My Proudest Moment In Poker

I’m a big believer in the idea that poker is a microcosm of life. That is, the situations and challenges you face in poker – as in sports – share the same features as the situations and challenges you face in life. The characteristics that it takes to be successful in poker and sports are the same ones that it takes to be successful in life.

Which brings me to my proudest moment in poker. It happened five months ago today at the $1k Bay 101 Last Saturday tournament on April 27, 2024. There were about 25 players left and I had a good stack that was about to become the biggest stack when all the chips were in against my opponent with me holding A9 off against his A4 off on A9X rainbow. He needed running 4s to beat me with the odds of that happening at less than 1 in 1000. But the turn was a 4 and sure enough the river was too. I was in shock. Couldn’t believe it. “How could this happen to me?” From the chip lead to a short stack in – what for me – was a big spot.

At that moment I faced a choice. Give in to my emotions and essentially give up. To let the feelings of unfairness – “Why me?” – control me would have meant immediately spewing all my chips. But – while it wasn’t easy – I found a way to let those thoughts and feelings wash over me without giving in to them. I processed the hurt, disappointment, sense of cosmic injustice, etc…. and found a way to regroup and give myself the best possible chance to win despite what had happened. And I ended up doing a 5-way chop for nearly $16,000 – the largest score of my poker career.

When one of the Bay 101 dealers who was playing the tournament busted after I’d recouped most of my chips he came over to me and said: “I’ve never seen anything like that in poker before. I was sure you’d be out in 15 minutes after that bad beat. Great job!” I’m forever grateful for him to saying that to me because he understood the resilience it took to come back from that. The truth is that I’ve been through worse in my life and I drew on that to maintain my composure. “It’s just poker”, I told myself. “You’ve been through a lot worse than this.”

On Saturday I was working out. It was the end of a long weight lifting session and I had finished my sets of squats and was transitioning to deadlifts. I was tired and I wasn’t using a lot of weight. I thought I could lift the bar from the rack, place it on the lower j-hooks and then place it on the floor to prevent myself from having to unload and then reload the plates. Unfortunately, it was more weight than I could handle in that movement and when I removed the bar from the rack and tried to place it on the lower j-hooks the force wrenched my wrist.

After a few days of pain and stiffness despite a lot of Advil and icing I decided I needed to see a Doctor. I was hopeful that it would turn out to be just a sprain that would heal in a week or so but unfortunately it wasn’t. There was damage to my TFCC tendon which required that I be put in a cast for four weeks. And then it will take a few more weeks to regain my strength and range of motion. No weight lifting, no swimming, no basketball, no tennis. A big setback to my training routine.

At first I was extremely depressed. I literally went to sleep for two hours after returning from the Doctor Thursday, got up for an hour and went back to sleep for another two hours. I couldn’t deal with the overwhelming negative emotions. I felt like my entire training routine would have to be put on hold for at least six weeks.

But as I reflected on the situation and tried to be resilient I realized that this wasn’t the case. I could still work out my lower body – though I couldn’t do barbell squats or deadlifts. And I didn’t have to completely stop training my upper body though I couldn’t lift with my right hand or swim. I could still lift with my left arm which allowed me to reframe the situation as follows: “My left arm has always been the weaker one. While I can’t train my right side, I can focus on my left side and use this as an opportunity to build it up and overcome what has always been a weakness of mine.”

And so on Friday morning I went to the gym and did a modified workout. I lifted weights with my legs – though I couldn’t do barbell squats or deadlifts – and I did the dumbell excercises I would normally do for my whole upper body except I only used my left arm. While not ideal it was the best adaptation I could make to the situation and I was happy with myself for making it.

I also thought I’d have to miss the Thunder Valley WSOP Circuit $400 Opener that I’d been looking forward to but – encouraged by my workout – I decided to drive up to Sacramento and give it a shot. I didn’t even know if I’d be able to look at my cards without exposing them with my cumbersome cast. At any rate, I registered a little before 12pm (the flight started at 10am) and subsequently ran up my 20,000 starting stack to 332,000 by the end of the day (6pm) to bag the sixth largest stack out of 257 players.