The Challenge Of Staying Present In Pursuit Of My First WSOP Circuit Ring

You’re not trying to beat the Yankees or the Red Sox or the Blue Jays. You’re trying to beat the game of baseball through execution – Major League Baseball Manager Joe Madden, quoted in Matt Fitzgerald The Comeback Quotient and The Other Talent

Ever since I finished 2nd at a WSOP Circuit Event at Graton Casino in Rohnert Park, CA in August 2023 – which I recounted in “Everything But The Ring: My Runner Up Finish At The Graton WSOP Circuit Event #17” (August 21, 2023) – I’ve wanted to finish the job and win a Circuit ring. To me, doing so would be a validation of all the hours I’ve put into poker – playing, studying, reading, writing, journaling – over the last two decades since I started playing in 2006.

When I came up to Thunder Valley last Friday, my intention was only to play the $400 Opener and then head back to the Bay Area for a full week of work. But when I was about ready to leave Monday morning after finishing 14th out of 1458 in the Opener on Sunday, something in me wanted to give it one more shot. I knew I was playing great poker and I was on a mission to get a ring so I made a last minute decision to extend my trip and play the $400 Monster Stack. Obviously I’m glad I did.

The point I want to make in this blog is that the real challenge in closing it out yesterday wasn’t the technical aspect of poker. I’ve spent nearly two decades playing and studying the game and I’ve developed a style that works and suits my personality well. The challenge was to stay present in the moment as the goal approached and execute my game. When I bagged the chip lead for Flight A on Monday, I was already thinking about winning. Nothing else was going to satisfy me. The problem is that winning a poker tournament – or an athletic competition or anything in life – is not completely under one’s control. What the other players do, the randomness of the deck, etc… all determine who wins.

What each of us controls is our own decision making and self management in the moment. During the course of Monday’s Day 2, there were a number of times – when I won a few pots at the start of the day to push my stack from 895,000 to over 1.2 million which was where the Flight 1B chip leader started the day, when I won a big pot, as other players got eliminated, when I reached the final table, when I got heads up, etc… – that I started to think about winning the tournament. But to me that was the danger zone. That’s because – as I said in the previous paragraph – that outcome wasn’t entirely in my control.

The key in my opinion was to continually bring myself back to the present moment and the decisions and self management that were under my control. Focusing on those things that I could control gave me the best chance to execute poker at my highest capability which in turn gave me the best chance of winning the tournament. Thinking about winning the tournament was a distraction and a hindrance. And so time and again I had to stop day dreaming about winning or worrying that I would fall short and bring myself back to what I needed to do in that moment to play my best poker.

I won the poker tournament because I played my best poker – and because things outside of my control for the most part went my way. You have to get lucky to beat a 520 player field. I got lucky when a medium stacked player shoved Q10 suited into my Aces on the last hand of Day 1A and my hand held up to give me the chip lead for the flight. I got lucky when I flopped a set of 5s to knock out a reckless and dangerous player at the final table who I was very concerned about. But I made my own luck too by trusting the process and staying present in the moment.

Thanks to everybody for the kind words. It’s all much appreciated.