Oh, where to begin.

And where to end.

Did you ever have something that was going so well, I mean SO WELL, and then somehow it suddenly all goes to shit, and you’re not even sure how that happened?

Not necessarily poker. Like maybe it was your marriage.

Omigod. Maybe it WAS your marriage! And if it was, I just analogized the downfall of your marriage with my insignificant little poker stories. I AM SO SORRY I DID THAT! I feel terrible. I don’t even know what to say. That was awful. Just awful.

Anyway, let me tell you about my poker story.

So, I get to Austin, Texas Friday afternoon about 3:30 PM, check into the lovely Cambria Hotel in North Austin and without even changing out of the clothes that I wore on the plane (black Tony Soprano Adidas Tiro 24 Competition Sweatsuit which has become my “flying uniform”), I head right to the infamous LODGE POKER CLUB in nearby Round Rock, Texas and late-register for the $300 tournament with a 25K guaranteed prize pool.

The Lodge Poker Club has, over the last few years become a bit of poker mecca for serious, professional and semi-professional poker players. By all accounts it is top notch and I’ve been wanting to go there ever since hearing about it.

And they’re not fucking around these people as evidenced by the armed security in black cowboy hats.

Look, I snuck this pic.

Not guys you’d want to trifle with.

Moving on, I saw the $300 tournament as a mere warm-up for the much bigger $1700 buy-in (! Million dollars guaranteed) main event which I would play the next day.

And with all due modesty, I was putting on a clinic. I played smart and aggressively and eight hours later (or so) we were down to ten players. Twelve made the money so we were already there. And now we were on the final table bubble, and I had a very healthy stack. I felt like I was poised to win the $7800 first place prize on my first day here!

Cue the sad trombone, wah-wah-wah-wahhhh.

My AK gets cracked by a smaller stack with A7 and all the sudden I’ve got a below average stack. And remember, we’re down to ten people, two tables of five so we’re very short-handed which dictates more aggressive play. And the blinds are huge. I’m down to nine big blinds, but still very much alive. I just need a quick double-up.

The very next hand I get 77 and I’m first to act so I properly go all-in with my medium pair. The guy to my left with a slightly higher stack goes into the tank, he thinks forever and then finally calls. Everyone else folds. We show down our hands and to everyone’s surprise he shows 22.

22! The Dreaded Deuces! It’s objectively a terrible call. Mathematically, it’s practically impossible for him to be ahead of me in that situation. He’s either flipping 50-50 against two higher cards, or he’s in even much bigger trouble against a higher pair (as is the case here). Trust me, it’s a terrible call, especially at this stage of the game. Any decent poker player will tell you the same. But I’m excited to see those two ducks. (Barring disaster) I’m going to double my stack!

Needless to say, he hits his deuce and I’m out of the tournament in 10^th place for a modest prize of $725.

Oh well. Tough way to go down but on the bright side, I take home a modest profit of $425 dollars to subsidize the bigger tournament the next day. And I’ve proved to myself again that I can play with top pros and succeed. All good.

I won’t go into all the gory details of my Saturday but if you’re at all familiar with the 1980 cult classic film Cannibal Holocaust, an Italian production so horrifically grotesque, it was banned in several countries due to its graphic content… it was a bit like that.

Bad beats and bad timing. I admit I even took two shots at the can, which I don’t normally do. Nothing went right on Saturday. So that’s $3400 US dollars, gone. As gone as Terry Bradshaw’s neck. It’s just not there anymore. All the sudden, the $425 I won the night before seems pretty insignificant.

I took my bright red 2015 Mercedes-Benz GLA Class rental car which I got from TURO back to my lovely hotel and took a long, long, shower. The shower in my room has a very soothing massage option – which I bet most people never even try out – and you could spend hours in the there with this spray function just trying to figure out a reason to leave the shower. I’m telling you people, ya gotta try out ALL the spray functions on your hotel shower! You have no idea what you might be missing. If you listen to me about nothing else in these pages, PLEASE pay attention to that one thing!

So, I spent Sunday morning discovering downtown Austin. I mean I’m here! I gotta check it out right? Here, look, I took some pictures.

Not sure exactly what’s going on here, but to quote my lovely client Claire Rankin, “That’s a whole lotta lotta!”

So that’s Austin.

And then, as a palate cleansing last chance to make my money back, I drove back up to The Lodge and went into this piddly $200 tourney on Sunday afternoon. Piddly, but still 25K at stake with 194 entrants and $7500 for first place. Nothing to sneeze at.

And again, I’m doing great. With 60 people left I’ve built a 150,000 chip stack (from a starting stack of 30K) and I’m well above average in the room. I feel good. I’m weaving and bobbing, picking up blinds, eliminating short stacks, doing all the things one can do without getting premium hands.

You know how much I hate bad-beat stories, right?

You know how I really try to avoid telling them here, right?

But this one is just too good. Please, please indulge me. I need to get this one off my chest. Please, try to follow along, even if you’re not a poker player. This is a good one. You’ll like this one. I’ll go slow.

Blinds are 1500-2500 and I’m in the small blind with my pretty healthy 150K stack. A guy in middle position limps for 2500 and it folds around to me in the small blind.

Now I’m going to call here no matter what I have. I look down to see a 3 and without even looking at my second card, I complete the bet to 2500 because it doesn’t matter what the other card is, I have to put in the extra thousand because mathematically that’s the right and only thing to do. It just is. Trust me.

And the guy in the big blind just checks.

The flop comes 9, 3, 2 all different suits. That’s encouraging. So now I look at my other card and sure enough it’s a 9. I’ve got top two pair. Amazing.

I check, as I should, hoping for one of these guys to bet so I can come over the top. The big blind checks. The limper checks. Dammit.

The turn is a 2 so now we’ve got 9, 3, 2, 2 on the board. I still feel pretty good about my hand. So, I bet out 6500 into the pot. The big blind calls. That’s a little scary. He could have a 2 after all. But he also could have 4, 5 or 4, 6 or A4 for a straight draw. Or he could just have two over cards and he thinks I’m trying to steal the pot. He could have a million things.

The limper folds.

So, it’s just me and the big blind. And, by the way, he has a slightly higher stack than mine, not by much, but enough to take me out of the tournament if he beats me.

The river… bless my soul… is another 9.

I’ve got a full house. But not just a full house. A nines over threes full house! Because I have the three. Do you see how significant that is? You see, even if by some miracle he also has a 9, then he’s got a nines over twos full house. He’ll think he’s golden. This is perfect!

I bet out 12,500. I don’t want to scare him away if he doesn’t have a 9.

But let’s hope he does, right. He can’t possibly put me on a 39.

To my delight, he shoves his whole stack. Obviously, I’m going to call, right? I’m going to win the hand. I’m going to have over 300, 000 chips and be chip leader in the room. This is a dream scenario,

I call. I call immediately.

And he turns over…

Not a 9.

He turns over…

22.

He’s got quad 2’s. Four of them.

Look. I took a picture. Warning: It’s gross.

Ask any poker player you know. Show them this picture. And then give them some breathing room and run and get them a barf bag.

Deuces.

Again.

Deuces.

We call them “Ducks” because, well look at them. They look like ducks swimming. Like a couple of idiots.

I used to think ducs were cute. I don’t like ducks, anymore.

I’m back in my hotel now. I ordered a medium pizza and a diet Dr. Pepper from a place called Zalat Pizza and I watched the San Antonio Spurs just demolish the Houston Rockets on my TV. And then I wrote this blog.

And I demolished the pizza. It’s not there. Like Terry Bradshaw’s neck, it doesn’t exist anymore.

And the Spurs are for real, man. We all knew about their potential, but we thought it would take a few years. It’s here, though. It’s right now. Wemby is a monster. And Castle and Vassell just play with maturity so beyond their years. I’m starting to believe.

Anyway, see ya, Austin. I wouldn’t wanta be ya.