In the last week of March, the legal work, which had become a total nuisance and maybe even a psychological barrier, was finally completed. To celebrate, I decided I’d play some live poker. I checked the tournament schedule in Cardplayer magazine and found that the Foxwoods Poker Classic was underway. I had missed the first few events, but the $600 NLHE event was starting on Thursday, March 29. A perfect mid-level event for a fledgling pro. Foxwoods was booked solid, so I found a room in a dump a few miles away and drove up on Wednesday.

The tournament started very slowly for me. Because the starting stacks were not huge, I was not inclined to play any speculative hands early. It didn’t matter, as I was getting completely cold-decked. It was an amazing stretch of unplayable hands. I mucked hand after hand in the first two levels but was pleased to see that the general level of play at my table was very poor. I noticed that many players were limping in with garbage. The only pot I won in the first two levels was a button-steal behind four limpers. Possibly out of sheer boredom, I raised with 8-3 offsuit and scooped up the dead money. When they broke my table 2.5 levels were gone and I had played exactly two hands.

At my new table, I still could not find any cards to play, and my stack began to dwindle as the antes kicked in. Then, with the blinds at 100-200 with a 25 ante and my stack around 2500, I found AQ suited in the big blind. There was a middle position limper, and the small blind raised to 900. It smelled like he was on a steal to me, so I shoved all in. Ooops. The small blind called and turned over AK, but a queen flopped, saving me. Doubled through to around 6000, my stack again dwindled to around 4000 when I found AK on the button. An aggressive player raised in middle position and I shoved. It was all standard business until the action got to the big blind and he instantly called. Ooooops. The original raiser folded and I discovered that my AK was up against pocket aces. A king flopped, giving me 2 outs, but so what? I stood to depart, watching the turn and river, mere formalities. The turn was a blank, and the river– the river was another king. What?! Nice! I did a short, spontaneous “gear shift” celebration (see Gibson, Kirk, rounding second) and sat back down. Maybe it was meant to be?

Now I turned up the heat. Stack size disparity was in full effect, and I began to maneuver my way through the field. For about six hours, all the way through the dinner break, I zigzagged along. Before I knew it I had broken though the bubble and into the money. Even so, the blind structure was creeping along. I recognized that the proper strategy was to turn up the aggression yet another notch. And so I did, including the following confrontation:

I was in the small blind with the 4-3 of hearts, and it was folded around to me. My stack, which was about average at this point, was only about seven big blinds. The big blind had me covered. In accordance with my new PokerXFactor knowledge and my plan for all-out aggression, I announced all in and started to put all my chips in the middle with 4 high. My opponent called before they got there. Oooooops. He flipped over AK. The flop helped neither of us, but the turn was a 4, and the river was a 3. Disgusted, my opponent, a yuppie-looking guy in John Lennon spectacles, looked up from the table, then at me and said “what the hell is that?!” He was obviously referring to my kamikaze shove with 4-3, not the hand itself. I replied “it’s two pair!” and winked at him. The other 7 players erupted with laughter, and the big blind, his tournament ruined, glared at me. On with the show.

The table was now on notice that I was a maniac, and they mostly stayed out of my way. At the same time, the quality of my starting hands improved. The tournament, which had started with 856 players, had been pared down to about 40 when my new image paid big dividends. On the hand in question one player, an older man who was very loose-passive, limped in middle position. It smelled a lot like QJ or some other moderate holding, and any astute player would know this. I was on the button with AA and raised enough to make the old man lay his hand down. The action was passed to the big blind, a very young, smart player, and he moved all in for about 4 times the amount of my raise. The old man folded and I called. The kid had K-9 and figured I was putting a move on the old guy. Oooops–for him. A classic next-level rationale NLHE confrontation, he knew that I knew that the old man’s chips were for sale (i.e. my range of hands was very wide), so he put the move on me, but I happened to have aces. I was suddenly one of the chip leaders very late in this tournament.

I resumed stealing blinds. Then the tournament director announced that we’d be playing until 1:00 am and finishing up tomorrow. When 1:00 arrived, I had just lost a major coinflip (I had QQ, he had AK) and there were 11 players left. I was 10^th in chip count. We bagged our chips and were told to return at 3:00 the next day.

Exhausted, I grabbed a bite to eat, made a few phone calls, and drove back to my motel. I got in bed, but sleep was impossible. I was guaranteed something like $4,000 at this point, but the prize structure was steep. Second place was $67,000. First place was $127,000. I thought it over for a few hours and determined that trying to creep up the prize ladder would be pointless. I was shoving all my chips in at the first opportunity. Yup, shove and pray. That was the move.

It took exactly one hand to lose the first player. I had made the final table. The tournament director paused the proceedings and gathered everyone for a group photo. Next we drew for seats, found them, and sat there as the director announced our names, hometowns and chip counts in turn. I had the fewest chips. When it was my turn, the tournament director said to the assembled crowd, “David Zeitlin, from New York, New York, $91,000 in chips he’s comin’ to get ya!” This was a sarcastic reference to my puny stack, and the gallery chuckled.

A fairly decent version of the story of the final table is told on pokerpages.com and on foxwoods.com. I’ll just add some pertinent info here. I won, by the way.

The best player at the final table was Rob Sciammarella. He suffered two horrible beats at the hands of the guy I ended up chopping with heads up. I wasn’t sad to see him go.

When we were 5-handed, I proposed a deal, taking $27,000 off of first place and distributing it proportionally amongst the other 4 places. Everyone agreed. Foxwoods has a policy of neither helping broker any deals nor redistributing the money in accordance with any deal.

The wildest player at the final table was the eventual third place finisher, Firas Haddad. When we were three-handed with three roughly equal stacks, he inexplicably called off all his chips with bottom pair. I found myself heads up with Cohen, trailing 2-1 in chip count. We were playing for about $27,000. I was guaranteed around $73,000.

I got off to a bad start heads up and was down roughly 4-1 at one point. However, I began to come back. Because it was the players’ responsibility to redistribute the prize money in accordance with the 5-way deal we had agreed to earlier, the 5^th through 3^rd place finishers were lurking around waiting to get paid. Two of them were familiar with Cohen, and one tried to arrange payment at a later date. The obvious assumption was that he would eventually win. Emboldened by my ongoing comeback, I looked at Cohen, and then the assembled audience and said “awful presumptuous.” Some of the crowd smiled and Cohen laughed nervously.

The comeback continued. On one hand I made a big bluff on the river, drawing almost even with my opponent. At that point, he asked if I wanted to make a deal. I chose not to and we played another couple of hands. I won them both. We were virtually even. Once again he asked to deal. I gave it a little more thought and then agreed on the condition that I receive the 1^st place trophy, commemorative jacket, and credit (i.e. listing in Cardplayer, etc.) as the winner. He quickly agreed to these terms. My final take after tipping out: 85.5k. Do you hear that, IRS? 85.5 grand, not 127 grand. Thanks.

My reasons for accepting the deal: First, I was totally exhausted. I had played about 17 hours of poker in the last couple of days and hardly slept at all. The horrible picture of me taken 30 seconds after the deal was reached is a testament to this. Second, I had come a long way, both from being short stacked at the start of the final table, and within the heads up portion of things. Just getting to the point where we had even stacks had been an uphill climb. Third, I was anxious to notch my first major win as a pro.

eww…

Winning the tournament was important in terms of gaining self-confidence. Self-confidence leads to aggression, which is a key attribute that all winning players have. It also provided an obvious bankroll boost, which has allowed me to play bigger tournaments and worry about my bottom line a little less. And the Foxwoods win serves as proof to my detractors and the naysayers (and they’re out there) that playing poker is a legitimate way to make a living. And so

Dear Detractors, the people who think I’m crazy for walking away from a steady living so I can play a child’s game: I might be pretty good at this game. Maybe better than you are at your job. Have fun dragging your ass out of bed at 6:30 tomorrow.

And Dear Naysayers, those of you who place me in the same category as those sad old bums that hang around OTB every day: I had my “lucky day.” Maybe if I have another “lucky day” we can promote you to Detractor!

Oh, and another good thing about winning at Foxwoods: My degree of delusion is now great enough to bring you this blog. I’m an important guy! (But seriously, thanks to Jon Marston for badgering me about doing this and having the talent to produce this thing)

When the tournament was over, the director first gave me my trophy, then walked me over to a counter in the back of the room, and counted out $127,000 in cash. Mr. Cohen and I redistributed the money in accordance with our agreement, I paid the 3^rd 4^th and 5^th place finishers their share, I tipped the dealers $2500, and the remainder, something like $86,000 in $100 bills, was placed in a shopping bag. Accompanied by a short, fat security guard, I walked it through the casino. It was heavy.

When I reached the cashier in the poker room, I asked to convert the contents of the shopping bag to a check for $86,000.00. I unloaded the $100 bills and two women had the unpleasant task of counting them. As they flicked their way through the bills, one by one by one by one, they had to stop many times to rejuvenate their wrist muscles, accomplished by shaking them horizontally, their limp hands wiggling in front of them.

Through all of this, I felt remarkably little. No sense of accomplishment. No euphoria. No hysteria. I was still locked into my poker table mentality and demeanor. I was unable to get out of card player mode and into celebration mode.

A flurry of phone calls followed. Relaying the news, I began to understand that something very good had just happened, but I still wasn’t there yet. I went back to the motel. Still exhausted, I nevertheless decided I’d drive home that night. I wanted to sleep in my bed. I matter-of-factly packed my stuff and got into the car. Before I got on the highway, I stopped for gas. As I filled up, I patted my back pocket to make sure. Yup, the check was still there.

I pulled onto on the highway and headed south. It was a nice night. I rolled down the window. The song on the radio was “Shake That” by Eminem and Nate Dogg. And somewhere near Westbrook, Connecticut, it happened.

I started a-whoopin’ and a-hootin and a-hollarin’ like an old-time road gambler who had just cleaned out some dusty little southern town.

I celebrated Groundhog Day 2006 by making like Punxsutawney Phil and holing myself up in my Upper East Side apartment. It was done partially out of necessity, as the legal writing work was still hanging over my head. And it was done partially to answer an important question. With the NYC poker clubs facing constant heat from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and with Atlantic City and Foxwoods each around 3 hours away, I knew that mastery of internet poker was the only way I’d be able to sustain my new career without relocating.

And so I embarked on a quest to log as many hours online as I could. By this time I knew that I could not sustain a decent hourly rate without “multitabling,” i.e. playing several online games at once. Historically, my results when multitabling had been significantly worse than my results when focusing on a single online table. Determined to change this, I purchased a new high resolution monitor for my desktop that would allow me to play four tables at once without having the table images overlap. Armed with an account on each and every major poker site, off I went. I played sit ‘n go’s. I played tournaments. I played cash games. And I lost at them all.

For a stretch of about four weeks, I did almost nothing but lose. My bankroll wasn’t spiraling out of control; it was more of a slow, steady leak. Not drastic, but impossible to ignore. By the last week of February, I was pretty worried, and “you don’t have what it takes to do this” was creeping into my mind a lot. The vast majority of the super successful internet pros are kids over ten years younger than me, savants who have somehow trained their brains to instantaneously calculate odds and notice betting patterns in eight or more games simultaneously. Here I was, 32 years old, trying to emulate them, and failing.

My brain just doesn’t work that way, I began telling myself. At every level of my education, and then in the workplace, I had been trained to think analytically, to take pieces of information and apply them logically in accordance with a framework created by a teacher, textbook or case law. This form of problem solving takes time. You’re supposed to sit and ponder before you answer. Playing multiple tables of online poker does not afford one this luxury. Now I was expected to speed up the problem solving, or somehow craft brand new instincts out of thin air. After a few weeks I started to attribute my success in Vegas to pure luck. I also began to think seriously about moving to either Henderson, Nevada or some awful town on the Jersey shore, so that I could prey on real live tourists instead of mixing it up with adolescent Rainmen online. It was a sobering idea, because I really do love New York City.

Playing out the string, at 11:00 p.m. on February 28, I entered a $109 tournament on Party Poker. Immediately I began to accumulate chips, and sometime around 2:00 a.m. on March 1, the field of 356 entrants had been pared down to 30, and I held the chip lead. I shut down the other 2 games I was playing and focused in, realizing that a big payday was possible. I made the final table, and when we were down to 5 players, the following hand developed:

I had been playing very aggressively. The stacks were about even, and I sensed that one of the other players was ready to make a stand. I nevertheless raised on the button with 4-2 offsuit. The big blind, the only player with more chips than me, called. The flop came K 10 6 rainbow. Now the big blind led out with a pot-sized bet, leaving him with about the amount in the pot in his stack. The difference between 5^th place and 1^st place in this tournament was several thousand dollars. The sane thing to do was concede the hand. The maniacal thing to do was anything else. But it occurred to me that this guy would probably trap me by checkraising all in if he was holding a K. His bet smelled like J-10 or 99, or something like that.

Now I knew I was going to bluff and try to take down this pot, but how? Raise all in now? No, I would wait for him to show weakness. I went with the no limit hold ’em equivalent of the rope-a-dope, the bluff-call, cringing as I clicked away half my stack with absolutely nothing, knowing that the outcome of the entire tournament rested on my hunch. The turn was a 7, and now the big blind checked, trying to conserve his chips and get to the river without using any more ammunition. I checked behind. The river was another 7, and he checked once again. Now I executed the rest of the play– I shoved all in. I was hoping he’d quickly muck, abandoning his ill-fated steal attempt without much thought. But he didn’t. He obviously had a piece of the board. He let his time clock drip down to about 2 seconds before he mercifully folded. I let out a yelp, and, having made a wild play I hadn’t realized I was even capable of, I showed my opponent the 4-2. He said “nice bet,” Party shipped the chips, and I proceeded to take down the tournament.

When I went to bed on the first day of March, my ledger showed that I was a significant winner for the month of February even though I had struggled through the short month’s first 27 days. Fuck Henderson, Nevada. And fuck Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey. This groundhog’s got balls!