ON THE BUTTON: The Best Call I Ever Made

Our fearless poker pundit went to Las Vegas in search of a WSOP bracelet, but things didn't go exactly as planned

Aug. 16, 2006

By Nick Lanteri
Bodog Nation Contributing Writer

It was the best call I ever made, and I wasn’t even sitting at the poker table.

I went to Vegas with the intention of playing in my first World Series of Poker event, then backed out.

Nope, never made it to the starting gate of Event No. 27 on July 18.

I wanted to win that bracelet as much as the other 2,000-plus hopefuls, but I mega-tilted less than 24 hours after stepping off the plane in Vegas. Guess it was a bad idea to sit at a $1-$2 No-Limit table the day before the big tournament, huh?

We unpacked Sunday (July 16) and headed right to the poker tables, and within an hour and a half of touching down in Vegas, my wife and I were playing some limit cash game poker after stumbling into the Mirage, the only place in town (it seems) that doesn’t pay off jackpot hands, such as royal flush, straight flush and four of a kind. Who knew? Of course, I flop quad 2s, the only flop I hit all week there, and got very little action. No jackpot either.

However, later that night, we headed back to our hotel at Paris-Las Vegas, and we were accumulating some valuable points on our casino cards (translation: comped rooms in Atlantic City) at the poker slots when my wife hit a royal flush for $1,000. Wow! Just when I start taking that girl for granted, she goes and does something that reminds me why I married her in the first place.

Blue Monday

Then Monday arrived, and that didn’t go as well as Sunday. Actually, it was the low point of my no-limit cash game career. Feeling good with money in my pocket after the wife’s score the night before, I sit down at the $1-$2 no-limit cash game at Harrah's and build a nice stack before disaster strikes ... twice! Awful timing, too, with the World Series of Poker tournament coming up the next day.

The first kick in the nuts began when I looked down at pocket aces in middle position. Win small pots and lose big pots with these cards, huh? They’re not kidding. Two limpers, I raise to $20 and am worried I won’t get any action because I’ve raised pre-flop maybe once or twice in the past two hours. However, I get a call from the big blind (tight player), and one of the limpers also calls, who is not surprisingly one of the few maniacs at the table. His hand was only good enough to limp with, but now he mumbles something about “pot odds” before calling.

Three to the flop, which is Q-8-3 with two hearts. Checks to me. I bet $50. Big blind folds and I get a call from the other player, who I have position on. Turn is a black 7, and now this maniac immediately leads out with a $100 bet, an obvious tell that he is trying to buy the pot right there, or at least semi-bluffing at it with some type of draw.

“Only $100? How much do you have left?” I ask while shaking my head.

“One-ten ... 115 maybe,’’ he says.

I put him all-in and he sits back, then says, “Wow, I had you on Ace-King and was hoping you’d fold. Okay, I call.”

It sounded like he was about to fold because he had made this very same move twice already, and then folded. Instead, the pot was now more than $550, and he wasn’t showing his cards as the dealer prepared to seal my fate.

I flip over the rockets, and the dealer peels off a four of hearts on the river, the third heart. Then the sickening sight of my opponent turning his cards over: King of hearts, two of hearts. Flushed me. K-2?

“You gotta be fucking kidding me?” was the best reaction I could come up with.

I was more upset that I got unlucky on the river - rather than berate this maniac - because who the hell wouldn’t want to be favored going to the river in a huge pot such as that?

Rest of the day was a blur. Drinking heavily will do that to a person.

The Day After

I woke up that Tuesday morning all pissed off after realizing that the day before wasn’t just a bad dream.

“The tournament (Event No. 27) starts at noon,” my wife says.

“Fuck that,” I snap back.

Give me credit for this. Instead of buying into a $1,500 WSOP tournament while on mega-tilt, I used the money to buy me and my wife into lower buy-in tournaments all over town the next few days. She bubbled out of a tournament, and the next day I went out on the bubble (seventh place) at Binions. It sucks to be the Bubble Boy, doesn’t it?

Still, it was a blast. Another trip next year? You bet. We’re heading back to Vegas during the 2007 WSOP. Whether or not I actually make it into a WSOP event is another story.

On the Button Mailbag

Nick Lanteri: Tyler, where is this cash game being played and how can I lock up a seat? Hmmm, you wanted to steal the $3 in blinds, and you raised the bet preflop with 6h-8h? If you play rags like that, and take a bad beat, is it really a bad beat? As soon as the board paired up on the flop, you should have put the brakes on the hand, but then you were pot committed after making the flush. I generally don't play hands at the cash table after it folds to me when I'm in position. Why bet into an empty pot? And three bucks in blinds is an empty pot! You created a high-risk, low-reward situation there for yourself with your actions preflop.

NL: Without a doubt, a beat like that is as bad as it gets because of the timing. There is no explanation for your opponent, who put his entire tournament on the line right there by calling with only a gutshot, but this donkey got rewarded for doing so. Makes you wonder how he got that far in a tournament when he called more than a three-times-the-blind raise with A-5 offsuit. The only thing worse than this sort of bad beat is that the sting actually wears off and you find yourself back at the table the next day. Good luck!

PHOTO: Thousands took a seat at this year's World Series of Poker, but one poker columnist was not lucky enough to be among the rounders. (AI Wire photo)

Nick Lanteri is a freelance writer based in Long Island, N.Y. His column appears monthly in Bodog Nation.