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Phil Laak

Poker is reaching the zenith of insanity.You may have noticed. Sometimes when I play the side games (no limit $20-$40 and $25-$50 mostly), the action gets to the point where I don’t believe my eyes. But never mind that. How about this new craze: giving money away? That’s right. The WPT is giving away a half million dollars five times a year in free roll tournaments. (Yup, a cool 2.5 million up for grabs this year!)

I am here at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles for the World Poker Tour’s second $500,000 give away. The first one was in Foxwoods which, brutally, I had to miss. First things first. Roughly, what is this seat worth? Well, with 180 entrants in the event, a seat is worth about $2777. Tidy. Now the hard part: cashing in on it.

I took my seat and was like… huh? Where’s the action? I am so used to having visible edge when I gamble that I was in uncharted water here. I have always been of the opinion that gambling is supposed to be fun and easy, and I know I’m spoiled, but let’s face it: having a guy play like a donkey at the table is just plain better than not.

All the players at my table were either competent or highly competent. Hmmmm. When is that table change? Directly across from me were Stan Goldstein, Thomas Keller and then Jeff Schulman. Even though this event was a bit faster than a 10k event, it still felt like there would be time to squeeze till the antes kicked in. Ahhhh, the antes. Antes are great, as I am justified in playing more hands. The junky in me would rather play than fold.

By the time antes arrived, flags were popping up left and right, “All In”, “All In”. About two hours deep and it seemed there was an ‘all in’ every few minutes or so! I was no different. I kept drifting down to about 10 or so times the big blind. I think I held that dealer flag 6 or 7 times. I would lunge with something like A-T of spades and someone would wake up with A-Q of diamonds (that one was Susie Isaacs). Of course, I would suck out.

I started to feel like Jeff Bridges in Fearless, as every hand I had would meet a stronger hand (J-J meets Stan’s K-K). Of course, I would muster up a win - runner runner straight that time. But in spite of it all I never once cracked the original starting chip amount.

My final moment felt like I had built a stupid hole. With a table move (and about 15 times the big blind) I found hand after hand and decided that, with my reputation as a sometimes partially sick one, I might be able to suck in a caller on some very sweet hands. A-K, A-K, 10-10 - they must have come all within 15 hands. Not one caller. I failed to adjust to the current table image I was giving off and so when I went all in against Barry Schulman’s button raise with A-9, I kinda got a bit of justice when his A-T held up and it was down to the cash games for ol’ Philly Boy. This $500,000 freeroll was not in the cards for me.

The cash games are an intimate part of my tournament experience. In fact, I consider myself more of a money game junky than anything else. The bread and butter games at the Bellagio (LV), Commerce (LA), and Lucky Chances (SF) are my oxygen. When I plunk down 10k for one of these ‘positive expectation lotteries’ (a.k.a tournaments) I pull out the ol’ Irish work ethic and do my best to get my entry fee out of the money games either right before or right after the event. The action seems to be at max bubble mania at these times. With all the tourneys nowadays you are guaranteed a heavy crowd of gamblers all trying to get unstuck.

The games at Commerce are superduper crazy-good for the month of February, but sadly this was an ultra hectic month for me and I was not able to be the degenerate that I would have liked to be. Gus Hansen, Antonio Esfandiari, Andy Bloch and I finished making a poker instructional video and I took it upon myself to get involved in the marketing (BeAllIn.com). Also E! has a new show called Hollywood Holdem and as the dealer/ host on the show I was off in T.V. Land instead of the regular Gamble Land .

Regardless of the action downstairs, I was not going to miss the final event. I love it. There were 538 players all coming up with 10k. That never ceases to amaze me. I get to my table and there were no ultra wizards - a few competent winning players, but no complete wizards… Ok, nice. When our table break went down I was moved to a very lively table. We had the infamous Dr. Chuck Pacheco, Gabe Kaplan, and Piano Dave to name a few. And the antes had kicked in. I was in gamble heaven.

Sometimes strange things happen and you wonder if you are experiencing a Jungian synchronistic moment. Dinner break arrived, and with mayhem and chaos afoot, I opted for a little drive to a nearby
Mexican food joint. Ordered my carne asada torta, dropped a quarter in a random Galaga video game at the counter and, whilst waiting for the food, I proceeded to wreak video prowl like no other. I could not die. ‘What? More shooting bees?’ Dodge, weave, dodge, shoot. Next challenging stage. 40 out of 40. No sweat. This was stuff I didn’t even muster back in the day when I played the game. 30 minutes later and four ships on hand. Looks like it is time to step away. So eat I did. And there I was eating my sandwich pretty sure that this was an omen.

It was. First hand back from the dinner break and voila, two red aces. Poor ol’ Piano Dave picked up two kings and, my oh my, I started to surf the Wa. What is this? Tracy Phan flopped a full house? No problem. Runner runner 9-9 and I have a higher full house. By the time I had been moved to a new table I was dodging real hands with my steals and had surfed my way up to 28k or so. The fateful moment came when I flopped a flush and the finance guru Babak Razi had done the same. Only thing was he out notched me.

Funny thing how a tourney goes. There are so many times you are just cruising along, seeing the path, when whump! Some hand comes along and that is the end of you. So downstairs I went. And 14 hours later I was back to even. Unstuck. The life of a gambler.

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