PART 1: The Escape PART 2: The Drift PART 3 (coming soon)
I run into a friend on the first break of the European Poker Tour Main Event. I can't quite recall when I last saw him. Maybe in Deauville last winter? No, must have been earlier. Vegas a year ago? I can't remember. The dates and the places get mixed up in my head. Too many tour stops, too many flights, too many encounters with other poker players. Whenever it was, it's been quite a while.
“How've you been doing?” I ask.
“Pretty good, forty-two thousand or so.”
I hate it when this happens, and it happens almost every time. Whenever I run into someone during a live tournament, they don't answer my genuine question about their life with a normal-person answer, but with a chip count from the tournament. I do it myself sometimes, too. It's hard not to. As a poker player, you're only as good as your latest results, and you start measuring not only your success at your job, but also your whole self-worth, in betting units. It's easy to get sucked into the world of poker, and it's so hard to step out of it occasionally to gain some perspective when your whole life is an endless stream of flops, turns, and rivers.
We catch up a bit, and my friend tells me that he recently moved to London. Living so close to Heathrow makes traveling around the world easier, he says. We discuss the funds the U.S. Department of Justice recently confiscated from thousands of poker players. He's got over $100,000 stuck in the hands of the DOJ. I wonder if he's still seeing the same girl from his native country, but I know it's not a good time to ask. During poker tournaments we do everything we can to close our eyes to the outside world, so we can concentrate on what we do best – play poker. We can talk about real-life things later.
“The tournament will resume in one minute,” the tournament director announces.
“What about you, how have you been doing?” my friend asks.
I could tell him about all the things that have been going great in my life recently; the big scores live and online, taking my first steps towards re-establishing my reputation, coaching other players, Cinnamon. But I know he's not interested in any of that, at least not right now.
“Not so great, only twenty-two. But it's alright, it's a long tournament. I'll see you at the final table.”
There's a saying in poker: you can't win a poker tournament on the first day, you can only lose it. High-stakes tournaments like the EPT take several days to finish. The first day is always more about survival than anything else. If you can get a good head start, nice. But the most important thing is to make it through to day two. I know this better than many of my competitors, since I have busted dozens and dozens of high-stakes tournaments on the first day, often due to impatience, trying to attain too much too soon.
My EPT Barcelona Main Event of 2011 begins as an exercise in self-control and patience. I have a difficult starting table consisting mostly of young pros, the kind of table you rarely have to face in a soft tournament like Barcelona. I lose several annoying pots in the early levels. I'm forced to fold a set of deuces against Javier Dominguez, a Spanish player who represents the PokerStars pro team. In another hand I have ace-king on a board with two more aces, and again have to fold to my opponent's river check-raise. I keep flopping great hands, but somehow my opponents always seem to have even better hands. Or are they outplaying me, making me fold the best hand again and again? That's the most annoying thing about slow and tedious live poker – the second-guessing that comes after every lost pot, when there's no way of knowing what your opponent had. But it's that same curiosity that makes us professionals money, as recreational players often can't help themselves and end up paying off big bets just to find out what their opponents have, even if they're pretty sure they're going to lose at showdown.
I find it hard to find company for the dinner break, since all of my good friends are playing in the second heat tomorrow. I spot a couple of Finnish players, but I'm not going to try to join them. I know who they are. We used to talk, but not anymore. They're from the group that's shunned me out ever since my scandal, and no matter what I've done since, things between us have remained awkward. It's alright, I deserve it. One step at a time.
I run into Vanessa Selbst, arguably the best female player in the world. She's a rare force in a game dominated by men; not only does she hold her own, but with her relentless aggression she instills fear into the minds of her opponents day after day, and she's considered one of the best players on the tour by many. I don't know Vanessa very well, but her friends seem to be playing in the second heat too, so the two of us head for a quiet dinner.
The buffet at the casino is free of charge for tournament participants. Since each and every one of us had to pay 300 euros of rake to the casino just to enter the tournament, I'd say providing us with a buffet is the least they can do. But the food is nice, nicer than on most tour stops, and there's plenty of it.
They say you're supposed to eat light on dinner breaks. The stakes are higher towards the end of the night, and you need to be alert when every hand really matters. If you eat too much, you become saturated and lazy. I've never been one to follow the nutrition guidelines precisely, though. It's already a serious game with a lot on the line. From all the stress my body has to endure during a long, grueling night playing for thousands of euros, the least I can do is provide it with as much food as it wants. Usually, that's a lot, because just a few hours of live poker often makes me feel as exhausted as though I'd run a marathon. I even attack the dessert buffet. It's these simple joys in life that often make you the happiest: good food, a long nap, reading a book in a hammock under a palm tree. No matter how much money I'm playing for, I'll never restrict myself from eating as much food as I feel like eating.
When we bag our chips at the end of the night, I've turned my starting stack of 30,000 chips into 86,400, well above the tournament average. In the end the cards have fallen my way, and I've made a couple of daredevil plays that happened to work out. Sometimes they don't, sometimes they do – it always comes down to the small things. Today I managed to be more alert than I usually am, to pay attention to every detail, and to have just the right mix of patience and willingness to gamble. The result is one of the best starts I've ever had in a tournament like this.
I call Cinnamon from the hotel, from the same bed that we just spent a week sharing. It still smells of her. When she asks how I did, I don't respond with a chip count. I never go too far in depth about how my poker has been going, because I don't want her to get involved. She's a key part of the normal world that keeps me sane whenever the poker world is driving me crazy, and I don't want to blend those two worlds.
“I have a weird feeling that I'll go deep this time,” I tell her. “I haven't felt this way since January and the Helsinki Freezeout.”
I wake up in the middle of the night to nightmares about school. It's the same nightmare I always have, and the happier I am in real life, the more often it haunts my dreams. I'm still an adolescent, stuck in middle or high school, hopelessly far away from what my life will eventually become.
There's a pool of sweat under me, which happens after every one of these nightmares. I get out of bed, drink some water and look out the window, allowing my thoughts to rest on the palm trees bending softly in the light Mediterranean winds.
It's only been two years since I stared at the same view, exhausted, contemplating throwing my sponsor's gear in the dumpster. It was also right here that everything started to go terribly wrong. Barcelona was the first stop on the tour that led to not only the demise of Interpol and end of The Poker Diary Of A Gambling Addict, but also the transformation of an entire community into a blood-thirsty lynch mob, coming after just one person. Me. It was precisely the EPT here in Barcelona, 2009, where I first crossed the line.
I remember feeling the conflict between my fears and dreams back then. I didn't want to give up the dream, I wanted to chase it at all costs, even if it meant risking everything. It's a risk I never should've taken.
To buy The Drift, click here.
“How've you been doing?” I ask.
“Pretty good, forty-two thousand or so.”
I hate it when this happens, and it happens almost every time. Whenever I run into someone during a live tournament, they don't answer my genuine question about their life with a normal-person answer, but with a chip count from the tournament. I do it myself sometimes, too. It's hard not to. As a poker player, you're only as good as your latest results, and you start measuring not only your success at your job, but also your whole self-worth, in betting units. It's easy to get sucked into the world of poker, and it's so hard to step out of it occasionally to gain some perspective when your whole life is an endless stream of flops, turns, and rivers.
We catch up a bit, and my friend tells me that he recently moved to London. Living so close to Heathrow makes traveling around the world easier, he says. We discuss the funds the U.S. Department of Justice recently confiscated from thousands of poker players. He's got over $100,000 stuck in the hands of the DOJ. I wonder if he's still seeing the same girl from his native country, but I know it's not a good time to ask. During poker tournaments we do everything we can to close our eyes to the outside world, so we can concentrate on what we do best – play poker. We can talk about real-life things later.
“The tournament will resume in one minute,” the tournament director announces.
“What about you, how have you been doing?” my friend asks.
I could tell him about all the things that have been going great in my life recently; the big scores live and online, taking my first steps towards re-establishing my reputation, coaching other players, Cinnamon. But I know he's not interested in any of that, at least not right now.
“Not so great, only twenty-two. But it's alright, it's a long tournament. I'll see you at the final table.”
There's a saying in poker: you can't win a poker tournament on the first day, you can only lose it. High-stakes tournaments like the EPT take several days to finish. The first day is always more about survival than anything else. If you can get a good head start, nice. But the most important thing is to make it through to day two. I know this better than many of my competitors, since I have busted dozens and dozens of high-stakes tournaments on the first day, often due to impatience, trying to attain too much too soon.
My EPT Barcelona Main Event of 2011 begins as an exercise in self-control and patience. I have a difficult starting table consisting mostly of young pros, the kind of table you rarely have to face in a soft tournament like Barcelona. I lose several annoying pots in the early levels. I'm forced to fold a set of deuces against Javier Dominguez, a Spanish player who represents the PokerStars pro team. In another hand I have ace-king on a board with two more aces, and again have to fold to my opponent's river check-raise. I keep flopping great hands, but somehow my opponents always seem to have even better hands. Or are they outplaying me, making me fold the best hand again and again? That's the most annoying thing about slow and tedious live poker – the second-guessing that comes after every lost pot, when there's no way of knowing what your opponent had. But it's that same curiosity that makes us professionals money, as recreational players often can't help themselves and end up paying off big bets just to find out what their opponents have, even if they're pretty sure they're going to lose at showdown.
I find it hard to find company for the dinner break, since all of my good friends are playing in the second heat tomorrow. I spot a couple of Finnish players, but I'm not going to try to join them. I know who they are. We used to talk, but not anymore. They're from the group that's shunned me out ever since my scandal, and no matter what I've done since, things between us have remained awkward. It's alright, I deserve it. One step at a time.
I run into Vanessa Selbst, arguably the best female player in the world. She's a rare force in a game dominated by men; not only does she hold her own, but with her relentless aggression she instills fear into the minds of her opponents day after day, and she's considered one of the best players on the tour by many. I don't know Vanessa very well, but her friends seem to be playing in the second heat too, so the two of us head for a quiet dinner.
The buffet at the casino is free of charge for tournament participants. Since each and every one of us had to pay 300 euros of rake to the casino just to enter the tournament, I'd say providing us with a buffet is the least they can do. But the food is nice, nicer than on most tour stops, and there's plenty of it.
They say you're supposed to eat light on dinner breaks. The stakes are higher towards the end of the night, and you need to be alert when every hand really matters. If you eat too much, you become saturated and lazy. I've never been one to follow the nutrition guidelines precisely, though. It's already a serious game with a lot on the line. From all the stress my body has to endure during a long, grueling night playing for thousands of euros, the least I can do is provide it with as much food as it wants. Usually, that's a lot, because just a few hours of live poker often makes me feel as exhausted as though I'd run a marathon. I even attack the dessert buffet. It's these simple joys in life that often make you the happiest: good food, a long nap, reading a book in a hammock under a palm tree. No matter how much money I'm playing for, I'll never restrict myself from eating as much food as I feel like eating.
When we bag our chips at the end of the night, I've turned my starting stack of 30,000 chips into 86,400, well above the tournament average. In the end the cards have fallen my way, and I've made a couple of daredevil plays that happened to work out. Sometimes they don't, sometimes they do – it always comes down to the small things. Today I managed to be more alert than I usually am, to pay attention to every detail, and to have just the right mix of patience and willingness to gamble. The result is one of the best starts I've ever had in a tournament like this.
I call Cinnamon from the hotel, from the same bed that we just spent a week sharing. It still smells of her. When she asks how I did, I don't respond with a chip count. I never go too far in depth about how my poker has been going, because I don't want her to get involved. She's a key part of the normal world that keeps me sane whenever the poker world is driving me crazy, and I don't want to blend those two worlds.
“I have a weird feeling that I'll go deep this time,” I tell her. “I haven't felt this way since January and the Helsinki Freezeout.”
I wake up in the middle of the night to nightmares about school. It's the same nightmare I always have, and the happier I am in real life, the more often it haunts my dreams. I'm still an adolescent, stuck in middle or high school, hopelessly far away from what my life will eventually become.
There's a pool of sweat under me, which happens after every one of these nightmares. I get out of bed, drink some water and look out the window, allowing my thoughts to rest on the palm trees bending softly in the light Mediterranean winds.
It's only been two years since I stared at the same view, exhausted, contemplating throwing my sponsor's gear in the dumpster. It was also right here that everything started to go terribly wrong. Barcelona was the first stop on the tour that led to not only the demise of Interpol and end of The Poker Diary Of A Gambling Addict, but also the transformation of an entire community into a blood-thirsty lynch mob, coming after just one person. Me. It was precisely the EPT here in Barcelona, 2009, where I first crossed the line.
I remember feeling the conflict between my fears and dreams back then. I didn't want to give up the dream, I wanted to chase it at all costs, even if it meant risking everything. It's a risk I never should've taken.
To buy The Drift, click here.