Just a Flesh Wound

My bankroll is not really big enough to play as many of these $10k+ events as I do. They are my favorite thing in the world, though. I'm a dreamer, and I do believe one day I will hit it big and make all the money back plus much more. Also, the thought of playing the big tournaments inspires me to play and make money in cash games when I'm not playing them, so for these reasons I continue to fire away. I think it's important for a poker player to have something to look forward to, something to desperately want.

All these reasons add up to an acute feeling of misery when I bust out of these tournaments short of the money. I am all too familiar with this feeling. In fact, I have failed to cash in my last eighteen tournaments with buyins of more than $5000. Several of these have been rather ugly, unfortunate exits. So today, when I lost a very big pot that essentially knocked me out after getting all the money in with my opponent just 13% to win, I was accustomed to the gut-wrenching, nauseous feeling and I recovered rather quickly.

I walked out to the beach. It was near sunset in Barcelona. A good start. There is no beach to walk out to in Tunica, or Las Vegas, so already the road to recovery looked more promising than usual.

There was this fat older lady making out with a hoboish-looking dude. It was kinda gross. But it was tender. They were down on this bench off the main beach drag, sort of off to themselves but also in plain sight to people walking or sitting nearby.

I was on that beach for more than an hour, and not a minute passed by where that fat old lady wasn't kissing, embracing, or clutching that hobo. I don't know what the occasion was. I imagined possible scenarios: it was their last night together before he went back to the Iraqi Army; he was a deep-sea fisherman leaving the next morning for three months at sea; he was going in the next day for an emergency operation that would likely kill him, but was his only chance at receiving a cure for his terminal disease.

Maybe there was no occasion. Maybe they were just in love.

Whatever it was that had that woman slobbering all over that man, it held more meaning, more importance than any poker tournament.
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Longtime readers of this blog know that it can be painful for me to watch Paul have success in these poker tournaments. It was a little painful today. He was at my starting table and I watched him make what I felt was a mistake against Annette_15, only to get rewarded with a suckout triple-up that kickstarted a huge rush. By the time dinner rolled around, Paul was one of the biggest stacks in the tournament and I was, of course, out of the tournament. It all seemed pretty unfair.

But, well, it's not unfair. Longtime readers of this blog also know that Paul's $6 million score at the WSOP last year personally netted me $240,000. I have told Paul that he can never, ever complain about bad beats in poker again, and that is probably true for me too.

Really, any poker player who can come to Barcelona and spend 11,500 of his own dollars to buy into a poker tournament can't complain about bad beats.

In the end, it didn't work out for Paul today. He lost some unfortunate hands and was eliminated shortly before the money. When we got back to the house after a late dinner and he was, unexpectedly, already there, I honestly felt disappointed.
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I somehow located the metro from the casino to our place and then Truman, Gabri, and I went out to dinner. We had a very good meal and a better conversation. Among other things, we talked about snoring, vomiting, and nosebleeds.

I was thinking the whole time - I don't get nosebleeds. I don't have allergies. I don't snore. I don't get sick very often. All my body parts work like they're supposed to. I've never had a catastrophic illness or injury. With one exception, no one close to me has never had a catastrophic illness or injury. I've never been super close to someone who has died.

I have taken a lot of bad beats in big poker tournaments, but I haven't taken any in real life.