WPT Boot Camp - Day Four

WPT Boot Camp Battle for the Season Pass III

David’s Journal

December 3rd – Day 4.

Suite 3124 – The following takes place between 6.15am and 8.15am.

I can’t sleep but not because my relaxation consultant is snoring like a slumbering dragon. (Just in case, I had boned up on snoring busting techniques before departure and was very tempted to try the following: forget all the nice methods about moving the person onto his side, simply open your cakehole and bellow ‘FIRE!!!!!!’, then hastily pretend to be fast asleep. The person abruptly wakes up, unsure of his position on the temporal plane and, as he slowly re-establishes a sense of being, you catch a few Zzzzzs.) Nor is it because of tension about the start of the tournament later today. No, it is because of the agony caused by a pair of severely sun-burned shinbones. I had stupidly neglected to cover them whilst enjoying a few pool-side beers yesterday and now they are inflamed.

At 8.05am, I make my first attempt to stand as I need to use the bathroom. I freeze. Now, to add to the physical pain, I have the indignity of enforced immobility and a sagging bladder. I experience a terrifying vision: I am in one of those cages the prison authorities use to transport Hannibal Lecter, it is wheeled to the tournament’s final table and I am wearing nappies.

My relaxation consultant generously agrees to operate outside his job title and goes to fetch some emergency supplies.

Suite 3124 - 9.25am.

I can now walk, albeit in a fashion akin to C-3PO during a three week castor oil strike. My legs are plastered with after-sun and I have downed some pills that are probably used to tranquilise undersexed bulls.

WPT Learning Labs – 12.25pm.

I sit down at a table hosted by ‘First Lady of Poker’, WPT TV commentator and ex-postal worker Linda Johnson. She has taken the dealer seat and all of the ‘players’ are allocated some fake chips. She deals everyone two cards and asks them to ‘play’ their hand – i.e. decide to call, raise or fold. After everyone makes their decisions, we flip the cards and Linda analyses our choices. It is all fairly basic stuff but I am intrigued by the looseness of some of the players. I start to think that the boot camp is a kind of rehab centre from which the fish emerge as sharks.

WPT – Battle for the Season Pass III Tournament – Main Event – 2.25pm

The queue for seat allocation weaved its way around the casino but, after standing nut to butt with some other male recruits, I have now placed certain parts of my anatomy on seat 4, table 17. We have been allocated our chips and, as we await the call of ‘Shuffle Up and Deal’, I try to assess my opponents. I quickly stereotype them. It saves time. Some look like they could be reasonably charitable while others do not appear to need any assistance from the Red Cross food program.

On every table, a WPT pro has been granted the best speck (seat 6) and it has been rigged so they are kept apart in the early stages. Our table has been graced by veteran TJ Cloutier - tall, imposing and talkative. I resent that he will have position on me and it increases my gastric unease. To quell my nerves, I had decided that I would mentally recite songs. So, as I go through Jump Around by House of Pain, the MC clears his throat and orders us into combat.

WPT – Battle for the Season Pass III Tournament – Main Event – 4.30pm – First break.

I am gathered with the other members of Team Eurolinx and discover I have the small stack. Lydia Melton has amassed an impressive 28,000 but Magnus Wenhof flies the flag with 33,000. Our online qualifiers are not present for the half time team talk but we learn they are hovering around the 22k mark.

I have a little short of 18k. The tournament’s first two hours have seen me play four hands: a blind steal, a pair of 66s (flat called from early position, missed the flop), a raise with AQ (no callers) and an intriguing situation that involved AJ.

It arrived when I was first to act from mid-position and had been folding hands for about forty minutes. The blinds were 50-100 and so I made the standard raise of 300. The action was folded to an American guy in seat 9 who, to my jaded eyes, looked so young that if he was in the Dominican Republic on his own, it was probably because all of his associates were grounded.

He had the temerity to re-raise me.

He had been folding to raises from the other yahoos and blowhards at the table but he decided to re-raise me to 950. It was just unacceptable. I used techniques of metaphysical exploration to try to stare into his soul but my search engine returned with: Error – Character Not Found: Access Denied.

I had to fold. AJ does not play well out of position, particularly to a re-raise from a tight Johnny-come-lately. The hand stayed in my mind, particularly as, two hands later, he was moved to another table and then, after another twenty minutes, I saw him ambling out of the tournament, typing a text message. Ouch. Did I miss an opportunity to double up? I’ll never know; but I do know I didn’t want the uncertainty to play on my mind so I speculated about his text message:

i hv AK, sm gy hs AT + sez cll. T on the flp. Im out :( btw pls cloe i stl h8 hr + snd mre Rtln. Gtg dad clng :(

WPT – Battle for the Season Pass III Tournament – Main Event – 7.45pm – Close of the first day.

It has been an eventful three hours for team Eurolinx.

Unfortunately, we have just had our first casualty as the online qualifier Ole Brodin busted out on the very last hand of the day. Although it is arguably better than departing early on the second day because he can now enjoy time off, Ole was understandably disappointed. Rick Fuller had earlier told Ole that his comments in the learning labs were ‘excellent’ and the latter had played a solid tournament. He’ll have to console himself with the cash games and the second chance tournament.

Jeff Lamont, a Canadian online qualifier, lives to fight on, as does fellow Eurolinx stealth master Orjan Knutsen, whose cloak of invisibility has proved to be an asset at the tables.

Although I am in an ecstatic mood, I am still behind Eurolinx trailblazers Lydia Melton and Magnus Wennlof by some margin as they have amassed 57, 000 and 72,000 respectively, but it is not the time for me to feel jealous. I have just had the hand of the day at my table.

Soon after the lunch break, I was moved to table four, seat three. It was the usual medley of poker characters: the guy to my left had found God, the man on my right had found aces. The WPT pro was Las Vegas legend Jan Fisher. It was a tough table and no one gave anything away.

I had been folding trash hands all afternoon and was down to 15k when I was dealt 99 under the gun. It is my favourite hand. I didn’t want to face a re-raise out of position, so I limped in. A player to my left followed suit and then Jan Fisher made it 1k to play. Everyone knows the rule about flat calling a raise with pockets, right? If the bet is 5-10% of your stack, call; higher than 15%, fold. I called and so did the player to my left.

The flop landed J-9-9.

Baby.

Normally, my resting heartbeat is about 70. It had now reached about 125.

‘Check.’

‘Check.’

Jan Fisher put in 1,000. It was just under a third of the pot and it meant that she had hit but was scared of the nines.

I needed to maintain my composure so I started the song ‘Fluorescent Adolescent by British indie band The Arctic Monkeys in my head.

‘Call’.

The player to my left looked at his cards. It is always a sign of weakness. He gave it some thought. I knew he had hit the jack but it looked like he didn’t fancy his chances against the nines, probably because he had a weak kicker. He folded.

The turn card was another J.

‘Check’.

‘Check’.

Jan was trying to trap me and I put her on AJ – a decent enough hand to raise on, worthy of 1k bet on the flop and now the higher full house.

The final card was sent from heaven: an ace.

‘I Bet 3,000’.

Jan stared at me for about a minute in an attempt to persuade me that her imminent re-raise would be because she thought I was bluffing and not because she had the nut full house.

Sweet music or, as The Arctic Monkeys put it, ‘the best you ever had is just a memory......’

‘I’ll take it to 9’, she said.

I nearly said ‘that Bloody Mary lacking in Tabasco.....’. Eventually I managed ‘all-in’.

She swiftly called.

The moment when I said ‘Four nines’ is now a flashbulb memory. Jan shoved her cards into the muck. I still do not know for certain what they were but it had to be AJ. The symmetry was perfect as it probably was the very hand I had folded to the high school dropout, but it doesn’t really matter. The hand impressed the table and had people on their feet. It was time for back-slapping.

It is probably a statement of questionable morality to say I had a spiritual moment in a casino but I don’t really care. As I hobbled out, I saw a beautiful female American tourist and, at that point I knew in my soul that God did indeed create everything, including the individual that had surgically augmented those blessed breasts.