$1500 NLH 6-handed: We meet the most maniacal player of all time and it is....me!

After a couple of hours another player and I are moved to a new table. On the second hand, playing 100-200 with $25 antes, he raises to 700 in second position. For some reason I think he is weak, so I pop it to 1900 with 9 7 offsuit. Unfortunately, the person to my left wakes up with a real hand and confidently moves all in for 3550. The original raiser folds, and I agonize for awhile before calling. When I turn over my 9 7, the rest of the table is in shock—they were wondering whether I was agonizing over A Q or J J! My opponent turns over Q Q, and it looks pretty hopeless when the flop is Q 6 3. My opponent now has the best possible hand! An 8 on the turn gives me hope, and a beautiful 10 on the river gives me a straight. My opponent is in obvious dismay, having busted out of the tournament after flopping a virtual lock. My table mates all look at me like I am completely nuts.Two hands later I am under the gun when the big blind is away from the table. I have only 9 2 offsuit, but when I detect disinterest from the player on my left, the absence of the big blind makes me think it’s worth a steal attempt. So I raise to 900, and everyone folds except the small blind, who calls. The flop comes J 9 2 with two spades. He checks to me and I bet 1300; he quickly calls. The turn is really ugly, the queen of spades, which makes the flush, several straight draws and a higher two pair all fairly likely. I am quite proud of myself for mustering a 2500 bet. He thinks for a minute and calls. The river is the 9 of hearts, giving me a full house. He checks and I bet 4000. He counts out 4000 and calls. I turn over 9 2 for the full house; he looks totally disgusted as he counts his remaining 500 in chips. (We never find out what he had; I suspect he was slow-playing aces.) The rest of the table literally cannot believe what they have seen. I have been at the table for only 5 hands and they have seen me call a re-re-raise with 9 7 offsuit and then raise under the gun and play a huge pot with 9 2 offsuit. One of them offers to play me anytime for any amount of money. My two opponents are replaced with new ones and the table tells them in incredulous tones that they have never seen as big a maniac as me in their whole lives. What they fail to realize is that I am aggressive, but not a maniac, and I had completely rational reasons for playing both hand the way I did.

For the next 45 minutes they don't quite know how to play against me. For sure, they have zero respect for my raises. But they believe (incorrectly) that I will call them with anything if they re-raise me. So they tend to be a bit passive and predictable, calling me with traditional strong hands, such as AJ, re-raising with their best hands, and folding the rest. These tendencies are easy to exploit.

Just before dinner I trap the loudest criticizer of my play. On the turn, the board is J 10 9 9 and I have J 9. He bets $3500 and I call, trying to get the third player behind me to call. Another J falls on the end and the remaining money goes in. He turns out to have J 10, and he has hit a miracle card to make the only hand that beats me. I lose a huge pot to this unfortunate river card. He tells me how poorly I played the hand. Of course, he is wrong, but for the moment I keep my mouth shut.

A new player arrives and once again he tells them how poorly I played the 9 7 offsuit. I can take it no longer. "Please tell me your why you think I played poorly," I ask him. "All I remember is you called a huge re-raise with 9 7 offsuit," he says. "Do you really want an explanation?" I ask. "First, of all you're wrong: it was a re-re-raise, not a re-raise. And here's the way the hand came down. The 2-seat opens with a raise to 700; I thought he was weak, so I popped it to 1900. The player to my left makes it 3550, and the original raiser folds. At this point, there is $6450 in the pot and it's $1650 to me, giving me just under 4-1 pot odds to call. If, as is most likely, he has an overpair, then it's around 4.5 to call, so I'm not quite getting the odds I need. But if there's some chance, even as little as 10%, that he has AK, then I have around a 3/8 chance to win and it becomes a mathematical call. Besides that, I felt like gambling." Each time he has criticized the hand I have re-analyzed it. When I do the exact calculations in my hotel room later, my math is shockingly accurate. I am partly showing off, and partly trying to intimidate the table. The shocked silence that follows indicates I have achieved the latter goal. Finally he say, "Well, I guess I respect your analysis but I still don't respect your raises." Fair enough.

For the next half hour I pick up some excellent hands and play them all very fast. I win more than I lose, but I am involved in nearly every hand and the chips are flowing in and out of my stack as fast as I have ever seen. It's a wild, insane, roller coaster ride, and I am loving every minute of it. At the dinner break I meet a dear friend, Tania, and her mother, whom I have never met. I am bouncing off the walls with excitement. Tania, the daughter of a twelfth generation rabbi, came to Vegas once before and was shocked, totally shocked, to discover that Jews actually gamble. (Her naivete is forever shattered when she discovers that the best gamblers of that era are either New York Jews or Texans, and that Las Vegas was built by a Jewish gambler.) Now, however, she totally gets it, and is completely gracious and understanding, sensitive to my time constraints and predictable attention deficit after the crazy session. Her mother is quite curious about this new world and peppers me with questions about whether I find playing poker addictive! It is a most enjoyable meal, but I have to bolt to shower and meditiate before we start again.

After the dinner break I am involved in a huge pot for most of my chips. I have the Ace and King of Spades, my opponent has Q Q. It is a virtual coin flip, and the winner will make the money bubble with a large stack. Despite my optimism and two spades on the board, his Queens hold up and I am severely short-stacked.

I am faced with the choice of limping into the money or playing more aggressively to try to win the tournament at the cost of a high likelihood of busting out just short of the money. If this were early in my poker career, coming into the money would mean a lot to me. At this point, however, while it would be fun to blog about, it wouldn't change my life any. I take some chances and bust out 130th, just 4 spots shy of 126th place, which pays $3800. Although I said I didn't care, I feel positively ill as I make the long trudge back to the hotel room. To make matters worse, as is so often the case, I have handed over all of my remaining chips to the player I least liked at the table. I do have some perspective though, and am happy that I put myself in a position where I had to lose one very unlucky hand as well as a coin flip in order not to make the money with a very respectable stack.