Caesar's Chop
The following story is true. I have witnesses, as hattrick8810, truesyalose, iLLNuGWichee and rusostreet were all there. However, those guys had been playing $1/$2 NL and drinking at Harrah’s all afternoon, so their version of the story will likely include Hasan Habib, two showgirls, a leprechaun, and some poor guy in a hotel bathtub full of ice whose kidneys are now missing. So unless you actually have evidence that I took that guy’s kidneys, we’ll stick with my version.
Those other fellas moved into Casa Bodog for the summer the weekend of June 16th, and I came up from San Diego for the weekend to hang out and swelter in the Vegas heat. Trues and Ruso went to play in the daily noon tournament at Caesar’s Palace on Saturday, and both had positive reports as to the blind structure (good, for a cheap live tournament) and quality of play (juicy, Junior…very juicy).
Over the first couple of levels, I hung around a little over the starting stack, taking down a thousand or so chips with KK against AK on a Q-high board and stealing a couple of blinds against a table of mostly very tight players. At level 3, with the blinds at 100/200/25, the button min-raised and I called with 97s. The button was a guy in his fifties who picked up his cards every time like someone playing 5-card draw in a Western movie. He was chip leader at the table with about 7500, raising a lot of pots, and always continuation betting the flop if he had the chance, the loose donkey at a table full of rocks. The flop came T86 rainbow, giving me the nuts, and it played out perfectly. I checked, he bet 500, I called. The turn was another T, I bet 700, he moved all-in, I called. His AT didn’t improve on the river, and I doubled up to almost 11,000. From there, I just played solid poker until we were down to two tables, and I had about 21,000 in chips.
When we moved to two tables just after the third break (about 4:30 PM), the player on my right had about 40k in chips, and was close to the chip leader at our table. The guy also kept checking his watch…he said he had an 8 PM flight, and had to head back up to Treasure Island first to pick up his car. I felt a little bit bad for the guy, as he was really friendly and obviously looking at a tough “sit or quit” situation, but I remembered some good advice I got a long time ago: “If you can’t play the whole tournament, don’t play any of it.” I had asked the desk before I registered how long it normally lasted, and he should have done the same. Anyway, I went on a nice rush at this table. I sucked out on an all-in short-stack with AJ against his AQ when a Jack hit the river. I knocked out a stack almost equal to mine when my 99 held against his AK. And as the blinds kept climbing, I started getting more and more aggressive. We moved to the Final Table of 9 players around 5:30 PM, with the blinds at 2000/4000/500, and my raises quickly got me the chip lead as we hit the fourth break. It would have been better if someone had gotten tired of me raising and played back when I held AA or KK in the first ten hands of the FT, but sometimes you don’t get action when you want it. On the last hand before the break, I raised and knew that the rest of the table would fold, as everyone visibly needed to pee. Trues was standing behind me and as I got up, he said, “Did you just raise from the 3-hole with J9 suited?” I replied, “No. I had J7 offsuit.” And that’s the truth.
Now, here’s where the story gets funny, interesting, and very frustrating, all at the same time.
We hit the fourth break a little after 6 PM with 7 players left. During the fourth break, the Friendly Guy spent the entire time on the phone with the airline, trying to find a later flight, but nothing was available to him. Friendly Guy and I were the two biggest stacks at the table. I had 92k, he was a little lower than me, and most of the other players were between 25k and 40k. The blinds were about to go up to 3000/6000/500. A couple of the smaller stacks proposed a straight 7-way chop, which would have given each of us around $1150, as there was $8000 left in the prize pool. This was a little less than 3rd-place money. Friendly Guy was all for it, as he just wanted to get out of there. The five smaller stacks thought it was great. I countered with a proposal to have the floor calculate a chip equity deal, as I estimated my cut would have been around $1900 (slightly better than the $1800 for 2nd), but I might as well have been talking Greek in a Roman palace. I wasn’t going to give away $800, and felt confident that I could run over the table to get at least 3rd, if not better. So I was the lone holdout on the chop, and we played on. I took quite a bit of abuse from the rest of the table and their friends on the rail, with the primary line being “You never know what could happen, you might not have the chip lead for long, karma’s a bitch, you should have taken the deal.” The Bodog boys had my back, to the point of the dealer asking me to tell me to tell them to shut up. Trues responded “hey, don’t have him tell me to shut up…you can tell me to shut up directly, I don’t care.” It was really hard to keep a straight face and concentrate on playing good poker.
Shortly after that, the 7th place finisher busted out. She was a frumpy middle-aged woman who probably could have really used the $700 difference between the $1150 from a chop and the $450 she ended up with. I went over to her to congratulate her on the game, and tell her that my refusal to chop was nothing personal. She said, very huffily, “You don’t know when you’re going to be at another Final Table, you should have chopped. The pros do it all the time.” I tried really hard to stifle a laugh, and replied “Yeah, but they don’t give gifts to the short stacks…they do it based on how many chips they each have left.” The heel in me wanted to let loose with a “How the bloody fuck do you know what the pros do?! And I’ll probably make another Final Table by Wednesday for a bigger prize pool than this, so go back home to your trailer and watch Celebrity Poker Showdown, you weak-tight, bad perm-having, muumuu-wearing, Jerry Springer-lovin’ cow.” But I’m a nice guy.
As it turns out, I doubled up one of the 40k stacks when my tens didn’t improve against his AA, I lost another coin flip, then two more hands where I was a 60-40 dog, and out I went in 6th for $550. I guess karma is a bitch after all. I’m sure they worked out a chop deal shortly afterwards and everyone went home happy. I hope Friendly Guy made his flight.
So, am I disappointed in my decision? Hell, no. I’d do the same thing again, every day. There are, however, a couple of lessons to be learned, things that I could have done better with if this wasn’t my first live tournament, and therefore my live chop experience.
1) If you can’t get the chip-equity idea to fly (probably because the rest of the table doesn’t get what you’re talking about), find another deal that gets you the same thing. Afterward, through his Ruso-haze, Mike said, “You should have just suggested that the other guys take $100 off their end for you and for the other big stack.” And the boy was right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. That probably would have flown with the desperate folks and would have gotten me close enough to what I should have had.
2) Don’t rely on the floor to handle the deal right, especially in a smaller tournament. The Tournament Director at Bellagio handled hattrick’s chop in his Saturday $1k win perfectly, having spreadsheets showing everyone’s chip count, cut %, and total payout within a couple of minutes. The floor at Caesar’s not only did NOTHING when I asked him to help, he flat-out lied to me to try and weaken my argument. I said that I had a little more than 25% of the chips in play at that break, and he said, “No, there’s over 400k in chips on the table.” Now, I knew that couldn’t be true. There were 79 players, each with 4500 chips, for a total of less than 360k. It was frustrating enough arguing with the other six players, most of who were looking on this FT as the pinnacle of their poker lives. Having to fight the floor, after assuming he was there to help, was much worse.
So, in conclusion, I have the following messages:
I didn’t make another Final Table by the following Wednesday. As it turns out, it was Thursday, in the FTP $69+6, with over twice the prize pool. So there.
That $1/$2 game at Harrah’s is apparently a bitch, as the Casa guys left it just to stand around and watch me play cards.
Trues will shut up if you tell him to.
If one of the Bodog crew offers an 80-way chop in one of the nightly $25k guaranteed tournaments, you should take it. It’s what the pros do.
