Did anybody get the license plate of the truck that hit me?

WSOP 2009, Event #24.

I arrived at 12:09 due to traffic (plus due to not really caring much if I missed a few minutes). No time wasted finding my table and seat, as I already had that mapped out. I recognize just one face at my table: John "The Razor" Phan, 2008 Player of the Year for both Bluff and Card Player magazine and double bracelet winner at last year's WSOP--in other words, on the hot streak of a lifetime.* My stack is 4425 chips, having lost one set of 25/50 blinds while absent.

My third hand, I have A-K offsuit in 2nd position. I raise to 150, get one caller from the small blind. Flop is 8-9-10 with two crubs. He checks, I check. I'm intending to play conservatively, and I'm willing to let one go rather than get into a sticky spot early. It's just too likely that he has some significant piece of that coordinated flop to go sticking my nose out. Turn is a queen. He bets, I fold. No muss, no fuss.

Next hand I play is from the big blind. I have pocket deuces. I call a raise to 150, just set-mining. Flop is 10-8-10. I check, somebody bets, I'm outta there.

When the button comes around, I see As-Qs. John Phan and a woman have both limped in. Of significance, Phan has a few hundred more chips than I do, because of having won an earlier pot. I push it to 200. They both call. Pot is 675.

Flop is J-7-4 rainbow. Phan bets 350. Woman folds. I decide to call. I know of Phan's aggressiveness, and it seems to me that he could easily think my pre-flop raise was pure position, or a small/medium pair, or exactly the kind of hand I had--two big cards without a jack. All of those would have missed the board. Besides, he has twice seen me give up without a fight when I've missed. So even with the woman and her unknown status in, it's not a bad spot for him to launch a probe bet and see what happens, no matter what he has. I think that with two pair or better he gambles that one or the other of us in the hand with him will bet so that he could check-raise. Therefore, I conclude that he has either missed or has no better than one pair. He could easily have a jack; top pair is certainly a hand he'd be likely to lead out with. Pot is 1375.

Turn is deuce of the fourth suit. No flush draws, almost nothing in straight draws. He bets 450. My first thought was to let it go. Again, no need to be splashing about with a significant fraction of my stack 15 minutes into a 3-day affair. And had this been any of the other 6 players at the table (we still had two empty seats), I probably would have. But Phan is aggressive enough, I think, to fire twice without much, and good enough to fold either air or a single pair to evidence of strength. He has not gotten to where he is by being a careless calling station. His sometimes frenetic play is when he has the initiative, not calling. So I think a bit, and raise to 1500.

My impression is that he finds this disconcerting--unexpected. It's hard, though, to tell whether it's more puzzlement or worry. He thinks for quite a while, staring me down, but eventually calls. I have a very strong impression that he is not Hollywooding a big hand. Pot is now 2875.

River is another brick--an 8 maybe? Can't remember for sure, because it wasn't a card that affected my analysis. Phan checks. I hesitate maybe one second before picking up my last two chips--yellow 1000s--and pushing them in. Phan shakes his head and makes a face, and as he tosses his matching yellows he has the distinct look of one who feels resigned to his fate.

I, of course, feel that more acutely than he could know. I say, "You called, so you must have the winner," and show my A-Q. He looks surprised but relieved, and turns over A-J. Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

As you might imagine, I've spent much of the last several hours going over it in my mind again and again and again. I'm trying to figure out just where on the stupid scale it rates, between "mildly" and "outrageously." I may not be able to arrive at even a semi-objective conclusion because of how crappy I feel. Every criticism of my actions I think of seems like 20/20 hindsight and outcome-oriented thinking, while every justification that comes to mind seems like wishful thinking and excuse-making.

Here's where my head is at the moment: I'm willing to defend everything up to the turn raise. Given his range and what I believe he's thinking about me, I don't think I was crazy. It was the first time he had seen me willing to put in money after the flop, on a board that had no draws, so he would have to think I have something. The turn raise is the most aggressive action he has seen from me, so he has to give it some credit. He has to worry that I have an overpair or a set, either of which I could easily have played as I did. I think that he won't want to risk virtually his entire stack so early in a tournament on one pair, in a situation where he must simply guess whether he is ahead or behind. If he folds on the turn, he's down to just a bit under his starting stack, but not anything like crippled.

So I think the flop float and turn raise are OK. (Of course, playing completely ABC and folding on the missed flop would have been OK, too. "He who fights and runs away," and all that.)

The harder question for me is the all-in river bluff. I did not feel pot-committed. I could have given up after he called the turn raise, and still had 2000 (40 big blinds) to work with. Had he fired out again on the river, I would have folded, no question. But his hesitant call on the turn and his check on the river suggested to me that this was not a spot in which he wanted to go all the way.

Was he pot-committed? Well, he was getting better than 2:1 for the call (2000 to win 4875). But that's hardly the end of the analysis. If he takes the chance and loses, he's down to less than 500 chips, and resigned to shoving preflop one time with any reasonable two cards, and hoping to mount a miracle comeback. I can't imagine him wanting to be in that position when he could find better spots. If he folds, he still has maybe 2500, which is still 50 big blinds. I think that is probably a more useful way of looking at his situation than just the pot odds, and by that metric, no, I don't think he was objectively committed to going all the way after making the turn call. However, I don't know his mind, and he may feel that being cut down to less than half the starting stack is tantamount to being out, and decide that he'd rather gamble on getting a substantial head start on the field than fight back from a half-stack early. Maybe he even had thought in advance that he'd enter the 5:00 event if he busted out early here, so that made him more willing to take a chance than he'd otherwise be. I just don't know.

My self-recrimination is eased a bit by having been right about his actual card strength and by having read correctly his bet sizing and body language. They really did represent apprehension--he really was worried. In fact, as I was standing up, I heard him tell the guy next to him, "I thought for sure he had a big pair." So I apparently succeeded in making him think what I wanted him to think. That comment is what makes me really wonder about what other factors prompted him to make the turn and river calls, though. Did he think it through? Did he really think that a player unknown to him would make that audacious a bluff at him, especially so early in the game?

I am disappointed. That, in fact, is an understatement. I can't remember the last time I felt this disappointed. I'm not angry or frustrated. Just enormously disappointed. And it's not because I had any serious high hopes. I knew going in that the most likely outcome objectively was leaving with nothing, and I was psychologically prepared for that. Part of the disappointment is that I didn't at least get to take from it the experience, the fun, and the stories that would have come from a more typical duration, even if I didn't win anything.

But most of the disappointment comes from not having played the way I had intended to play, and therefore feeling that I blew it in the most obvious and avoidable way. I had even thought explicitly in advance about how I didn't want to be ousted. I had decided that the worst way would be to make a hero call that turned out to be a donkey call, and the second worst would be to try running an outrageous all-in bluff that blew up in my face.

[It is now Friday, 6/12, just after noon. That is as far as I got in writing yesterday. I had wanted to finish the post, but just couldn't bring myself to keep going. My apologies for the delay. This is literally the hardest post I have ever had to compose, and I just plain ran out of mental and emotional gas to finish the job yesterday.]

This is the first time I can recall wishing that I had taken a bad beat. Then I could feel annoyed but self-satisfied, have a good story to tell, grumble a bit, and be over it. I'd even prefer having been outplayed--e.g., somebody slow-playing a monster and inducing me to fall into his well-disguised trap. Then I could feel beaten but not despondent. As it is, I can't shake the feeling that I just plain suck at poker.

That said, I am slightly buoyed by an exercise that my friend Cardgrrl urged me to do a couple of weeks ago. I had mentioned that I don't consider myself a tournament player, didn't enter many of them, and don't have spectacular results. She encourged me to check my records and see what my cumulative results really were. I knew I was significantly ahead in tournaments overall, but I hadn't analyzed the numbers carefully. When I did, I was surprised to find that since being in Vegas I have played in 61 live tournaments (a lot more than I remembered), and cashed in 13 of them--a pretty respectable 21% of the time. I have also won outright three times, or 5% of the time. With an average field size of probably around 70 or so, that's nothing to be ashamed of.

But still, when I was presented with a chance at my biggest score ever, I completely botched it. The most generous way of looking at what happened is approximately this: "Hey, you made a move that had a decent chance of putting you way ahead in chips early on, and it didn't work out." The most damning way of looking at it, and the one that most occupies my thoughts, is approximately this: "You proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are the phony wannabe good-for-nothing moron donkey idiot that deep down you've always known yourself to be." I'm too bewildered and depressed to figure out at which end of the spectrum the truth lies, or perhaps somewhere in between.

Stu Ungar once famously said, "No one has ever beaten me playing cards. I have only beaten myself." Of course that wasn't literally true for him, nor is it for me. But it sure is true today, and it is the worst feeling I can imagine. People often say that there are certain life events the overwhelming emotion of which you cannot truly be ready for, no matter how much you might think you are--things like the birth of a child or the death of a parent. I thought I was sufficiently steeled for losing in this tournament. But not like this. Not for losing in the way that I told myself a hundred or a thousand times I absolutely was not going to do, one which (unlike falling into a trap) was 100% avoidable.

I feel like I let everybody down--my wonderful friends; my loyal readers; PokerListings for giving me the seat (which I now suspect they will regret; I wouldn't blame them for discreetly but deliberately not inviting me to join the blogger freeroll if they run another one next year); PokerNews for giving me the time off of work; Cardgrrl, who was arriving to support me for the day just as I was walking away overflowing with shame and remorse; and the other players I beat to win the seat, who undoubtedly would have performed better than I did.

I feel profoundly embarrassed, even while remaining uncertain to what degree I have reason to be. In three years here, I have never come so close to an uncontrollable reaction that would leave onlookers saying, "Hey, there's no crying in poker!"

I can't help wondering if the fact of it being a freeroll for me had something to do with my actions. I had literally nothing invested in it. I had anticipated in myself the possibility of treating it too lightly--of subconsiouly focusing on having spent nothing to get there rather than on the possibility of winning half a million dollars--and had spent a decent amount of time harshly warning myself not to let it happen. But maybe it did anyway. You'd think that the fact that I lost nothing in the process would make the outcome roll off as if nothing had happened. Actually, I thought that might be how it would feel. I was way wrong. In talking about that with Cardgrrl yesterday, she offered some insight: Maybe it being a freeroll makes it feel worse, because the prospect of getting something for nothing is so alluring and enticing, that when it doesn't happen it feels even more disappointing than when you have paid your money and taken your chances like everybody else. I don't know, but it's an interesting idea.

For those few readers who, judging by submitted comments, seem to revel whenever I step my foot in the dog poo, go ahead and speak your mind. Tell me what a pathetic loser I am. Tell me that I don't deserve even the modest success I have had in the game so to date. Tell me that I'm a poseur, a hack, a nobody. Nothing you can say will make me feel it any more viscerally and genuinely and thoroughly than I already do.

Last week rapper Nelly entered a WSOP event and lasted only a little longer than I did. His parting words to the table summed up what many must feel as they bust out of poker tournaments: "Stupid game."

But he doesn't speak for me. It's not a stupid game. It's a great game, endlessly full of excitement, challenge, and intrigue. I only wish I could have risen to the occasion and shown some part of what I think I'm capable of when at my best, instead of humiliating myself like a contestant on "American Idol" who commits the unforgiveable sin of forgetting the lyrics when he is finally given the opportunity of a lifetime and has the camera and spotlights on him.

Now I feel like I should apologize for this ridiculously self-indulgent, navel-gazing rant, in addition to apologizing for performing so horrendously badly. I don't know. I'm just utterly beyond the ability to know what I should think and feel at this point. So for it all, I'll just say, "I'm sorry."



*A cautionary note. It's possible it wasn't actually John Phan. Nobody mentioned any names, there was no press there photographing or interviewing him. He was at the other end of the table, wearing big, dark sunglasses, and people don't always look like their photographs. But if it wasn't him, it was a darn good impersonator. I'm in the vicinity of 90% confident of the identity, so I'm going with it here.