by Ira Glass
T.J.’s $400,000 threatens to make him Boss Hoss, a role he was surely born to play. And with Shulman’s vast stacks on my right, I’m developing a severe case of big-stack envy. A half hour later we lose Kathy Liebert. She entered a big pot with queens but lost to K♥ 10♦, then got bounced five hands later when someone called her K♦ 10♣ raise with a pair of queens, and that time the queens did hold up. Very brutal. But now I can barely keep from whooping when, sitting in the small blind, I find K♠ K♦. Even better is that Annie Duke, who’s playing without shoes or socks, has already raised it four pink. I reraise eight more and flash her what I hope is a friendly but confident smile. Her response is to say, “I’m all-in.” Terrified of aces, I call, timidly flipping my kings as Duke snaps down . . . Q♣ Q♥. This is good. What’s bad is that our table has suddenly become the matrix of Annie Duke fandom, all of them training a miasma of estrogen on to my innocent cowboys, willing them to be bushwhacked by ladies. Bob Thompson’s reminder that Annie’s the last woman left only whips them up further. Annieee! . . . You go, girl! . . . C’mon, queeeen! Yet in spite of all this, my brag book decrees that the cowboys stand up.
We come back from dinner to antes of $2,000, blinds of $5,000 and $10,000, with the final fourteen reconfigured as such:Table 1
1. MARK ROSE, $223,000
2. ANNIE DUKE, $130,000
3. HASAN HABIB, $330,000
4. CHRIS FERGUSON, $305,000
5. JIM MCMANUS, $450,000
6. STEVE KAUFMAN, $400,000
7. T. J. CLOUTIER, $540,000
Table 2
1. MICKEY APPLEMAN, $540,000
2. ROMAN ABINSAY, $330,000
3. ANGELO BESNAINOU, $70,000
4. TOM FRANKLIN, $450,000
5. JEFF SHULMAN, $440,000
6. ANASTASSIOS LAZAROU, $105,000
7. MIKE SEXTON, $385,000
What a player Appleman must be, having started the day with $6,000! I’m glad that he’s not at my table as, once again, we play hand for hand, aiming to get down to six. Between shuffles I get up and watch Angelo get bounced when his A♣ 6♠ goes down to Shulman’s A♦ 10♣.
I remind myself how much seven-handed action changes the value of pocket cards. Trouble hands like K♠ Q♦ or small pairs become cautiously playable, even from an early position. It’s crucial that I not only adjust but account for the fact that my opponents will, too. The amazing thing to me is how calm I now feel, as though vying for the lead late on Day 3 of the Big One is all in a night’s work. I can’t see the stacks on the other table, but I figure I’m in fourth, third, or second, and I understand that I can win.
I watch as Chris Ferguson makes what has become our standard preflop raise, $60,000, and with J♥ J♠ I am happy to call, especially since I’ve read Chris’s raise as positional. Kaufman and T.J. and Rose and then Annie all fold, but Hasan, in the big blind, calls too. This triggers the blend of “oh, shit” and “oh, well” that’s been percolating down through my brain each time I play a big pot. I’ve risked only sixty so far, but we’re likely to take it much higher. When the flop comes A♦ Q♦ 2♣, it’s more like “oh, shit” and “oh, shit.” The fecal sensation becomes more pronounced as Chris moves both hands behind his stacks, clasps them together with pale, bony fingers, and pushes them slowly toward the pot, making sure not to topple any of his precious pink towers. I ask him to count it. “Two-fifty,” he says, without counting. I believe him, and the dealer confirms it. Do I call an all-in bet with two overcards already on board? I don’t think so. At the same time, I don’t want no Fred Astaire wanna-be shoving me off my two jacks. T.J. and Annie and Slim all have their share of the photographers’ attention, but Jesus of late has become the new darling. Both the still guys and film people regularly zoom in on his badass Black Stallion hat with silver buckles adorning the brim, his wraparound shades whose convexity must make for some swank photographic effects—Fred Astaire meets Richard Petty, along with the Youngbloods hair and beard, the bona fide Jesusesque features. I’m sure they’re all pulling for him to win the whole thing, as opposed to some puffily unphotogenic dad-type like me. But darn it all, I’m bad as well! Haven’t they noticed my space-age titanium shades, or the stain on my top right incisor from smoking Cambodian opium? And what about the four-color tatts of Sade and Genet on my scrotum? . . . I flip my jacks into the muck. Too many overcards, plus no read whatever on Chris.
But I only have to wait three more hands till I get my first chance at redemption, looking down to find what certainly looks like Big Slick. I peer in again to make sure. Yessiree, it’s A♦ K♣. Swallowing as discreetly as possible, I wait my turn before pushing ten orange toward the unraised pot. The instant that Steve Kaufman mucks, T.J. shoves forward a tall stack of pink, snarling, “Raise.” He may not have actually snarled, but that’s how it registers in my soul. And whatever the participle or verb, it’s another $100,000 to me.
In the final chapter of Super/System, Brunson claims that A-K are his favorite pocket cards because you win more with them when you make a hand and lose less when you don’t; whereas A-Q, just one pip below it, is a hand he famously refuses to play under any circumstance. T.J.’s book stresses that you have to win both with and against A-K. “It’s the biggest decision-hand in a tournament.” He considers it so decisive that in four of his twelve practice hands, the reader is given A-K. And be still my computerized, book-learnin’ heart and suck in my un-Christlike cheeks, but I just have a feeling that T.J. is making a play. And I want him to go on making it. Yet with four hundred large in the pot, what the hay is a feeling? The short answer runs something as follows: T.J. writes that when he gets raised holding A-K, his response depends on who made the raise. I’ve studied the passage so obsessively, I believe I can quote it verbatim. “There are times when I will just flat call the raise. There are times when I will try to win the money right then by reraising. And there are times when I will simply throw the hand away. It all depends on what I know about my opponent.” Not to get overly granular here, but I think T.J. thinks he can push me around, so I feel I should give him a call. Playing against him these last two nights has made it clear he’s a guy on whom nothing is lost—just his chips in this case, if I’m right. If I’m wrong, I’ll be out of the tournament.
“Call.”
The flop of my life comes a baby rainbow: 2♣ 5♥ 4♦. I still have boss overcards, plus a nice belly draw to a wheel; but I also have nada. Same draw for T.J., I’m guessing, since I’ve put him on a medium ace. He’s not the kind of guy to reraise with A-3—unless he has Kryptonite testes or assumes he can bluff me with garbage, both of which are probably operative. I recall that in Practice Hand 4, the flop comes three babies. If Player A bets, T.J. quizzes the reader, what do you do? “You throw your hand away. Why? Because you have nothing. In no-limit hold’em, you never chase”—about the dozenth time he’s restated the never-chase maxim. Assuming he knows that I know this, I chase. The instant I tap the felt checking, T.J. mutters, “Two hunnerd thousand” and his entire stack of pink chips disappears into his hand, to be deftly redeposited between him and the pot in four stacks of five. His fingers don’t seem to be trembling.
“Call,” I croak finally, making a virtue of necessity by trying to sound like I’ve lured poor T.J. into my trap, an impression I hope isn’t risibly belied as my vibrating digits fumble to count twenty pink. I can’t bear even to glance in T.J.’s direction, so I cannot say how he reacts to the turn card, the seven of diamonds, which as far as I’m concerned changes exactly nothing. I check.
“I’m all-in,” T.J. says. No surprise here, since he’s been trying to buy the pot all along. A third enormous bet doesn’t scare me any less, or any more, than the first two did. Except now he has put me all-in.
“I call.”
Thompson notes for the gallery that T.J. has me covered by a hundred thousand or so. What he doesn’t say is that if his fellow Texan has even a pair of deuces, I’m finished. T.J. turns over an ace and a nine, muttering
something I can’t quite make out because of the buzz off the rail. When I turn over macho Big Slick, there are oohs, aahs, applause, and T.J. appears mildly shocked. Amid the gathering uproar, Thompson announces our hands. A trey will give us both wheels, a nine and I’m kevorked. Anything else, the pot’s mine. My sense, as the dealer’s right fist thumps the table, is that T.J. is going to catch. . . .
“Jack of clubs on the river,” drawls Thompson. “Jim McManus wins eight hundred and sixty-six thousand and becomes the new chip leader.” Benny Behnen and Amarillo Slim have been standing behind the table for the last several hands, and Benny now drawls, “Jesus Chrahst!”
“Ah’d bet on that boy,” Slim drawls back. “He’s got the heart of a cliff divah.”
“T.J. taught me everything I know about this game,” I announce. “Read his book and you’ll see.” If I had my copy on me, I would brandish it aloft for the cameras. T.J. stubs out a Salem, not pleased. “It didn’t teach you that, boy,” he growls, with what I hear as a trace of contempt. Now, the last man on earth I would taunt is T.J. Cloutier. I also remember how showing my queen to Kathy Liebert didn’t seem to assuage her. Not that it’s my job to assuage either one of them . . .
This former cliff diver, though, is gonna sit good and tight with his chip lead. After thirteen hours at the table and staring down T. J.’s three barrels, he’s got cobwebby spermatozoa floating through his vitreous humor. So he’s not even tempted to play a 3♦ 8♥, J♥ 5♣, or even A♥ 7♥. No, sir. He also decides not to raise but to limp. And Duke, one off the button, cooperates beautifully, raising to $60,000. Hasan and Chris fold. Hasan stands up, yawning and stretching, to watch. And then I’m yawning, too, just as I happen to start moving $150,000 toward the pot; judging by the size of Duke’s stack, it’s enough to have set her all-in. The next thing I know, both Kaufman and the dealer are citing me for a string raise, claiming I went back into my stack for more chips without saying, “Raise.” I realize they’re right and apologize. The dealer determines that the amount in my hand as it started forward was $60,000, which happens to be the minimum allowable raise of Annie’s original bet. And boy, she’s not happy. My raise doesn’t set her all-in, but since she only has $140,000 left, she’s been priced in. She turns to her entourage. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in a tournament!” she shrieks—and shrieks, I’m afraid, is the word. “Let me call that myself,” she chides Kaufman, and for a moment I’m cheering her on, till she adds, “I would’ve been glad to let him go to his stack for more!” She runs a hand up through brown bangs, jangling her wrist load of beads, braided leather, plastic bangles. That she would have been “glad” to let me put her all-in suggests she has a premium hand, and that she was so overwrought when she said it makes it impossible to believe she was acting. I have to put her on something better than a lousy pair of jacks, do I not? But so why, after my raise was scaled down to sixty, didn’t she simply reraise me?
The flop comes A♣ Q♣ 8♣, about as bad it can be for my jacks, so I check to the shrieker. “All-in,” she says, sliding her stacks in. She has a live human being inside her—her third—but that’s not the reason I fold. No way can I call even a hundred grand more, though the pot odds declare that I should. Not with them overcards squatting pregnantly on the baize. It isn’t the toughest laydown I’ve made, but it still smarts to have to muck johnnies again. This is, after all, two-card chicken we’re playing, and things can change fast on fourth street and fifth street . . .
“I changed my mind,” Duke announces, then graciously shows me an ace before mucking. “That’s the best thing that ever happened to me in a tournament.” Big applause from the rail. Hang in there, Annie! . . . Chicks ruuule! Yet who can I blame but myself and Steve Kaufman? If I’d been competent to set her all-in before the flop, when all she probably had was a medium ace, she almost certainly would have folded; but for only $60,000, she was still sufficiently tied to the hand to make a crying call correct. Then she caught that huge piece of the flop. So my little snafu while trying to put her all-in cost me $120,000 and handed Jeff Shulman the lead. If I’d simply said, “Raise,” I’d be sitting on over a million.
To stem this new ebb tide, I resolve to enter no pots for the next fourteen hands unless I find aces or kings. I watch two rounds go by without a flop, a single raise being enough to capture the blinds. Meanwhile, at the other table, Sexton and Lazarou get bounced on consecutive hands.
Level 15 brings with it $3,000 antes and $15,000 and $30,000 blinds, but my chips are still copious enough to let me relax, await monsters. Anyone in his right mind would follow this plan, yet when I find A♣ 9♦, I flash back to what Annie just did to me and call Chris’s raise to $60,000. Hasan calls as well. When the flop comes A-Q-5 rainbow, Chris says, “All-in.”
“Jim has about $700,000 in chips,” declares Thompson, “Chris and Hasan, oh, I’d say about half that.”
If I call and lose I’m out of the tournament; if I win I’ll not only guarantee playing tomorrow but I’ll have a huge lead in the sprint for the $1.5 million. Yet every last piece of advice I’ve received says no way do you call in these situations unless holding the absolute nuts. I do have top pair, but I lose to any kicker above nine. I wish I had some kind of read on this Jesus character. He’s certainly capable of bluffing, but he’s also extracted quite a few fishes and loaves from his butt in the last twenty minutes. My mouth for some reason says, “Call,” and Chris turns over . . . A♥ 9♠. I pause long enough to give him decent psychological scourging before I let him off the hook and show mine. Shaking our heads as the crowd goes bananas, we triple-check the board for a flush draw; finding none, we both burst out laughing. His slender blond wife stands behind him, wrist to her forehead, recounting the split on her cell phone. In the meantime, on the very next hand, Annie goes all-in again, only to have Chris call and show pocket aces. Revealing the fateful A♠ 9♠, Annie never catches up, so she’s out. As she slowly gets up, Thompson announces that Annie’s tenth-place finish is the highest by a woman since Barbara Enright came in fifth in 1995, and the $52,160 makes Annie the leading female money-winner in World Series history. After watching her play for a week, I doubt this will cheer her up much. She’s a cowgirl.
Down to nine men, we are ranged around one table: Ferguson in seat one with $800,000, then Habib with $400,000, me with $950,000, Cloutier with $550,000, Abinsay with $420,000, Appleman with $240,000, Jeff Shulman with $1,000,000, Captain Tom Franklin with $600,000, and Steve Kaufman with $220,000. Sitting just to my left, T.J.’s in perfect position to hammer his student, like he’s been trying to do for two days. Plus he now has revenge as a motive.
For the next hour or so, the standard preflop raise is ninety or a hundred thousand, usually enough to take down the blinds. From time to time one of us reraises all-in, but in each case the original raiser gives the reraiser credit by folding. Then, in very short order, this happens: Abinsay, from under the gun, brings it in for $60,000, and Appleman calls with his last $58,000. With the J♠ 10♠, I’m tempted to make it a three-way, but I follow the no-chasing dictum. Thank God and Cloutier too, because none of my straight or flush cards appear on the board as Roman’s A♠ K♠ easily holds up over Mickey’s A♦ 10♣. Two hands later Captain Tom wagers his last $118,000 before the flop, and Ferguson calls him with tens. When the Captain shows fours and the board gives no help, we are seven.
One more unfortunate bet and it’s bedtime, but nobody wants to finish in seventh. As in every WSOP event, the last nine players receive commemorative final-table jackets; there’s also a hefty difference in prize money ($146,700 for seventh versus $195,600 for sixth); but the main reason for our lull in aggression is that tomorrow’s final table will seat only six, owing to the Discovery Channel’s need for compressed action in their documentary. Since we all want to be in the movie, not one all-in bet gets a call for the next forty minutes. The guy forcing most of the action is Jeff, and he steadily builds up his stack. I’d love to know whether he�
�s doing it with legitimate hands, but I’m not catching cards to find out with. One mistake against Jeff and you’re gone, whereas he can guess wrong and still play.
Finally, finally, one off the button, I find aces, the first time I’ve seen them all day. But my ecstasy ratchets down notch by notch as Kaufman, then Chris, then Hasan, muck their hands. At this point I’m tempted to limp, though I know it would be read as a trap. The $66,000 in antes and blinds I’ll win by raising is hardly chump change, but when you find pocket rockets you want to eviscerate people. Masking my chagrin, I make the minimum raise to $60,000, hoping someone will come blasting back over the top of my show of timidity. Not this time. T.J. even shoots me a rare little smile as he folds, and Roman and Jeff are also un-tempted to call.
Three hands later, Jeff raises $200,000 from the button. Kaufman ponders defending his $15,000 small blind for a moment, then passes, leaving Chris, in the big blind, to reflect on his options for another thirty seconds. “What would Jesus do?” a shrill railbird wonders aloud, getting laughs. The answer is: move all seven of His tidy stacks toward the pot, reraising $650,000. Hasan and the rest of us scram. Jeff stares at Jesus for maybe ten seconds, then shrugs almost meekly and calls. When he turns over 7♥ 7♣—not really much of a hand to be calling a big stack all-in with—there are whispers and cries of astonishment. Then Chris shows us . . . 6♣ 6♠! In absolute crunch time, the twenty-three-year-old Shulman has somehow made a veteran read of his opponent, leaving Chris with two outs. As auto-advance cameras fire away and the railbirds go silent, the flop comes 10♥ 3♥ . . . 6♥! Having flopped a miraculous set, Jesus vaults from his chair. And yet Jeff, for all his hellacious bad luck, has a flush draw—nine outs right there, to go with the two other sevens. Jesus’s lean, foxy wife, Cathy Burns, has her palms on her ears, a Munch screamer, as voices call out for sixes or sevens or hearts. When 5♣ hits on the turn, Jeff has a straight draw as well, though Chris is still the 2 to 1 favorite. The dealer turns fifth street: a ten. No heart flush, no seven. As Jeff slumps back in his chair, Chris dances out of his, the sooner to be locked in a tango embrace from Ms. Burns. No celebratory peck for these two, but a lingering soul smooch while they twirl one another around.