"I've been playing some deep-stack events at the Venetian," he said. "The fields are decent and the pay's good, but I've been running bad."
"You think you've been running bad? Let me tell you about what happened to me a few days ago in the $1500 event," I said. And we ended up trading a few stories-you know how it goes with poker players. I'm not sure we ever remember the great hands we played and won, but we sure never forget the beats we've taken.
This Guy (you know, the one that always beats me) sitting on my right side had kept on raising, raising my big blind from the small blind. He had a lot of chips, so every time it was passed to him, he raised my big blind without fail. And I just kept throwing away because I never had anything. Finally I got dealt a K-Q. Everybody folded to This Guy, and for the umpteenth time, he raised. I figured I had the best hand by far, so I called to see the flop. I didn't want to see an ace fall, in case he had something like A-6.
I got a really good flop: The board came K-Q-6. He led at the pot with a pretty good-sized bet, and I just moved in with top two pair, you know. This Guy had 6-6 in the hole! Here it looked like I was gonna win a huge pot, and I wound up walking.
"Maybe you should join me over at the Venetian for a change," my buddy said.
"Didn't you just tell me you were getting beat up over there?"
"Well, yeah, but I never give up, you know."
"Neither do I, buddy, neither do I!"
That said, we started the 14-minute trek (that's how much time the porters allow to get to the tournament from the front entrance of the Rio) to the WSOP. I'll let you know how things went for me. Till then, this is TJ signing off from Vegas to the world.