Yesterday, I lived like royalty in the 250K PKO Benjamin Bounty. Every early door opened in anticipation of my arrival, and Cinderella’s other shoe never dropped. After three or four levels, I found myself neck and neck at the top of the leader board. A couple of decent pots put me a few thousand clear. Then I was gifted KK UTG, appropriately enough, as it would turn out.
I raised 3.5 big blinds (pot raise). Second from the button intruded on my majesterial bliss by coming over the top. My first thought was aces, but then the button called her raise. The blinds folded, bringing it back to me.
I took a moment. I could be facing bullets and a hopeful lower pair, but my gut said it felt more like a low ace from the caller and a big one from the raiser.
I told myself the caller might have put the raiser and myself on AK/AQ and shoved if he was holding something like queens, jacks or tens. He hadn’t though, which had me leaning toward a middling ace. That in turm convinced me the raiser was holding AQ or a suited AJ.
In retrospect, I was definitely talking myself into a big play. I had ruled out putting her on AK due to my pair, but was happy to think they could each have an ace. We’d all prefer the other players in a three-way to be counterfeited than for it to be us, right?
Regardless, I wasn’t folding my hand. The chips were going in eventually, so why not now?
I shoved, figuring the raiser would call and the caller fold, but they both hopped into the back seat of my royal carriage together.
In any other tournament, I’d have probably looked like a fool when the raiser revealed aces and the caller on the button had tens, but in this ‘every dog has his day’ moment, I had read the hand very well. The raiser showed AQ and the caller A9. Both paired their low cards on the flop to give them false hope and me at least a little stress, but the turn and river had my back. In the blink of an eye, I had almost tripled my already chip-leading stack, leaving nothing but scorched earth between me and the rest of the field.
From there, I continued to be dealt eminently playable hands, broadway aces and kings in coordinated outfits, a pair of jacks, two nines, and a few suited connectors. A few rags were interspersed, and I folded those, but since my stack was more cushioned than a Maharaja’s harem, I raised all the good stuff, figuring I’d only ease up when people began to push back. No one did, however, and I padded my stack by another 25% without ever seeing a flop.
Then the player two places to my right spoke up in the chat.
“The chip leader hasn’t won a pot,” he wrote. “He’s just stealing blinds.”
“Yup,” someone else agreed. It’s easy to misinterpret a player’s tone of voice in the chat, but I had the distinct feeling this player was content to let me steal whatever I wanted after seeing me brutally decapitate two of my nearest rivals in a single hand.
“It isn’t right,” the original poster wrote. “Someone needs to do it to him. See how he likes it.”
I didn’t reply. He wasn’t wrong, nor was I breaking any rules. I continued raising for two or three more hands unopposed. After the blood bath with the kings, no one was willing to challenge me.
Then came a hand where I was holding 24 off in the big blind. Everyone folded to Che Guevera on the button. Expectantly, I waited for him to act. He had talked a good game in trying to rally the peasants. Here was his chance to back it up. While I waited with bated breath, he took his time over his cards, convincing me that a raise was coming, after which he would claim my subsequent fold was proof I had been bluffing the whole time.
That’s fine, I thought. He’ll just find out how wrong he is later.
Only the raise and the resultant table talk never came. As his time trickled into the red, he meekly folded.
I couldn’t help but laugh. Like the greater percentage of revolutions that never made it into the history books, his just petered out.
Nevertheless, he did make it to the final three, where sadly it was the eventual runner-up who busted him, not me.
That was the only pleasure I was denied, as in barely a half hour, I’d won a tournament in which nothing of consequence went against me. Briefly, I had tasted the virtual equivalent of a luxurious, entitled existence, the kind where every card is your friend and the chips just fall in your lap. After such a privileged experience, I can only conclude that Mel Brooks and Tom Petty were both right. It’s good to be king.
