By Bond18 on September 25th, 2007 (more posts by author)

Over the last year I’ve watched a lot friends hit ‘the big score’ in a tournament. I’m not exactly sure how big ‘the big score’ is, but I like to think it’s enough money that unless you’re a total spew tard in life you won’t go bust after hitting it. How big it really is ends up being relative for most people, but I think if you hit close to $100,000 or more that’s pretty god damn big.

At this point, almost every regular in the MTTc forum has a score of that magnitude or close to it. While I’m very happy that my friends--all of them quite deserving--hit it huge, it comes with a catch; I’m a petty and envious man so I feel jealous. I want to hit it really hard, too. I mean who doesn’t? The big, potentially life changing score is every serious MTT’ers dream, and an absolute ton of your overall profit in playing MTT’s comes from a few sizeable yearly scores. The hardest part to stomach is that I’ve been in a position to hit it huge a number of times now, and something always goes awry. I don’t feel like rattling off every time I’ve been three outed at a final table, but their have been a few times in the course of history that I watched huge amounts of equity slip through my fingers. So here’s what could have been:

1. The first major final table I made in live poker was a 1k buy-in in Australia that got like 260 guys. I was close to broke at the time due to bankroll mismanagement and running extremely bad. Luckily my friend Rob decided to back me online and as we’d made a little bit of progress we decided to take one shot at a live 1k event. Going into four handed at the final table I had a little over half the chips in play and the pay outs were as follows:

First: $79,360
Second: $46,080
Third: $28,160
Fourth: $19,200

As we returned from the break I looked down at TT on the button. The UTG player open shoved his short stack and I reshoved. He turned up K7o and runner runners a flush. Okay fair enough.

The very next hand I’m dealt TT UTG again and open raise. The SB goes for a resteal all in and I call, and he flips up KQ. Flop KQ7 and I’ve had a huge chunk of chips taken. We continue play for a while and I manage to regain some but not many chips when I look down at AK on the button. The UTG player again open shoves and I reshove. He shows KJ and promptly flops a J. OKAY FINE. I’m still in. Play continue for a while longer and it reaches 3am from a noon start time. Nobody is going out. The blinds have gotten very high. I look down at KK in the SB and UTG open shoves. The button folds and I of course rejam, BB folds. UTG flips up KQs.
Flop: Qxx
Turn: Q
River: X

Obviously, I was no pleased. I’m pretty sure my exact words were “GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!!” followed by smashing my fists on the floor. Yea, I got pretty excited over that kind of thing back then.

2. The second close call came during the 2006 WSOP ME. I was pretty bad at poker at the time (still am) but the field that year was nearly 9000 players and absolutely full of clueless spastics. I had a pretty aggressive pre flop style of play which got me pretty far since I was three betting a lot and not afraid to abuse the bubble. Two situations come to mind in regards to costing me a huge amount of equity in that tournament. The first came late in day two. The average stack at the time was 40,000 and I had 70,000. The opponent in the hand had 55,000. Blinds were 300/600 with a 100 ante.

Mp1 open raised to 2400 and I called on the button with 77. The blinds folded.

Flop: J 7 3 rainbow
MP1 bets 4500 and I call.
Turn: 6
MP1 checks and I fire out 10,000, to which he instantly check raised all in over. I of course called in half a second. MP1 flips over 66 and there’s now almost 3 times the average in the pot.
River: 6

The entire section of the tournament EXPLODED. MP1 begins screaming and dancing out of his seat, shouting “YEEEEEEEEEEEAH! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEA!!!!!” I stood watching it in relative shock while people came over to pat me on the back and ask if I didn’t want to maybe cry it out a little bit. I’m pretty sure some people made calls on their cell phones just to tell others what they’d seen, I don’t know, it’s all kind of blurry. I sat down, swore once, composed myself, and doubled next hand, then kept going. It’s hard to say exactly how much equity that pot cost me, though we were nearing the money and being able to abuse it

I managed to survive and get back into the game and advance well into day four. Late in day 4 my stack was hovering around 260k with the average at about 400k. There were 200 players left with the payout structure looking like this:

1st $12,000,000

2nd $6,102,499

3rd $4,123,310

4th $3,628,513

5th $3,216,182

6th $2,803,851

7th $2,391,520

8th $1,979,189

9th $1,566,858

10 - 12th $1,154,527

13 - 15th $907,128

16 - 18th $659,730

19 - 27th $494,797

28 - 36th $329,865

37 - 45th $247,399

46 - 54th $164,932

55 - 63rd $123,699

64 - 72nd $90,713

73 - 81st $65,973

82 - 126th $51,129

127 - 189th $47,006

190 - 252nd $42,882

So clearly we’re getting close to some big money. The button open raises to 30k and I shove my stack with AKo. The button thinks it over and makes the call with AQ.
Flop: Q J 9
Turn: X
River: X
It’s hard to say what that pot's equity was worth, though I’m sure someone could do the math and tell me a truly disturbing number.

3. The next time something interesting happened was a few months back when I made a run in the 1k buy in Sunday Million. To give you an idea of pay outs; 10th was $9,930, 4th $100,666, 2nd $179,760, 1st $353,186. With 10 left on the final table bubble, the chip leader of the tournament was one of the worst players I’d ever seen in any tournament but refused to fold and always hit. He put a gross beat on Matt24 at the final 3 tables calling off 30 BB’s pre with 3 invested holding K8o. That’s how he rolled. On the CO, I open shoved 12 BB’s with A6s and he decided to call in the SB with QJo. It was all over on the flop.

4. Of course there's the 95<88 on 678 flop early on day 3 of this years WSOP ME. I don't think that story really needs any retelling to anyone whose ever read this blog. God knows what having a top 10 chip stack near the bubble is worth in THAT tournament.

5. And of course the most recent so close feeling came last night, which is the reason I’m writing the entry on this topic. With about 30 left in the WCOOP 1k event, I got it all in with KK vs a short stack’s (250k) ATs and another medium stacks (about 980k) JJ. The board came A77XJ and the 2.1 million chip pot (the average was about 1 million, CL had 4 million) was shipped to both opponents.


So that’s my little bitch fest. It’ll be the last blog entry about bad beats until I play live poker again, but hashing those things over and over doesn’t really do anyone any good. However, getting them down on paper helps me sort of let them go and look towards the future. I really wish I was stupid enough to believe in being ‘due’ right about now.