There’s an article I’ve been meaning to write for years now. Sadly, this isn’t it.
This isn’t it because yesterday, again, I failed to get the monkey off my back. I STILL do not have a recorded cash in a poker tournament.
Yesterday, the tournament in question was the $600 TORSE side event at the 2024 WPT World Championship festival. Look how happy this guy was just to have the chance to play in a poker tournament!
It’s not as if I was the first one out. It’s not as though I got lost somewhere in the middle of the pack. It’s not as though I didn’t try. It’s not as though I didn’t have the typical ups and downs that every player has during a tournament.
I actually had some chips to work with this time; something that I’ve never really had in my last 10-12 tournaments or so. And by 10-12 tournaments I mean 10-12 years.
YEARS?! What do you mean “years”, Robbie?
Well, as I’ve written many times in these pages, I only typically get to play 1-2 tournaments a year. Life is busy. I live in a country where there are no poker rooms or casinos. Poker works trips are busy (gotta prioritize, yo!) and I can’t devote much time to playing in tournaments. So, yeah; years.
While I’ve known this intellectually for some time now, I’ve really come to appreciate lately how so much of tournament poker success can be boiled down to volume. The fact of the matter is that I don’t have enough of a sample size to be meaningful. Not sure if I ever will, either. But “ever” is a long time, so who knows.
I hear players telling me (and the world, on Twitter) about how they’ve busted 5-6 bullets on a single tournament. Of how they’re 0-for-16 on the series. That’s not me. I don’t have that seemingly endless supply of bullets that all the pros and grinders do. I don’t even know where the ammunition store is!
There were 211 entries in the $600 TORSE tournament yesterday at Wynn Las Vegas. To everyone else (at least in my mind), it was “just another poker tournament”. To me, it might as well have been the $10K WPT World Championship itself. It was one of the primary things I was looking forward to on this trip.
Basically, it meant a lot to me.
Look at me, all full of joy and hope. Before the first hand gets dealt, ANYTHING could happen. Today, it could be me! Oh, how deeply I’d cherish a winner’s photo and a Wynn trophy. OMG and that prize money… while it wouldn’t be “life changing”, it would, genuinely change my poker life, catapulting my humble bankroll to the next level.
That’s why almost every time I’ve played in a tournament over the last few years, I’ve written about it. Because they’re so rare for me, each one is special (even though I’ve “failed spectacularly”). Each one could be THE ONE. Where I finally break through. Where I finally “prove to the world” what I already know: I AM good enough. I CAN play this game well. I can play LOTS of poker games well. Very, very well. I know it! But there’s no HendonMob proof; so how could I possibly have any meaningful poker skill, right? RIGHT?!
Ari Engel – you know, the legendary tournament crusher with nearly 700 lifetime cashes, 4 bracelets, 18 rings, and for whom the danger in citing those statistics in an article is that by the time you publish they might be out of date? – was playing in the $600 TORSE tournament as well. We spoke a few times on the breaks. We’ve known each other for many years and are good friends both on and off the felt.
Ari had a pretty good “read” on me; that is to say, he knew just how much this tournament meant. Kindly, he asked me how it was going. Because he’s a good friend I didn’t have to mask my emotions, so I let my guard down as I relayed what the tournament’s rollercoaster ride felt like. About how while I knew intellectually what to expect, and that precisely that was happening, and yet I couldn’t help but also be emotional about the experience. Ari got it. He understood. He was all class. He’s heard all of this stuff before from a million people and has gone through it himself a million times (OK, maybe about 6,500-7,000 according to his rough estimate, but you know what I mean).
And when I finally shut up and in turn asked him how his tournament was going, I got the expected answer: “just another day at the office” 🙂 . Oh to be so calm and relaxed! What I wouldn’t pay to have those nerves of steel!
I outlasted Ari, by the way. Take that, HendonMob!
I also outlasted 2014 $10K WSOP HORSE champion Chris Wallace. I outlasted mixed game pros Allen Kessler and Kathy Chang, the latter of whom was sitting at my table for about six hours. I also think I outlasted all the “Mikes” — seriously, almost every new player who filled a seat at our table when one opened was named “Mike”, lol — and I was still around when all the, erm, Mikes had dropped.
Playing @WPT @WynnPoker TORSE with @cardplayerlife at my table. GL @tjreidpoker in your event. pic.twitter.com/ecsyQMv2FQ
— Kathy Chang (@changrd) December 16, 2024
All of that isn’t to throw shade at those supremely accomplished pros. Who am I to throw shade?! Hell, who wouldn’t admire and be appreciative of how hard they’ve worked for decades to earn their millions in combined winnings and collective assortment of poker trophies and jewelry? But the fact is that I still had chips in the tournament when they were long gone.
Of those 211 entries, 27 places cashed. The mincash was $1,255 — a little over double the buy-in. Top prize was a shade under $27,000. I played in the $600 TORSE tournament for 9.5 hours. I made it all the way to level 17, past the fourth break — the furthest I’ve ever made it in a poker tournament.
And then it was over.
With Ad7d | Td I got my 1.5BB remaining worth of chips in on third street and couldn’t manage to overcome my opponent’s KhKs | 8c in my final Stud 8 or Better hand on the runout. There’s no record of it, of course, but I finished in 36th place; it might as well have been the bubble, for in that moment it felt just as deflating.
While I had had decent chips stack earlier on in the tournament, ever escalating blinds and lack of playable hands or hitting draws eventually meant I had to play in survival mode for a good, long while. While it’s an invigorating challenge, it isn’t much fun playing in survival mode for 1.5 hours, knowing that one wrong move could be your last. But I did survive… until I didn’t. And despite making no wrong moves (while in survival mode), I have “nothing to show for it”, except this article, I suppose.
Conclusion
So, that article is going to have to wait a little (or a lot?) longer. I’ll be back in Las Vegas in February. Maybe I’ll have time to play a tournament again then. Maybe I’ll finally make it into the money. Maybe I’ll finally get that monkey off my back, and that notion of “Robbie is incapable of cashing in a poker tournament” out of my head.
Oh, what a day that will finally be, if and when it ever happens.
Ah, and that article. That glorious wonderful article.
I promise, if that ever sees the light of day, you’re going to want to read that one.
About The Author
