DOYLISM OF THE DAY: "Feed your courage and your fears will starve to death."

DOYLISM OF THE DAY: "Feed your courage and your fears will starve to death."

Torture…day after day. What the King of England did to William Wallace in Braveheart pales in comparison to me in the past month. I was the bubble boy again in the $10,000 Omaha 8 or better tournament. I was the chip leader with 250k with only 40 players left and didn't make the money, which was the final 27 players. A player made an inside straight the last card with all the money in the pot. What made it so bad to go out in the 28th position is that I had several bets, totaling almost 200k, that I would make the money. I didn't lose because they had to make the money and none of them did.

In retrospect, I can see I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier because all I had to do was sit there until one player busted out, but what the heck, I was trying to win the tournament.

Today, summer officially begins and this is the longest day of the year. I'm taking a couple days off from poker, tournaments, and cash games. I'm going to regroup and get ready for the 50k HORSE tournament on Wednesday. If I don't do well in that, I'll be greatly disappointed. For the life of me, I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong at the poker table. Losing 5 sessions in a row at the cash game tells me I'm not playing the way I should. I know it's going to turn around.

I'm going to finish my top 5 poker players that I've seen abusing dealers. The only living player to make my list is Sammy Farha. He is unbelievable at times. He talks softly but is very abusive with his language. Puggy Pearson is also on my list. I remember at the old Dunes card room, he got into a fight with a lady dealer name Kim. When a male dealer jumped in to hold Pug back, Kim took off her high heel shoe and was beating Puggy on the head. We laughed about that for years. "Shoeshine" Nick Simpson was another player who berated dealers constantly. He once urinated under the table on an unsuspecting dealer. My last player was "Nigger Nate" Lanette. I'm not being racist, that is what everyone called him. He once bit a dealer's ear off at the Stardust. He came back the next day and gave the poor guy $5,000. That was a lot of money in those days. This list is too controversial to continue so I'm not going any further. I am going to mention Johnny Chan who used to be bad with dealers but has reformed over the past few years.

Way to go John!

-DB