-old poker phenom from some ridiculous town in Norway, winner of the first WSOP Main Event in Europe. The girl who played a 180-person tournament without looking at her hole cards (allegedly). (What are they feeding those kids up there? How can they be so good?)
Annette15 says "I'm all in." and now the power of those words starts to become manifest.
On the plus side: You've got kings!
Also on the plus side: You're playing for a prize pool of A$8.27 million. And – did I mention this? – you've got kings!
But you're not rash or impulsive. You decide to look at the minus side. You glance at the high-definition plasma screen on the wall behind you. (Damn you! You should have looked at that before the cards were dealt!)
And that provides some bad news: 84 players remaining. Which means that you, Mr.-I've-Got-Two-Black-Kings, are on the bubble. One more elimination, and this room will erupt with a cacophony of high fives, three-thump hugs, and congratulatory phone calls. Every single player left in this glorious room will be, in some sense of the word, a winner. ("Yeah, I made the money down at the Aussie Millions. Really fun. Great food. Nice people. Beautiful country. It was cool." Your nonchalance will be the death of you.)
Every single player but one. Let's call him "Bubble Boy."
All of a sudden, playing two kings isn't as easy as it seemed about 15 seconds earlier. You look at her stack. You'll ask for a count, but you know she's got you covered. And this is the reality of tournament poker: Call and win, and you'll be in a great shape (and you'll have crippled one of the emerging talents of poker). Call and lose, and you'll be skulking towards the exit, the stink of defeat emanating from every fiber in your being and the sickest of sick feelings in what every neuron of your brain.
Now imagine you're in my shoes. Do you still think you know what "I'm all in" means? And more important: What do you do?
It's Not Just About Poker
If you think I'm going to give away the dramatic moment of my experience at the Aussie Millions before the first subhead, you are sadly mistaken. You're going to have to do one of two things: Scroll to the end of this post. Or sweat.
But look on the bright side: You've got options. All I could do then, that Saturday evening in Melbourne, was sweat.
I'd been in "the land down under" for nearly two weeks, and it's been instructive, at least linguistically. Americans don't understand Australian beyond "Gday," "Fosters," and "barbie." "Footy," for example, means Australian Rules Football, one of the world's more glaring misnomers (it's not football, there are no rules, but the Australian part is right). "Sheila" is a generic term for "woman." A "dill" is an idiot. "Maccas" means the fast-food chain McDonalds. (Thanks heaps for the Australian Slang Dictionary!)
Oh, and this: When it's winter in the States, it's summer in Australia. (OK, I admit that I knew this, but it's nice to have it confirmed through first-hand experience.)
Other key lessons from my trip to Melbourne: Do not play Chinese poker – for any stakes, at any time – with Phil Ivey....Yes, Erick Lindgren can indeed dunk a basketball....When an Australian says, "Just one more beer, eh?" it's usually 6 a.m. and time to go home....Jimmy "Gobboboy" Fricke is a freak (but is, I have to say, a pretty talented player.)...And this: 8,000 miles is a very long way to go for a poker tournament.
Hospitality in Spades
Note that 8,000 miles is more than a reasonable travel distance for a great vacation. How could a trip to Australia in January be anything less than fantastic – especially with Full Tilt as your host?
We fly from LAX with what seems to be the entire FT team (if this plane had gone down, an entire generation of poker superstars would go do with it). I want to sit next to Clonie Gowen, the former Miss Teen Oklahoma, but my wife wants to be near Phil Ivey; she wins without a showdown. But I end up next to Michael Craig, and before we decide on some sleep, I bombard him with questions about his latest book, The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide, as well as about The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King, the riveting story of the biggest heads-up match in the history of poker.
There's Ivey! There's Lederer. There's "The Mouth." Jen Harmon. Erick Lindgren. Phil Gordon (I've reviewed two of his books: Green and Blue). Andy Bloch ("Hey Andy! I went to MIT too, but you were smarter."). Ram Vaswani, and my favorite pro (because of his unassuming style and enormous intelligence): Allen Cunningham. It's a poker fan-fest via jumbo-jet, and the pros could not be more gracious. I suspect their attitude will change if and when we face off across the felt.
Did I say 8,000 miles wasn't too far to go for a vacation? I was wrong. At least, I felt wrong at about the 5,000 mile mark with the equivalent of a Los Angeles to New York flight ahead of me. But we do get there, eventually, someday (but who knows what day?), stumbling into one of the many limos waiting to ferry us all to the Crown. And then the fun really begins.
Full Tilt knows how to stage an event. We all got some pretty cool gear. There was an event or function at every possible moment (bowling, winery tour, the Melbourne Zoo, receptions, golf, and on and on and on). It was only walking through the casino that I remembered the real reason I was here: to play in the biggest buy-in tournament of my life.
I played some no-limit hold’em every day, more to stay in tune with the ebb and flow of the game than to make any real money. And I followed the online updates of every event religiously, hoping that some little tidbit of information might come in handy later on.
And then the big day was upon us. The Main Event. 827 players. An A$8.27 million prize pool. The reason I'm here. I find my table, look around and pray that I recognize no one, and stare down at my starting stack of T20,000.
Just like that, 2007 Aussie Millions champ Gus Hansen says, "Shuffle up and deal." Let the game begin.
That Was a Crazy Game of Poker
I go into a tournament assuming I'm going to lose (more accurately: I go into a tournament assuming I’ve already lost). Not that I'm clueless or can't hold my own, but it’s just better if I assume a frank, realistic understanding of short-term variance, the vagaries of chance, and my status as an amateur. But my outlook gets a bit more optimistic on the very first hand.
The UTG player makes it T1,000 to go when the blinds are T25/50. He's a local – you can hear the broad Australian twang when he announces "raise" and ships in 1/20th of his stack. A strange play, maybe even a little bit crazy. Trust me when I say everything gets far more disturbing as the action winds itself around the oval table.
The raiser gets called in three places (both blinds fold), so there's T4,075 in the pot. "Let's see a flop," says the UTG player with a broad grin. The dealer raps the felt, burns a card, and deals the first three cards: queen of diamonds, nine of clubs, deuce of hearts. The third card has barely settled on the felt when UTG moves in for his remaining T19,000.
Fold.
Call.
Call.
The hands are turned over. UTG has an offsuit queen-nine for top two pair. Caller #1 shows two red aces. And caller #2 tables a set of ducks. No one improves, two people are sent to the rail, and one lucky (if that’s the right word?) guy is sitting on a stack of T60,000.
I thought to myself, "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy ride." But things actually settled down quite a bit after that hand. People brought it in for 3x to 6x the BB. Sometimes we'd see a flop; other times we wouldn't. Nothing too dramatic. People busted, some with a look of utter disbelief, others with anger, and still others with a benign "what are you gonna do?" half smile.
My stack got bigger, with alarming regularity. I got KK once, taking it down with a Q-high flop. I flopped sets twice and both times they held up. There were the usual TP/TK hands. I took a hit once with two queens when my opponent, holding AK, spiked a king on the river. I stole the blinds a few times. And yes, I sucked out, not once but twice.
The first suck-out was, quite frankly, a miracle. The blinds are T500/1000, and I had 22 of clubs in the BB. Two people limped in middle position; the SB completes the bet. Flop comes A2 rainbow, and I check-raised a guy in middle position who popped me back all-in. I called, assuming bottom set was good. He had two aces. But I turned quads to double up and eliminate a player.
Now that was lucky!
I'm not going to write about the second suck-out. Suffice to say I made a bad call and got lucky again. (Really, really sorry about that Clonie. I just didn't think you were as strong as you were!)
I finished my Day #1 with about T140,000 – a bit above average. And I was feeling pretty good.
“You Were In Purgatory, My Friend!”
Feeling good but feeling tired. Twelve hours of poker is hard, much harder than I thought, and I was able to sleep like a child after that first long dayt. But then there were two whole days to kill, waiting for the rest of the field to finish their own day ones so I could get back into action. Waiting is horrible.
I followed the online updates. I took as much exercise and sunshine as I could stand. I sampled a few of the local brews. But sleep was difficult to come by. It's a lot like Purgatory, the middle ground between the heaven of making the money or winning a tournament and the hell of getting felted and going home with nothing but memories (bad ones: busting is a lot like what I imagine dying feels like).
I know, I know: I’m not supposed to think about merely cashing; I’m supposed to think about winning.
"Hey Tim, how did you do in the Aussie Millions?" "Oh, I cashed and had a fantastic trip. Want to see the photos?"
"Hey Tim, how did you do in the Aussie Millions?" "Well, I ran into a bit of bad luck and ended up as the Bubble Boy for my first big-buy-in event."
“I can dodge bullets, baby!”
And that brings my story back to the beginning: On the bubble. Holding two black kings. And facing an all-in re-raise from Annette15. What would you do?
If I fold, I can almost certainly make the money. If I win, who knows what happens – but again, I will certainly make the money. There's only one hand that really worries me, of course: AA. I'm favorite--a pretty big favorite--against anything else (if she has a lower pair, I'm about 4:1; if she has AK, I'm about 3:1; if she has AA, I'm a dead duck). I know how she plays. By which I mean, simply, that I know she has another gear to her aggression...and I know that she knows that I'm an amateur and that the money bubble is about to break. All of which points me to the right thing to do: Call and double up.
Of course I folded.
Can you imagine walking out of that room, empty-handed, when all I had to do was fold? I can’t. In fact, I folded my kings face up.
Annette laughs, showing everyone her two black aces. I made the right laydown – even if I did it for the wrong reason.
The bubble breaks in another minute or so. We high-five each other, do the three-thump-on-the-back manly kind of hug (and I thank Annette for showing!), and we speed-dial our spouses, our friends, and anyone else we can think. But while I’m doing so, I cast a glance towards the exit where I see the real bubble boy, staring back into the riot of excitement. He knows what "I'm all in" means; I think I do too.
Coda
The big laydown – the right laydown – can give any player an extraordinary boost of confidence (and it commands respect from his tablemates), and I rode that particular laydown for another two rounds or so, moving up two spots on the money ladder. But I was no match that field as the blinds went up and the weaker players fell by the wayside. I made a stand with two nines against Justin Bonomo's Big Slick, and he won that race. But I walked out of that room with an extra spring in my step, and the biggest payout of my poker life.
You know who won. His picture is on the cover of Card Player, and he’ll be center stage when the show airs later this year. But I have no regrets. I’ll probably never be on such a poker stage again. But man was it fun!
*NB: This is a fictional post written as part of Full Tilt Poker’s “Battle of the Bloggers. I have not even been to Australia (but I’d sure like to go!)
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