Brilliant Play, Pathetic Negotiation

Bigger than a football field, the Pavilion room dwarfs the aptly-named Amazon room used in previous years. Just as I walk in they announce "two seats left in the next $1035 satellite for the Main Event." I grab the second-to-last ticket with enthusiasm, but when I get to my table I am in for a real surprise. Normally, some of the players will have a last longer bet for a hundred or two, but in this case the entire table has a thousand dollar last longer bet and the obvious table captain has 4 or 5 individual last longer bets with other players. When I decline he offers to put me in for $900 and put up the last $100 himself. I wonder what kind of table I've stepped into and wimpishly decline his very sporting offer. To give myself cover, I offer to make a "last shorter" bet--essentially betting I'm going to lose right away--which no one ever accepts. Three people immediately want to do that with me and now I have to back out of that as well! It's clear I've come to a gambling table, but also clear that the entire table is full of solid professionals. The last player to arrive just looks a little weak and I find myself hoping that he and I are the last ones standing.

The very first hand, the weak player has K 10, the table captain has K Q, the flop comes K Q 5, the weak player makes a very foolish call of the captain's raise. The turn is a 10 and now they both have two pair and get all their chips in the pot. Oops, the weak player can only win with another 10, which promptly appears as the last card. Just like that, on the very first hand, the table captain is busted; to his credit he takes this atrocious bad beat in stride, pays off the four thousand in last longer bets he just lost and tells us to come find him when we're ready to gamble.

The rest of the table is actively gambling, but I get such a string of bad cards I hardly play a single hand. Finally, I decide it's time to take advantage of my presumed tightness and, when the short-stacked button raises, I move all in with K 4. He folds immediately and then goes on a tirade about what a nit I am: "You act like you came to gamble and offer to make a last shorter bet, but that's the first hand you've played."

The next hand is one of my all time favorite hands. With his words still hanging in the air, everybody folds around to me in the small blind. I look down at A 9, normally not much but given that everyone has folded a decent but not great hand, probably worth a raise. Instead of raising, however, I have this weird feeling that if I just call, the player to my right, subconsciously influenced by the tirade about what a nit I am, will bet his whole stack figuring there's no way this old nit will call. I call the additional 100, the guy to might right reaches for a handful of chips, and then, exactly as I surmised instead of making an equally effective but less risky 500 dollar raise, pushes his 4000 dollar stack into this mere 200 dollar pot. I snap-call (instantaneously call) for added effect, he shows 10 9, and my A 9 is a huge favorite and, indeed, holds up. What I like about this hand is that I was able to pick up on the effect that the comment about me being a nit would have on my opponent, and change my strategy to capture his whole stack.

The tournament takes another hour to complete, and, taking advantage of my tight image to rob the other players mercilessly, combined with a run of good cards and good luck when needed, leaves just me and the player I mentally labeled as weak as the only two left. The satellite is $10,000 winner take all, but it's very common to settle when there are just two players left, as walking away empty-handed at that point is one of the worst feelings in the world. He really wants to settle, imploring me not to court disaster by continuing, and offers me a slightly better settlement than our chip stacks would indicate. Even though I noted before the satellite started that I wanted to play him heads up, in a moment of weakness I agree to settle.

As we wait for them to bring us our prize money, we get to talking and he reveals that he's runs a junkyard as a scrap dealer. For some reason this really galls me: I could have played on, risking unpleasantness but as a significant favorite, and instead I settled with a junkyard scrap dealer!> This both amuses me and sickens me; I am not even mollified when I walk away from the table with an extra $5000 in my pocket. A scrap dealer, for goodness sakes. What was I thinking?