#782 – 2009 WSOP #40 – Vegas on $2,000 a Day #6 – No One Knows Where the Hobo Goes When it Snows

Friday night 9:30 pm.

I just busted from the $2,500 OEOB/SEOB in forty-eighth place, eight spots from the money on the last hand from the break. I’m struggling to find a word that describes how I feel right now. I played well and I have busted out of many tournaments but busting out of this tournament after this amount of time is a little different. But I can’t come up with the word.

It’s not an angry feeling but it’s a feeling of loss and, whether or not deserved, shame. I started today in the bottom 20 with 150 players left. By the first break I was well above average. But it was hard, hard going.

I continually had to rebound from being short and did.

Unfortunately, I lost most of my chips in Omaha with a starting hand of A-K-Q-2 double-suited and making nothing after a flop of 7-8-9 with two of my suit. raising with A-deuce-K-Q and hitting nothing after a flop of 7-8-9. But I couldn’t even call the bet on the river. In my final hand, where I could have tripled up, I had four good low cards and four hearts by fifth street in SEOB when I was all in. But I never made a fifth low or a fifth heart.

Jon Turner put me out of both hands. He was, as always, a gentleman, and offered his hand saying, “Nice playing with you Mike.” And I said something like, “It will be a great story if you win the bracelet, and now I’ll be free to cover it.” But even then I was overstaying my welcome. I went back to the Undisclosed Location and ran into Steve Wong with whom I tangled repeatedly and without success yesterday.

“How many chips do you have?”

“Zero.”

There’s really nothing he can say there that doesn’t make it worse … but that didn’t stop him from trying.

“Oh, you just missed going out on the bubble.”

As I left the room, Jennifer Harman and Marco Traniello were walking in.

“Did you see who won the heads-up?” Jen asked, referring to Nick Schulman’s heads-up in No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven World Championship.

Considering how I was living and dying with her, so many times from the rail and then had her busted in this tournament only to have her fluke two pair against my aces, I wanted to get some empathy. “No,” I said, head down. “I didn’t hear.”

So I walked down the hall out of the convention center. It almost felt like I was invisible. They’re coming back from break in that event – which used to be MY event – and I can’t seem to meet eyes with anyone.

But what’s that word? It’s not “drained” but I definitely feel drained. My adrenaline supply has run down. But I also feel ashamed. This was an event with a lot of elite players and my finish was shorthand for, “You’re not there.” I’ve now gone twenty-two WSOP events since my previous cash. This is my second near-miss in a mixed-limit game, both times returning from the dead and building a stack, only to have it pulled out from under me just short of the money.

When I showed up to the Rio today, I was thinking about driving home for a couple days. But those thoughts disappeared as my fortunes soared and stayed aloft.

Now what? Will you see me in the Amazon Room at the $1,500 NLHE tomorrow or in the $1,500 HORSE on Sunday? Or in the satellite room? Or writing from the condo or the undisclosed location? Or playing the weekend tournaments on Full Tilt?

No one knows where the hobo goes when it snows.

Addendum: five minutes after I finished writing this, I figured out the word.

Worthlessness.

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