I awoke Friday with the pressure of knowing that if I didn't win my seat in the main event today then I would not be playing. I headed over to the Horseshoe for a late breakfast and as I was eating I noticed a line starting to form in the hallway outside the restaurant. I knew the only tournaments being held today were satellites and I coudn't believe that they were lining up this early for the 2 pm event. I finished breakfast and headed out to investigate. I was wrong. This was the line for the 2 pm event registration so I jumped in as people poured into the hallway and the line continued to grow, snaking its way down the hallway past the gift shop and towards the escalators.
The line inched forward as players paid their $225 entry fee and recieved a receipt with their seat assignment. It took me over an hour to get to the registration table and pay my entry so I was glad that I got in line when I did. After getting my seat assignment I headed back to my hotel room as I had about 2 hours until the tournament would start. As I strolled through the poker room at the Golden Nugget on the way to my room, I noticed a table tucked in the corner with two guards around it. As I got closer I saw why. Sitting at the table was probably the greatest collection of high stakes poker players in the world. Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Phil Ivey, Bobby Baldwin, Sammy Farha, Gus Hansen and a few others. On the felt in front of them were piles ofcolored chips that aren't often seen inside the casino by most visitors. Several players had at least a million dollars in chips in front of them putting the cash value of the table in the $10 million range. They were playing mixed poker games for limits of $4000 and $8000. That means in a hand of Hold 'em with no raises it would cost you about $24,000 to play a single hand to the river. I was informed by the floorman that the minimum buy-in to sit and play with them was $250,000. I watched them play for a few minutes and headed up to my room.
I walked back over to the Horshoe a little before 2 pm ready to play and feeling confident. I found my table and seat and the dealer was already there so that was a good sign it might start on time. After a few minutes an announcement was made that the tournament would be delayed in starting due to the fact that there were still several hundred playes in line waiting to buy-in. Since I didn't want to miss the first hand, I waited at the table as the minutes ticked away and the room became a sea of anxious players and dealers. Over an hour later, at about 3:15, another announcement was made asking us to please take our seats as the event was about to get under way. A record 580 players had registered and we were finally going to get started. With that many plyers I knew there would be at least 12 seats awarded and after rebuys it might be double that. That still meant I had to finish in the top 4% of the field. We started with $500 in chips and blinds of $25, which didn't give you a lot of room to work with and they'd be going up every 20 minutes! I'd have to play aggressive but cautiously at the same time. I noticed there were alot of pros playing in this event, and I can't blame them. Why not save the $10,000 and get into the main event at a discount? I could see alot of familiar faces at the table around me, and I knew I would be playing against some of them soon. I managed to survive the first hour without having to rebuy and made it to the first break with about $1700 in chips. Not bad, but not great either as the blinds were now $100-$200 and I had to be very careful about what hands I played while not waiting too long as the blinds were going up every twenty minutes and would simply eat away at your chips if you tried to wait for the best cards each hand. I don't remember many specific hands but I do remember getting both alot of great starting cards and hitting alot of flops so my chips started to accumulate to the point where I was the chip leader at the table and could put alot of pressure on the other players by raising almost every hand I played. As players are eliminated they break down tables and combine players at new tables with the ultimate goal being a final table of nine players and eventually one winnner. Of course in this event we would play until there were as many players as there were $10,000 prizes to award. I had to guestimate how many players were left and I figured that since there were 580 starting players with $500 in chips then I would need a stack of at least $24,000 in chips to be close to winning a seat. I made that my goal and as I look back on it now I still don't remember exactly how I did it, but I kept winning and my chips kept growing.
About 5 or 6 hours into the tournament we were down to about 150 players and I had about $40,000 in chips so I felt pretty good, but I knew it would only take a few mistakes to blow it all. The number of players kept dwindling and finally I found myself upstairs in the main tournament room (we started with tables spread out over two floors of the casino) with only 6 tables left and 54 players. They finally announced that there was over $270,000 in the prize pool which meant there would be 26 prizes of $10,000 each and the 27th player would get the remaining cash; not enough to buy-in to the main event, but not bad for a few hours work either. I knew I had enough chips to survive so I really concentrated on playing smart, not getting involved in marginal hands and waiting for others to screw up and get eliminated. If this had been a regular tournament with tiered prizes for first place, second place, etc., then I would have used my chips to play more aggressively and concentrate on making the final table, but since I had a good shot at winning a seat, my main goal was just to make it to the final 26 players. I remember folding alot of great hands that I would normally play, even Ace-King and a pair of queens before the flop, but there really was no point at risking it this late. I guess I would have played a pair of aces, but the pressure was intense. When we got down to about 30 players, I found that myself and Amarillo Slim, one of the greatest poker players and gamblers of all time, were the chip leaders. It was quite a rush and meant that we would be getting some extra cash for our efforts. As players were eliminated one by one, victory was so close I could feel it. Each table was playing "hand-for-hand" which means that the dealers at each table deal at the same time and then wait for each table to finish their current hand before dealing the next hand again simultaneously. The reason they do this is to prevent players from playing slowly and trying to hang on by stalling the action while play would continue at the other tables. It makes it more fair and it is done when you get close to awarding the prize money. The 29th player was eliminated and then every player knew that it might take only one more hand to end this. The 28th player was finally knocked out and the tournament ended shortly after 11 pm with 26 of us getting $10,000 prizes and the 28th player got the remaining cash in the pot, about $4000. The 26th player actually won his seat with a single $500 chip left in his hand, which is the exact amount of the ante needed to play the next hand.
We had been playing for about 8 hours and I had so much adrenaline pumping through me I couldn't even think about being tired. We were all excited and there was alot of high fives and congratulating to be done with the kid with one chip left getting alot of the attention for his incredible luck.
It took about an hour for the tournament director to pass out the paperwork for us to sign to collect our prizes; twenty beautiful blue $500 tournament entry chips and $200 in cash. We then took the chips to the tournament registration desk and turned them in for an entry ticket to the main event with our table and seat assignment. I would be starting the next day in the main tournament room just two tables away from the ESPN-televised feature table.
I was walking on air as I headed back to my room to try to sleep. The biggest tournament of my young poker career would be starting at high noon, just a few hours away! (to be cont....)
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