I’m not even sure I can bring myself to write about this
one. 

But I will.

Ruth and I took a little trip to Montreal this weekend to
see our son, Joey, and for me to play in a poker tournament. It was The WPT $1500
Deepstack.

And for whatever reason, GOD-if-GOD-exists decided I
was not going to make the money in this tournament.

There’s simply no other explanation. I played too well to
get shut out by mortal means. No, this was divine intervention, for sure. I
mean you would think that GOD-if-GOD-exists would have other things to worry
about this weekend. Right?

You would think that GOD-if-GOD-exists would concern
herself with the air quality in New Delhi, or somebody’s impeachment, or Kim Kardashian’s
evanescent weight gain… But no. For whatever reason GOD-if-GOD-exists
seemed solely focused on keeping me out of the money. Go figure.

I won’t bore you with the blow by blow gory details, but
suffice to say that it took a confluence of minor miracles starting with the
last hour of day one (when I was probably close to chip leader) and culminating
with my last hour of day two when my proverbial poker coffin was closed tight with
rancorous finality.

Of course, I’m assuming you would agree that all-in with AK
pre-flop in three separate hands versus AQ, AQ and TQ respectively, and losing
all three hands qualifies as bad luck?

Yeah?

So how about this? With all that, we’re down to 86 players
out of 596, and 85 get paid. The minimum payout is $3000. I’m on the button
with a miniscule stack, but the fact that I’m on the button means that I can
wait 9 hands for someone else to go out. We’re playing hand-to-hand. 

For each
of the next 8 hands we hear the commotion on another table signifying that some
poor shmuck is all-in against an opponent with a bigger stack. If ANY ONE of
those poor shmucks loses their hand, I make the money. Do you have ANY IDEA what
the odds are that 8 out of 8 survive? Neither do I.

But I know who ended up the poor shmuck.

It’s either a sign from GOD-if-GOD-exists that I
should give up the game… or… or… OR… it’s a TEST of my perseverance to see if I
have the grit to hang in for the inevitable huge bounty that awaits me.
Someday. I choose the latter. Glutton for punishment, you say? Pshaw, says I.
And I proudly pop the silent P when I say it. Know why? BECAUSE THAT’S HOW I
ROLL, BITCHES!

Wait. Wait. Wait. You wanna hear the worst insult to injury
ever? 

In the update below, which is published on the Playground Poker Website,
they describe exactly how the money bubble burst. The hand went down exactly as
they say. See the AK vs KJ? That’s me! I’m the KJ. Only in that report they name
ME as NABIL KARRAS!

I’ve been called a lot of names in my life, but never that one.

Is that not the worst?! Even in inglorious defeat, I get no
glory!

In the money

November 3, 2019 | 5:37pm | Shawn McCrory

The money bubble has just burst on the
WPTDeepStacks. The field was brought into the money by Matwej Troitschanski,
who opened the action to 15,000 from early position. The player in the big
blind, Nabil Karras, was all in with his big blind. No one else at the table
wanted to tangle in this hand, but the other players were happy to watch the
drama unfold. Hands were tabled, and Karras got the bad news; his 

 

 was
dominated by 

 

.

 There was no jack to save Karras, and the remaining field is now in the money. There were several other short stacks in play, who were waiting patiently for the bubble to burst, so the floodgates will open for the next little while as players try to run up their stacks.

See
the guy in the black tracksuit, below? Nice guy. Russian. Funny. We’d really bonded over the two days we played at the same table. Had some good laughs, he and I. And he was really rooting for me to make the money. Right up until the moment he took me out of the tournament. Fucker.