With the WSOP Seniors tournament behind me, I set my sights on the Seniors tournament over at The Venetian. $1000 entry fee with a one million dollar guaranteed prize pool. What’s not to like? Plus, I needed to get my 15,000 steps in anyway. I headed over there on foot. 

Vegas during the day is – if you can imagine this – even more disgusting than at night. I say this with only love in my heart. In the twenty minutes it takes to walk from Paris to The Venetian, I saw enough depravation to last me twenty years. Honestly, it’s like Sodom and Gomorrah except in Sodom and Gomorrah the citizens aren’t all walking around at 11:00 AM with 4-foot bottomless Mai Tais. I swear these people wouldn’t even notice if God rained Sulphur and fire upon them. 

Inside The Venetian Hotel, a different story. I found civilization.

Day 1 

Turning point hand #1

An hour into the tournament I’ve built my stack up to just under 40K (from the original 30K) blinds are 200-400 and I find myself with 99 in the BB. A very aggressive player, an obvious local pro with bushy eyebrows and some kind of weird permanently pursed lips thing happening, raises to 1000. He’s been raising pre-flop about 50% of the time. He has slightly less chips than me. I’m never that interested in set mining, so I decide to either take it down there or get some information. I raise to 2900 in position and he calls. Flop comes Ks Qd 3s. Very live board. He checks the flop, so I continue with a bet of 3200 about half the pot, and he calls, while taunting me a little by saying “Just keep betting, kid. You’ll go far”. I ignore this of course, but his flat call leads me to believe he’s either on a draw or he has air. If he had any type of made hand he’d be protecting it against all the possible draws out there. 

The turn is the K of diamonds pairing the board and creating a second flush draw. He checks again, and I bet 6500 leaving me with 32K behind. He quickly pushes all-in for about 31K and says “See what you did? I tried to warn you but you got yourself in trouble, anyway”.  

I don’t think I am actually in trouble but now I’ve got work to do. 

What story is he telling here? If he’s holding a strong King, I believe he would’ve led out post-flop with such a live board. Either that or he’d have re-raised my c-bet. He would not just flat there, no way. That makes no sense. Has he hit a set, maybe 3’s? Again, I don’t believe that story. He would’ve protected his hand before the turn. I can only put him on a diamond flush draw, that’s it. Probably an A-rag. Or maybe he’s holding JT for a straight draw. I don’t see many other possibilities, and in all those cases I’m ahead significantly enough to make the call even with my crappy pair of 9’s. Even if he’s holding Jd Td (which is not at all impossible), I’m still ahead, albeit slightly.

I finally make the “hero call”, for all intents and purposes for my tournament life…  

He turns over J9 of clubs. HE’S BUYING TO AN INSIDE STRAIGHT DRAW, THAT’S ALL! I caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. In fact, I gave him way too much credit apparently. He has even less than I thought, his only savior being a dreaded ten. 

The river is the 5 of hearts, a welcome brick if there ever was one. I double up to approximately 79K to a chorus of “Whoa, nice call, man” from the table.  

I have to play that way against a pro. I know what he sees when he looks at me. It’s like when Wyle E. Coyote feasts his eyes on The Roadrunner and envisions him roasting on a spit, fat dripping into the fire.  He sees a victim. A non-pro, non-Las Vegan. And he just assumes he can outplay me post-flop. Well think again while you’re walking to the cashier to re-buy with your freaky pursed lips.

I do like that he called me “kid” though. I’m pretty sure I was older than him.

Poker is a lot about profiling. I know everyone likes to talk about “tells”. If you’re asking me, I think it’s a little bit of bullshit. Yes, it’s exciting to say that you’ve bolstered your poker game by extensively studying the art of body language working with a retired FBI agent. But puh-lease. These are tournaments with multi-million-dollar prize pools. There are poker pros flying in from every continent on the planet (and from the looks of things, maybe a few from other planets as well). They know all about “tells” and “false-tells” and “reverse-tells” and “false-counter-reverse-tells” and sometimes when a guy clumsily knocks over his stack reaching for a bet, it’s not a “tell”, it’s just that he’s clumsy and he knocked over his stack. The whole concept is highly over-rated IMHO. 

But profiling, that’s real. Who is the guy? An amateur, a guy who does pretty well in his home game in Poughkeepsie, or Flin Flon and wants to see how he does with the big boys? Is he a pro? And if he’s a pro, is he a good pro, or just a pro by virtue of the fact that he doesn’t have another job? Is he an online nerd with more money than he knows how to spend? How desperate is he? Can he rebuy? Can he rebuy seven times if he needs to? 

And maybe more importantly, how do THEY see ME? Am I a familiar face? Have they seen me on TV? Am I local? Do I play at the big clubs in California? Or am I just a yokel Canuck? Most crucially, am I someone they can push around? That’s what I need to be thinking about. Not whether he listens to the sound the Oreo cookie makes when he pulls it apart. That only works in the movies.

A little old Asian man comes to our table, stacks his 30,000 chips in front of him and immediately falls asleep. I don’t mean he nodded off, I mean sawing logs asleep. On the first hand. The bet comes around to him and the dealer has to pound the table in front of him to wake him up. He wakes up and he calls. And then he immediately falls asleep again. The man’s a serial narcoleptic. This goes on for half an hour, he sleeps through every hand, wakes up only to bet or fold. He even wins a few hands. But eventually he goes broke. He never says one word. Not one.

He gets up very slowly and we all watch him stumble away from the table. The guy beside me, a cagy pro says “He’s going to the cage. He’s going to rebuy.” Another guy chimes in “There’s no way he’s rebuying”. We all watch in silence, even the dealer pauses the game to see what happens. Two guys bet $50 as to whether he’ll rebuy. He does rebuy and coincidentally comes right back to the seat at our table that he just vacated. And he falls asleep.

Same thing. He falls asleep every hand. Twenty minutes later he’s out of chips again. And guess what? We all watch in awe as he stumbles to the cage… and rebuys again. These are $1000 rebuys he’s making! One player chimes in “He could’ve gone upstairs to the Royal Suite for what he’s paying to sleep through this tournament!” And another one adds “With a few hookers thrown in!” You gotta love Vegas.

Turning point hand #2 

A few hours later, the guy in seat 7, I wanted him. I wanted his chips. White guy. Striped polyester golf shirt, bad comb over, pear shaped and sweaty. My wonderful mother-in-law, Fran always says that “when someone shows you who they are, believe them”. I knew from first sight, he was my guy.

 He’s got roughly 60,000 chips, blinds are 500-1000 and he raises to 3900 from early position, too much for him to have a big hand. He doesn’t want a caller, that’s obvious. Everyone folds to me in the Big with 5s 3s, not a brilliant holding, but when your guy comes calling you answer the door. I call. Flop comes 7h 9h 9d. I whiffed, but he doesn’t know that. He comes out betting 4500, about half the pot. It’s a standard continuation bet and I put him on a pretty standard non-suited AK or AQ. I call with nothing. Nothing but a plan, that is.

The turn is 7c for two pair on the board. He bets out again, this time less than half the pot at 7500. It’s a weak bet. I can’t put him on either a 7 or a 9 as I don’t think he raises preflop with either of those cards in his hand unless they’re paired, and I’ll take my chances he didn’t catch quads. If he’s got a big pair he’d come out stronger than this to protect his hand. I’m pretty sure he’s holding AK. I raise to 29,000, about half his stack.  

He goes back in the tank. He can’t call. I know he can’t call. Even if I’ve misread his hand and he’s holding a premium pair, I still don’t think he can call. This guy didn’t come all the way from Schenectady or Peoria or wherever to lose to a full house this early in the tournament. He looks at me pleadingly and says “Will you show it if I fold?” I shake my head “No.”

He goes back in the tank, thinks for a long, long while, and then finally folds, turning his cards face up (I was right, AK) and he says “I know you’ve got the 9, you don’t have to hit me over the head with it”. I smiled and mucked my 3 5 and raked in the pot. 

By the end of day one I’d amassed 206,000 which gave me a pretty average stack with 147 players left out of the 1049 players who started the tournament. 109 of us would make the money.

Meanwhile my friend Jim Hess (who, you may remember actually WON the WSOP Seniors Tournament in 2011) made the money in the 2022 WSOP Seniors over at Bally’s and my friend and Poker Partner in Crime, Domenico Scalamogna, not only made the money, but was heading into Day 3 with a very healthy chip stack.

Day 2 

A few hours into day two, I went on a run. A combination of good cards, aggressive play, and a few coin tosses that went my way, and I was suddenly looking at about 1.6 million chips in front of me. By the time we got to the bubble, I’m guessing that I was probably chip leader in the room, if not close to it. 

As we grinded through the day, things levelled off for me, some ups, some downs, and by 8:00 PM we were down to two tables (18 players) I held a respectably average stack of just under three million chips.

First prize was $170,000 and this is about as close as I’ve ever been to a prize that size. I wondered if I’d have any case of nerves, but I didn’t. I just kept playing my game. 

A terrible time to go card dead, wouldn’t you agree? But for the next hour and a half, that’s exactly what happened. I did everything I could with what I had. I made a few moves but they backfired and now I wish I could take them back, but you live by the sword and you die by the sword, right?

By the time we were down to 13 players I found myself the shortest stack left in the tournament. Blinds were 50,000 -100,000 and with nary five Big Blinds left in front of me I finally looked down to see a suited AJ and needless to say I shoved my piddly stack.

The Big Blind called me with 9To. I can’t blame her, she had over three million chips and she knew my shoving range was huge at that point. Flop came Kh, 8s, 5c … I’m good so far… the turn was a 2d… I’m still good… the river… Ts. 

A fucking ten. 

I’m out in 13th place for a cash of $11,200. 

I know. I know.  

When I think of this in a year or so, I’ll look back and realize that coming 13th out 1049 people is great, and something to be proud of.  

In retrospect I’ll acknowledge that cashing for $11,200 is awesome, my second–best live cash to date. 

But, man… But, man… But, man … right now… the only thing I can think about is… I was so damn close this time.