Welcome to 'The House of Pain'

"Welcome," I said, picking up and answering a Wednesday, May 21, 2003, telephone call I knew to be from my sister, "to The House of Pain."

If that phrase sounds familiar, it's because about 25 years ago, Houston Oilers fans used to hold up signs bearing that warning in their home stadium, the Astrodome, in a modest effort to intimidate visiting teams. The PA announcer used to do a nice evil Vincent Price kind of job saying it, too.

My own usage stems from the mood I held for about 24 hours, starting about 10 minutes from the end of the second day of the 2003 World Series of Poker.

Before then, I would have called my six weeks at this year's WSOP my "10-minute time," because that span of time kept popping up in odd ways throughout the six weeks.

It all started literally 10 minutes before I was to jump into my car and head from Hollywood to Las Vegas: My lower back went out on me, badly, for the first time in eight years. That's why I wound up covering fewer events for casino.com and Card Player than I usually do, and why instead of playing in every no-limit hold'em event, as I had planned, I played only in the "Big One."

I wouldn't have even played in the Big One, but about three days before it began, my back finally started loosening up, and I felt pretty good. With two supersatellites as my only warm-up (literally the only poker I had played in two months), I bought in to the record-breaking 839-player field.

Precisely 10 minutes before the Big One was to begin ("10-minute time," remember), someone came racing out of the Binion's Horseshoe gift shop, on what sort of speedy mission I cannot imagine, and I had to jump to get out of his way. I jumped awkwardly, and when I landed, The House of Pain had returned. I played the first day in a mixture of agony and pain medication.

I don't consider the pain meds an excuse for a horrible play I made against Patti Beadles about five hours into Day One. With the blinds at $75-$150 (I may be fuzzy about the details, but will be close enough for you to get the general idea), I found two tens and made it either $600 or $700 to go.

Patti, sitting immediately on my left, made it about $2,000. She'd been at my table for only about an hour, replacing a nice fellow whose play had been spectacularly transparent to everyone (all you had to do was check the flop: he'd bluff, and then fold to a raise, although occasionally he would call and then repeat the pattern on the turn), and whose chips had lasted even longer than they had figured to.

If I'd known Patti was in "ultratight" mode, I might have thrown the hand away then and there, but I called, and we looked at a flop of something like 8-5-2 rainbow, and for no good reason I found my mouth saying, "I'm all in" (for my remaining $12,500), when instead my hands should have been pushing about $3,000 forward.

That would have been enough to push a sensible player with overcards out of the pot. I certainly can't check-fold: A check looks too much like I have A-K or A-Q and have given up. Three grand was the right bet. It's a sizeable amount at that stage. If I get raised, I can just throw the hand away. If I bet all of my chips and get called, I'm losing.

Bet them all I did, and losing I was: Patti had two kings. When a 10 hit the river, we both were stunned. I suddenly had almost 30K when I should have been out, and Patti had about 8K left when she should have been in good shape. Maybe poker shouldn't be my game. Like everyone, I feel horrible when someone sucks out like that on me, but unlike everyone, I feel almost as bad for my opponent when I do it to him/her.

Usually I don't do much sucking out, because my style usually has me getting the money in with the best hand, but I thought Patti's unfortunate crippling deserved acknowledgment. She played it right, I played it wrong. I got the chips, and she was left in a tough position. Such is poker, but Patti took it with more grace than probably 99 percent of the players I know.

I instantly recognized the play for the bad move it had been, and it snapped me back into shape. Playing small-bet poker – and never, I believe, moving all in the rest of the day, unless I had the stone-cold nuts – I finished Day One about 50 percent over par, with about $32,000.

I had been in agony all day, though, so that night I took enough drugs to start a clinic, and they worked. The next morning I didn't have to take a thing, and I felt pretty good during the tournament's first two hours.

Then, "10 minutes" into the second level, some idiot who was built like a short linebacker and who was running as fast as a good halfback came flying down the aisle behind me. I was seated, but I had leaned back slightly in my chair and he collided with me hard enough to almost knock me from the chair (I'm 6 feet 3 inches tall, 235 pounds).

Perhaps even worse, he never paused, and never turned around to say he was sorry or indeed to say anything. He just kept running because, god forbid, he might miss looking at one hand. My back pain didn't just return, it went to new and nuclear levels. I hope he got to the table in time to pick up the hand and lost a bundle on it.

Honestly, had this been a smaller event, I would have walked over to him, told him to stand up, and slugged him right in the face (back pain or no back pain), accepting the tournament-ending penalty that would have come with it. Maybe I would have given him a chance to apologize. I don't think so. In this event, I wasn't willing to do that, and I decided that I had best stay right where I was, to make sure I didn't do something that would result in either a 40-minute or tournament-ending penalty.

Late in Day Two I was still doing fine, still playing small-bet poker (only one all-in move), and had about 75K when my table broke for about the seventh time in the day.

Ten minutes after they told us the table was breaking (I'm stretching a point here, because the "incident" I'm about to describe happened about three minutes after I'd arrived at the new table: It took quite a while to randomly high card everyone, rack up the chips, and make my way not just across the room, but through a mob that separated one half of the room from the other), it was déjà vu all over again.

I leaned back again to get rid of my chip rack, and wouldn't you know it, someone else flying at a dead run for the men's room slammed into my elbow. At least this guy did the right thing: He stopped, apologized, and asked if I was all right. If the first guy had done that, I would have been in pain, but not interested in starting any trouble. Ironically enough, this second runner wasn't only someone else I knew, but someone who was also dealing with back trouble: Phil Hellmuth.

Ten minutes after that, "Minneapolis" Jim Meehan, a friend seated on my right, opened from under the gun for $2,800 (the blinds were $600-$1,200, and the antes $200, so I thought this a bit low), and I looked down and found two kings. I made it $9,000 straight.

It came back around to Jim, who thought for about four seconds (plus whatever time it had taken for the play to get back around to him), and then said, "I'm all in."

Jim had about $100,000 in front of him. I had about $81,000 left after my raise had been dragged into the pot. A million things went through my mind. He'd opened from under the gun for a "please raise me" amount. Now, he was hugely overbetting the pot. Although this could have meant lots of things, I narrowed the possibilities to four:

1. He had aces (small under-the-gun raise) and was trying to fool me with double reverse psychology, making me think he was weak with something like two sevens. I'll correct for this in the future, but the double sneakiness of a play like this made it seem more likely to me than it should have, because I like double, triple, and quadruple sneaky plays.

2. He had A-K, which has unique properties: It dominates all other ace-high hands and has an edge against all other nonpairs. While an underdog to all pairs, it gives the bettor a good chance against all pairs 2-2 through Q-Q, and even a reasonable (30 percent) chance against K-K; it's buried only against A-A. As a result, A-K is a nice hand to make a move with under most circumstances.

This moment in this tournament wasn't one of those circumstances, though. Jim certainly didn't want to play a huge pot as a slight underdog (as he would have been against any pair), almost as certainly didn't want to play one as only a small favorite, and probably was not anxious to play one for 9K (if he'd flat-called) against someone who held a pair, because an A-X-X flop risks the "X" being a set for his opponent.

Jim probably would have been willing to fade the action if he knew I had K-K, but while anybody with a brain loves big action as a 70 percent favorite in a side game, great players are not really hungry for it when well above par at this precise point in the WSOP championship and must risk most of their stack to do it (much earlier or much later, a great player might eagerly accept that edge; at this point, it would merely have been, "OK, I'll take it, but I'm not going to use up one of my three wishes to get into this position"). With A-K, Jim just wanted the pot and figured I wouldn't call without aces or maybe kings … and if he had the A-K, the chance that I held aces or kings dropped.

3. He had a small pair or some other weak hand like A-Q or J-10 and just wanted to blow me off the hand with his bet. I didn't like this theory on the risk-reward balance. Yes, his bet was likely to take the pot, but if I had a real hand, he stood to lose most of his chips. That I'd reraise an under-the-gun bettor from very early position suggested that I did indeed have a real hand, especially as I believe he hadn't seen me reraise anyone up to that point. I'd done enough of it at other tables, but hadn't been here long, and he had not seen me lay down a bunch of hands of reraises (that would come later).

4. He had a good hand, like queens or kings, and didn't want to risk taking a flop against A-K. Note that my owning kings made it much less likely that Jim had them. If I decided that Jim would make this move with only kings or aces, my hand made it far more likely he had aces.

I thought and thought, and spent a lot of time staring at Jim, enough so that someone else finally called for a clock on me. Usually I am very good at reading people: I consider it the best part of my no-limit game, when I remember to take the time to do it (I hadn't taken the time against Patti, and later I would fail to take it against Amir Vahedi on a big hand I will detail).

I'd laid down Q-Q twice before the flop earlier in the day after long stare-downs, and for some odd reason each opponent had shown me that I was correct, K-K in one case and A-A in the other. Why they should have proven to me that I could read them correctly I still don't understand.

(By the way, I didn't always lay Q-Q down preflop to a raise or reraise that day; in fact, a couple of times, I played it much harder than it was probably worth. It was all a question of reads and situations, and I never lost any of the hands when I played it hard.)

Here against Jim, I didn't smell any fear, none at all. That meant either aces, kings, or an absolute conviction that I wouldn't risk going out on one hand. Someone holding kings can be in fear, but not after a lone opponent takes any kind of time to think. That I held two kings made it much less likely that Jim did (although later he told Amir Vahedi that he had held K-K). If I'd sensed any weakness, my money would have gone in faster than most players can trap you into listening to a bad-beat story.

It all added up to aces.

I finally threw the hand away, figuring that 81K in the bank was better than a push if he had two kings or playing at a 4.5-1 dog status if he had the aces. Heck, even though I wouldn't mind the action if he had A-K, I wouldn't really have been thrilled rolling the dice when my small-bet poker had been effective and the blinds were allowing me to play that way.

Others have since told me they think I should have called. I'll never know. Even though Jim is a friend, we're still competitors, and there's no reason for him to tell me the truth, and I wouldn't expect him to, so I won't ask, at least not until long after we've both retired from the game. (By the way, because I never showed the hand, even though I talked about it a lot there at the table, you have the right to believe I'm lying about my own hand.)

Ten minutes later, a player limped, Jim called from the small blind, and I found A-Q in the big blind, so I raised 5K. The limper made it 20K, and while it might easily have been a move, I wasn't in the mood to find out, so I let that one go, too. A-Q isn't a good calling hand, and the limper didn't have enough chips for me to even consider trying to blow him off with a reraise.

Ten (I'm not kidding) minutes later, I made one of my three worst plays of the two days. I had pocket sevens and had made an initial raise, and Amir Vahedi, sitting on a quarter million, called me. The flop came Q-Q-4, and we both checked. A 6 hit the turn, and Amir checked. I should have too, since I couldn't handle a raise and Amir had the chips to do it, but I bet 6K, Amir made it 25K, and I threw that one away, too.

At this point, my new table had seen me lay three hands down to reraises, and I looked like easy pickings for that play … which is why, when I found A-A under the gun 10 minutes before the day was to end, I raised to $3,500 (too low, it should have been to 4K or 4.5K, although this 3.5K amount had become a kind of table standard), and Amir and his huge stack called from the big blind.

The flop came 8 8 3, Amir checked, I bet 15K, and Amir raised 20K more (a total of 35K). Without all the other laydowns, I might have laid this down (or might not; that's a hypothetical question, and context is king). If the board had come something like K Q 9 or Q-J-10, I probably could have gotten away from it fairly easily (I might not even have bet it). I wasn't looking at one of those coordinated flops, though, and given (1) all the laydowns; (2) Amir's aggressive style; (3) the chip total that gave him the opportunity to take a shot; and (4) the chance that he could be coming after me with what he thought was the best hand (a pair of tens or better) or an "escape hand" (like the nut-flush draw), I decided that my chips were going in. Unfortunately, I spent my time thinking about cards and my own table image, and not studying my opponent: A hand like A-A can do that to someone, although it shouldn't after the flop. A flat call would have left 20K in front of me and I'd have been pot-committed, so I went ahead and shoved them in. When Amir called instantly without bothering for a count, I asked the question I then really didn't need to ask: "Do you have an 8?"

He nodded and turned over 8-7 offsuit, a good hand to take a shot at busting someone with, and I'd complied. No ace turned or rivered to save me. Max Shapiro called this "a bad beat" in his daily report. I don't agree: I'm inclined to call it "an unfortunate beat," because when the money went in, Amir had the best hand.

Whether, given the context, I played it incorrectly or not, I still don't know, aside from wishing I'd departed from the "standard" opening raise to make a bigger bet, given that it was the unpredictable and chip-heavy Amir in the big blind. Most of the pros I've discussed the hand with have called it "a very tough decision" (maybe that's their way of politely saying "you messed up"), although a few have said they definitely would have gone with it and a couple have said they would have laid it down.

I thus finished almost two full days of physical pain with some pretty serious emotional kind. I'm not looking for sympathy: I did get lucky early, and there are many things in life worse than getting knocked out of a tournament, even one this big, and the back pain/collisions just threw the whole thing into sharp relief.

What I do want you to know, as I sit here realizing that aces and eights were indeed my personal Dead Man's Hand, is just how hard this tournament is to win, even though each year players of varying levels of ability make the final table. Twenty hours of "one mistake and you can be gone" is taxing. Fifty hours of it says as much about your will, stamina, and mental toughness as it does about your skill and luck.

I think the mental toughness factor plays almost as big a role in the amateur making it to the final table as the luck does, although there are more and more amateurs each year, and the amateurs often won't make laydowns that "better" players will, allowing them to pick off more bluffs and giving them more chances to accumulate lots of chips in one hand. I'll analyze final-table plays forever, but I think from now on, I'll be much more understanding if someone makes what seems to be an obvious error.

Until you've walked the whole mile in a man's shoes, you can't know how hard this is. I didn't even walk a half-mile in time (although exiting 112th, it was almost seven-eighths of it in players), and never had to face the really big money pressure or the really big TV pressure … and I'm still spent.

If ever you attend the final table at the World Series of Poker championship, make sure you clap long and loud as each player exits. He or she will have earned that much, and more.