My Biggest Loss

Up until the past two years, I focused a ton of my energy and time on playing in side games. It didn't matter whether I was winning a lot of tournaments or not, I always put a lot of effort into these games. When you are winning in $400-$800 side games, you can sure pay the bills in a hurry. Winning $100,000 in a week isn't hard to do when things are going well. Of course, things haven't always gone well in big side games for me. One time, I was in L.A. at The Bicycle Casino and was playing in a no-limit deuce-to-seven side game with Doyle Brunson, Freddy Deeb, Johnny Chan, Steve Flicker, and a bunch of other great players, and experienced my biggest loss ever. This was a pretty big game, with antes of $200 a man and the blinds at $400-$800. Usually, we opened the pot for around $3,000, and someone often raised the opening bet and made it $10,000 to go. So, lots of pots were $10,000 to go before we even drew cards! I'm sure I was on tilt (it was a very bad time to be on tilt) before I decided to go back to my hotel room and regroup.

After a little meditation and rest, I came back into the game feeling great, which was good, because I was already a $50,000 loser. Immediately after I arrived, the following hand came up between Doyle Brunson and me. Steve Flicker opened the pot for $4,000, Doyle called, two other people called, and Freddy Deeb called from the small blind. I looked down at 4-5-6-7-10 in the big blind, and pondered my decision. I probably had the best hand at this point, especially if Steve was drawing, because anyone else who had a pat (already made) hand would have raised Steve's opening bet. Therefore, I decided to raise the pot to $16,000. Steve contemplated for a long time and then folded, but Doyle announced, "I'm all in for $43,000 total." Everyone quickly folded, and now I was staring the best poker player in the world right in the eyes. It would cost me $27,000 more to call Doyle with my pat 10, and I certainly couldn't draw a card to my 4-5-6-7. Was my pat 10 good or not? Fortunately for me, I had played with Doyle the day before, and had made a similar raise with nothing (I guess I was on tilt that day, as well), so I assumed that Doyle thought I had nothing. I decided to call his raise and stand pat on my 10. Doyle then drew one card, and, luckily, he couldn't beat my hand.

Wait a minute, isn't this supposed to be an article about my biggest loss ever? Don't worry, even though I did manage to win that one big pot, I proceeded to tilt off about $75,000 of my money, and yes, Doyle got most of it.

After playing all night long, the following hand came up against Freddy Deeb, who was now playing me heads up. Freddy opened for $3,200 and I looked at 2-3-6-7. At this point, I decided that I would make my move before I looked at the last card, in order to confuse Freddy's read of me. If my last card was a 4 or a 5, I would have one of the best possible hands, and I didn't want to give off too much strength. So, I simply decided to move all in for the $25,000 I had lying in front of me. Freddy decided to call and it was my turn to act, so I quickly looked back at the last card, and it was a 9. Yippee! A pat 9 is a very strong hand in deuce-to-seven. I rapped pat (I didn't draw a card), and then Freddy studied for a minute before drawing one card. I knew that I was at least a 2-to-1 favorite over any draw that Freddy had, so I was feeling pretty good at this point. Freddy asked, "Do you want to make a save?" This means, let's split some of the money in the pot at the appropriate odds, but I decided that if he beat this hand, I would take my $105,000 loss and go get some sleep. Freddy took a long time to look at his last card, which was 100 percent appropriate. I would have taken a long time myself to "sweat out" a $50,000 card. Freddy made an 8 to break me, and I stared in disbelief at his hand before realizing that it was over; I was done playing. I had lost $105,000! Finally, I thought, "Oh well, there will be another better day coming soon!" Freddy said, "Phil, you really played that hand well." I never did tell Freddy that I had raised my last $22,000 in the dark!

I hope that you enjoyed this "Hand of the Week." Good luck playing your hands this week.