The Journey

I’m standing outside the Rio Convention center, enjoying the crisp morning air. I have a half hour before the $2500 Freezout starts.

I call my wife, and she sounds hesitant. Am I doing ok, after yet another day of losing?

I’m perplexed. I actually think I’m doing well. I have six cashes so far and making some deep runs. My last cash was only three days ago.

And with these fields of thousands, I would expect to have far more early days than late nights. The empty seats in the Pavilion at the end of the day, a sea of gravestones for the fallen.

This is the math of tournament poker. Statistically, it might take years for me to make a final table. There is always only one winner. There are a handful of people at the top of the All Time Money List who've never won a bracelet. Earlier this year, Daniel Negreanu at #3 won his first tournament in eight years of full-time play.

There may be no storybook ending for me on this trip. No picture of me sitting in front of a mountain of cash, hoisting gold into the air, my toothy grin.

Besides, it's still early. I’ve only fired 25 entries so far. That's right in line with a typical Sunday online session for me back home. It just goes more quickly when I'm multi-tabling 6-8 tables on a widescreen monitor. The software shuffling decks in an instant, 15 second shot clocks binding players to make quick decisions.

More importantly, I remind her, I love the game, the grind. Taking the journey is enough for me.

We talk about our early days, when I realized I couldn’t work a 9-to-5. How I was suffocated by the idea of a steady paycheck and a gold watch. How I went the other way, and sweat and scraped and failed and failed and never knew if there would be a payout in the end.

I’m preaching to the choir of course. She’s heard the speeches before.

It’s time to go. We say our goodbyes and I take my seat at the felt.

My table isn’t an easy one. I battle in 3-bet pots with Joseph Herbert, the runner up from the 2020 Main Event. I trade chips with Faraz Jaka, former WPT Player of the Year who’s sitting two to my left. He’s sporting a mohawk, in line with his image of being a wild and unpredictable player.

The only easy target is a dapper Italian to my left, who has an assortment of lotions in front of him, applying them to his face and hands frequently. It seems this is his first tournament. Each time the blinds roll around to him, I have to patiently remind him it’s his turn, and how much he has to put in. He seems confused when he counts out his chips.

A few hours in, he’s on the button. The river has paired the board, and flush and straight possibilities abound. The pot is massive, and it’s checked to him on the button. He makes a big bet, and his opponent tanks. It’s clear she has a big hand, but she finds the fold. The Italian has only played his hands in a straightforward way. Everyone at the table knew he must have had a better hand, the fold clearly a better play.

As the chips are moved toward him, the Italian peeks at his cards a final time, held high enough that I can see them clearly. He only has king high. I stare at him in shock, wondering how much of his visage is an act. Even the fish will bite the sharks.

For my part, my stack grows and dips, and by dinner break I have not much more than a starting stack. When I return, the Italian has been replaced by Brock Wilson, a recent fixture on the super high roller scene.

From the small blind, I 3-bet jam a cutoff open with AJo. Brock pretends to study me before he puts his 22bb stack into the middle with pocket queens. I catch a jack and a flush draw on the turn for a bit of a sweat, but the river is a blank. I have a single yellow 1k chip left, and a few hands later I move it all-in with exaggerated motions. My pocket sixes don’t hold up.

It’s 7:30pm, which is too late to register any other tournaments, but too early for me to go to bed. I decide to head to the Strip to play craps for the first time this month.

The table is cold, and I lose a buy-in before I get my first drink order in. I make a rebuy. And then another.

Unlike poker, the house has an edge that's written in stone. I can’t win in the long run. But I can reduce their edge to a fraction of a percent with optimal play. Add in the free drinks and rooms, and my losses over time is comparable to any other night of entertainment. I just need a bankroll and a mindset that can handle the variance.

It’s my turn to roll, and I go on a heater. I befriend the people next to me, in town for a fintech convention. There are shouts and smiles and fist bumps over the next couple hours. Points hit, hard ways roll, and bonuses pay out.

I need to be at the Rio in ten hours so I stack the towers of black and green chips on the table for a color up. I toss a tip to the dealer, and say my goodbyes. The yellow chips clack in my pocket as I saunter away.

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Times I heard Salt-N-Pepa music playing in the halls of the Rio: 2