A feel-good bad beat story

There's really no way to talk about your exit from a poker tournament without making it sound like one of the dreaded bad beat stories that everyone hates to hear but everyone winds up telling. The Rio is lousy with them, in the poker room, the halls, the restaurants, everywhere. I was in the bathroom, standing at a urinal, and an older guy next to me was saying into his cell phone, “Ok, I had pocket aces in the small blind ...” I didn't hear the rest of the story, but the tone and the intro were enough to convince me it wasn't going to end well.

So I don't want to lay a bad beat story on you. On the other hand, as Michelle says, you paid your money to be part of this ride, and if you're curious you deserve at least to know how it turned out. Ok, fine by me.

My last caveat before spilling this tale of woe though is that unlike most bad beat storytellers I don't feel bitter, angry or ripped off by the hand that took me out. I had an incredible time today -- the most fun I've ever had playing cards or hanging out in Las Vegas, and that's saying something -- and I'm forever grateful that I got to compete in the World Series of Poker.

The sad part isn't that I got knocked out. Everyone but the winner does. It's that after getting off to a very strong start I seemed in great position to cruise if not into the money then at least deep into the first day's play. I felt like a contender. The shock was how quickly things changed.

As Michelle was posting here at the time, I finished the day's second round with a strong run. Four hours into the tournament I had nearly knocked out the poker pro Jeff Madsen and rebuilt my stack from a low of about 13,000 chips to a very healthy 33,000. That made me the chip leader at our table and probably among the top 10 or 15 percent in the tournament.

Unfortunately the floor managers broke our table as the second round ended and distributed the players to other tables -- this happens throughout the tournament as people are eliminated and tables are consolidated -- and I ended up with a new group of nine players, whose styles I didn't know and many of whose chip stacks were about even with mine. Whatever edge I had eeked out over the past few hours was gone.

After folding a half dozen or so unplayable hands at the new table, including the big blind, I found myself in the small blind with the ace of clubs and 10 of hearts. This isn't an overpowering hand but can be decent depending on the game's texture and the way the betting is unfolding. As it happened, all the players including the button (the player designated the nominal dealer for that hand) folded their cards, and the action was to me. I could forfeit my $200 small blind, call for an additional $200 and play heads-up against the big-blind player, or raise, trying to steal his $400 forced bet.

My opponent looked to be in his late 30s, wearing a blue Boston Red Sox baseball cap, and had about the same amount of chips as I did. Other than that I had no read on him.

I elected to raise the bet to $1,200, essentially challenging him to call $800 more or muck his hand. My thinking was that against one other player with a random hand (his blind bet meant he hadn't entered the pot voluntarily and could therefore have any two cards) my A-10 was a pretty strong holding.

To my dismay he neither called nor mucked, but instead reraised me to $3,400. This was an aggressive play and could mean one of two things: Either he had a quality hand himself -- perhaps a pocket pair, or an ace with a larger kicker than mine, something like A-K, A-Q or A-J -- or he guessed my bet was a bluff. If so, his raise was an attempt to take the pot away without a flop and to discourage any such future attempts on his chips. Many good no-limit players will make that move automatically. The betting sequence is so common, in fact, that it has a name: steal and re-steal.

Because I know that, I didn't immediately assume he had a better hand than mine. And in any event, his reraise meant it would cost me $2,200 more to contest a pot that had now grown to $4,600. In other words, I was getting better than 2 to 1 on my money, and even if my A-10 was behind, there were a lot of flops that could put me back ahead.

So I took a breath and called. The pot was now $6,800.

The dealer laid out a flop of middle cards -- a jack, an 8 and a 7 -- all of different suits. This was somewhat troubling because the flop didn't hit me directly, and many of the cards my opponent might have raised with -- a middle pair, or A-J -- would now be pretty comfortably ahead. At the same time, I could now make a straight if a 9 fell; a 10 would give me a pair that might put me ahead; and for that matter my ace high might even now be the best hand. I checked, hoping to get a free card or some kind of read on Mr. Red Sox. Happily, he checked as well, meaning I'd see the turn card for free.

Miracle! A lovely 9 fell on the turn, completing my straight (the 7, 8, 9 and J on the board, along with the 10 in my hand), and giving me the best hand possible so far unless Red Sox Dude had exactly Q-10, which struck me as an unlikely holding given his pre-flop raise. Furthermore, if he had been raising with something like 99 or A-J he'd now have a pretty strong hand and would feel just comfortable enough to make a big, losing bet. I felt sure I was winning -- even that he might be drawing dead, unable to catch a card that would make his hand the best -- and thought about how to extract the most chips from his stack.

After pondering for a minute or so I settled on a tricky and, I thought, very smart and aggressive bet: nothing.

I checked, assuming that since he had shown strength before the flop and I had shown relative weakness in only calling his pre-flop reraise and then checking both the flop and turn, he would feel sure he either had the best hand or could win the pot by representing that he did.

To my not-at-all surprise, he fell right into my trap, firing $2,500 with a look that said get out of my way. That brought the size of the pot to $9,300, the biggest I'd seen all day.

Again I took a deep breath and pondered what to do, although this was mostly for effect, since I already knew I would raise if I got the chance. My thoughts now were: How much more can I put in the pot without inducing him to fold, which I greedily didn't want him to do, and how long should I optimally sit here pretending to think about this without him concluding that I'm acting.

“I'm going to raise,” I said, and put out $7,500, effectively calling his bet and challenging him to match $5,000 more. He'd now be getting pot odds of more than 3 to 1 ($16,800 in the pot, against only $5,000 to call), which I figured he couldn't pass up if he had any kind of hand at all.

Incredibly, beautifully, he seemed thrilled. “I'm all-in,” he said a bit excitedly, and pushed the rest of his stack out in front of him.

Now, I had coached myself to take my time in this tournament, to never act quickly, even on seemingly simple decisions. So I looked at the board again and again ran through the possibilities. Yep, sure enough, I was beating every possible hand except the unlikely Q-10, and even among the best of the hands I might be facing -- pocket jacks, 9s, 8s or 7s to make three-of-a-kind -- he'd still need to pair the board on the river to beat me with a full house or four of a kind.

I didn't really want to call an all-in bet and put my entire tournament at risk, but there was no way I could fold a straight to what surely was a low-percentage draw.

So I called. Twenty-something thousand chips.

Red Sox Man turned over his cards. Ace-queen -- nothing! not even a pair! -- and audibly gasped when I tabled my ace-10 for the straight.

“Oh my god,” he said. “Nice hand.” And then after a beat, still staring at the board, he realized it was possible for him to draw a higher straight on the river.

“Bring a 10!” he pleaded with the dealer.

The beauty of bad beat stories, like the one I partially overheard in the men's room, is that you don't need to hear the end. They all end the same.

I can only say that when that horrible, damnable, predictable 10 fell on the river even the lucky Red Sox bastard who doubled his stack because of it seemed shocked and sorry. Chris, as he later introduced himself, kept apologizing and telling me how unlucky and unfair the hand was (yeah, man, thanks) and rooting for me to make a miraculous comeback with the $1,400 in chips I had remaining after paying him off.

Even the dealer got into the act. “Where are the TV cameras now,” he said. “They should have been here for this. That's as bad a beat as you're going to see.”

Michelle, watching from the rail, said I turned red, but I actually felt pretty zen and, weirdly, happy. It felt to me like an amazing World Series of Poker moment; I was grateful, sort of, to get busted with such a flourish.

My last 1,400 chips held no miracle comeback. I put them all-in two hands later with, fittingly, the same unsuited A-10, and lost this time when some guy with king-jack of diamonds made a flush. Oh well.

As promised, Michelle and I left the Rio and found a good strong glass of gin, Sapphire, a couple of them actually, to go with our perfectly prepared steaks at Smith & Wollensky. And then we stayed up late playing poker, and winning, at the little card room here in the weirdly redone Planet Hollywood (formerly Aladdin) hotel.

It was a wonderful conclusion to what, believe it or not, felt like an almost perfect day, even if it involved the losing of a $10,000 cashier's check.

During our little poker game tonight, I looked down at my chips to find I was about $400 up for the session.

Pretty good, I said to Michelle. Just ninety-six hundred more and I'll be un-stuck.