Out of Left Field

Imagine jumping out of a plane and experiencing free fall for ten straight hours. That pretty much sums up my experience of sitting down at a poker table under bright television lights facing three incredibly accomplished professional poker players, a very good aspiring poker pro, and a jacked office furniture entrepreneur prone to Shakespearean soliloquies named Dave. I had $50,000 in front of me, and when the dealer started shuffling the cards for the first hand of 150, I felt like I was going to throw all the way up.

This is a follow-up post to my previous one, in which I explained how I came to play on “The Big Game,” a reboot of a popular poker show from about a decade ago. Although I’m a serious poker player who has long fantasized about appearing on a show like this, battling the best in the world, I never – NEVER – imagined it would actually happen. It’s a bit like being a competent beer league softball player and being invited to spend the day playing left field for The Brewers. And like that player standing out in left field on a bright summer day in front of a stadium filled with fans, my only thought as the first hand was being dealt was this: “Please don’t hit it to me.”

Selfie taken a few minutes before sitting down to play. This is not the expression of a man comfortable in his surroundings.

My strategy in these early hands was to sit tight, play my game, and not get involved in any big pots. I wanted a couple dozen hands or so to get comfortable, get acclimated, make a few jokes, and figure out how to relax. Instead, in the second hand of the 150, I found myself saying these words, “I’m all in.”

The good people at PokerStars have asked me not to reveal my results on these pages because this will, eventually, be a television show and they would rather I did not provide any spoilers. I shall not. Suffice it to say, the game was not going according to plan.

At one point late in the game, Dave, in his bright green “I am Kenough” branded sweatshirt, turned to me and said, “You’re shaking.”

I replied, somewhat heatedly, “Of course I’m shaking. I’ve been shaking this whole time. I’m fucking terrified.”

Dave’s follow-up question to me was an astute one: “Are you terrified because you’re strong or because you’re weak?”

Bitch, I have aces. I’m shaking because I’m strong.

This is what $50,000 in poker chips looks like.

The night progressed apace. Hand after hand, each one as stressful as the last. Even folding became a stressful act because I knew I only had 150 hands to capture as much money as I could in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The longer I played, the more I began to feel like I was representing all the little guys out there, the small stakes players like myself who dream of taking this kind of shot. There are plenty of better players than myself hanging out at any local cardroom. These are men and women who work a regular job and play cards on the side. For players like us, a session might conclude with us being up a thousand bucks or two. Not chump change, exactly, but nor will it change anybody’s life. At this game, pots regularly grew to five figures. When I said, “I’m all-in,” a call from my opponent would have resulted in a pot of over a hundred thousand dollars. I’m not saying my opponent didn’t call, but we’re talking about serious money. Players at my level have no business getting involved with pots of that size. To be there, battling against these players in this environment, felt incredible. And also, as I have repeatedly said, terrifying.

At our first break, thirty hands in, I was exhausted. I used to do a little long-distance running, and once competed in a half-marathon. After that race, I remember needing to sit down on the street curb because if I hadn’t, I would have collapsed. That’s how I felt after the first thirty hands. I still had 120 to go.

The chips in my stack grew and shrank and grew again. I one point, I made change for Phil Laak, who reached into a plastic sandwich baggie he was carrying around in his pocket filled with $25,000 chips. These are not normal people.

Eventually, after ten or so hours, the game came to an end. From that, I guess you can infer that I did not go broke. But beyond giving you that piece of information, I cannot say more. It was one o’clock in the morning, my adrenaline levels were off the charts, and I had a car scheduled to pick me up for the airport in three hours. Sleep would not be possible in my state. A friend suggested I go downstairs to the casino and play a little one dollar, two dollar poker. After spending the previous half day playing one hundred, two hundred poker, that sounded like a pretty good idea to me. I changed clothes and bought into the regular game downstairs for four hundred bucks. Then I sat down at my seat, back among the mortals. I have never felt so relaxed.

Thank you to PokerStars and to my good friend, the poker commentator Joe Stapleton, for wrangling me an invite to “The Big Game.” It was a top five life experience for me. (I’m moving the birth of my children to slots 6 and 7.) I may never become a professional poker player but, for one incredible day, I sat among them and survived. I’m all in.