A Dream Come True

About three weeks ago my friend Nate told me he had a dream that I got 4^th place in the Austrian tournament which would be my final stop in this overseas voyage. It is strange that he had a dream about me playing poker and stranger that he remembered it. The fact that it actually ended up happening is a coincidence of such staggering odds that one must wonder if it actually was a coincidence at all.

The day I came to Baden, I first visited the museum at Sigmund Freud’s former home in Vienna. Freud was one of the central figures of my education so I deemed it necessary to visit his museum, especially since it was just a block from the hotel I was staying at. Freud’s work primarily dealt with psychoanalysis – the understanding of unconscious and/or repressed feelings and thoughts. Freud’s obsession with the unconscious mind eventually led him to dreams. His legendary 1899 work The Interpretation of Dreams begins like this:

In the following pages, I shall demonstrate that there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and that on the application of this technique, every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state.

Freud would interpret Nate’s dream as a commentary on his relationship with me, or something of that sort. I interpret it as evidence of Destiny, of a preordained Plan. At the least, I think I will start keeping a dream diary.

My notebook, where I write down every hand I play in the major tournaments, was its own diary of dreams throughout this tournament. I will begin posting the hands on this blog soon. You will see how fortunate I was in this tournament, how often I had to rely on luck to build my stack.

There were many times I was all-in during this tournament at risk of getting knocked out. Today, at the final table with five players, I was all-in with pair under pair – a one in five shot at survival. But I wasn’t meant to exit this tournament in fifth place.

After that lucky double-up, I played my best poker of the tournament and took the chip lead after several hours of four-handed play. I then played a gargantuan pot against Julian Thew, a gentleman, a father of two, a friend, a fantastic player, and a deserving champion. I had the best hand and would very likely win the tournament if I won that pot, but I wasn’t meant to win this tournament. I was meant to get fourth place.

And I am very happy with fourth place. I am very happy with my play today, certainly my best of the four days. I have played a lot of big tournaments, made a lot of mistakes, and been unlucky many times. In this tournament I made few mistakes and was very lucky for four days. I recouped all the losses I had endured on the tournament circuit in search of the Holy Grail. I won a large sum of money that dwarfs anything I have won before or anything I would have imagined possible while growing up.

I am so grateful for all the support, from my friends at home in the States as well as the media and players here in Baden. You know who you are and you mean so much.