A Cool Half a Million

"In a battle of power and patience, take patience everytime."


Monday was probably the coolest poker experience of my life. I was looking on cardplayer.com on Sunday night and seeing if any big names had made final tables. I noticed the name Adam Hourani in the final 27 of the Omaha $5,000 buy in with Rebuys event. This is one of the biggest events of the series. Back at the end of May, I was introduced to a guy named Adam at the bar, whose poker screen name was Houdini (close to Hourani), and played high stakes Omaha for a living. He also told me he was staying at Panorama while he was out here. I decided there was a chance this was him, and looked him up on facebook. Sure enough, Adam Hourani was the same kid I was taking shots with at the Post on a random Thursday night. I face booked him Sunday night, and woke up Monday to see he had made the final table and accepted my facebook friendship (YESSS!!!) I sent him a quick note on facebook, telling him who I was, congratulating him on making the final table, and telling him to give me a shout if he wanted to go out. He told me they were gonna go out that night to celebrate the final table and call him and if I wanted to go.

Anyways, back to what was so cool poker wise about the entire day. Cardplayer.com described this as “possibly the best final table in World Series history.” Johnny Chan, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, John Juanda, and David Bennaymine were the big name TV pros. The other 3 are all big name online professionals who have made millions. Phil Galfond (OMG Clay Aiken) and Brian Rast (T Sarrast) being 2 of the biggest online winners of all time. Everything I read going into the final table, gave my buddy Adam 0 chance. He entered 8th place in chips out of 9 and was expected to exit quickly.

The final table started at 2, and I walked up to Adam before and wished him good luck. I figured I’d watch for an hour or so before he busted. Little did I know I would be there until 2:30 am. About an hour in Adam doubled up through Daniel Negreanu, giving him 400,000 chips and a fighting chance (the chip leader had 1.5 million.) The action was very slow and 2 hours in no one had been eliminated. I introduced myself to Adam’s brother (Pollo), and ended up sitting with him. At about 4:15, the bodies began to drop. First out was Tsarrart, then Phil Helmuth, Daniel Negreanu, and John Juanda. Suddenly, the table was down to 5 players, and Adam had made $100,000 more since the final table began ($170,000 total). Every hour or so the players would have a quick break, and Adam would come over to his brother and myself and shoot the shit with us. It was pretty cool for it to be the biggest poker moment in this kids life, and he was talking to me like I was his good buddy, and not some random kid who was in it for the after party. Anyways, it is hard to convey the tension and excitement in the room, and the fact that live poker is generally boring makes it hard to write about. Johnny Chan went out in 5th blowing a huge chip stack at the final table through horrendous plays. Adam’s biggest pot to this point came when he raised under the gun 4 handed. Serge, another online pro reraised to 220,000, if Adam called he would have 400,000 chips left and it was still possible for him to fold on the flop. Serge on the other hand was essentially committing himself to this pot by re-raising. The flop came KK5 and Serge went all in. Adam almost instants called revealing KT97 double suited (a strong, but not great starting hand) and Serge flipped AA22. Adam had him crushed. Adam’s hand held and he was suddenly in contention for a bracelet, not bad for a kid from East Lansing.
My favorite part of the day was our dinner break. Essentially, Phil Galfond had 3 million chips, and Adam and David Benyamine both had 1.6 million. On our way to dinner David Bennyamine’s publicist caught up to our group. She told Adam she had just talked to David and he descried Adam as “an unbelievable Omaha player.” Not bad coming from the guy who is widely regarded as the best Omaha player in the world. We stopped so Brian Rast (the 9th place finisher) could take a piss and David Bennaymine, along with his famous (in the poker world) girlfriend Erica Schoenberg (hot), approached. I don’t want to publish (even on my blog read by 5 people) what they discussed, but it was very cool to be privy to that discussion. Just ask me if you want to know. Anyways, we went to the American Grille for dinner. This is a casual steakhouse, with a menu full of steaks and seafood. I really wanted chicken fingers or a burger, but figured these high rolling online poker players I was with would certainly order steaks. Adam’s brother went first and ordered the chicken fingers, next was Tsarrant (online poker millionare) who also ordered the chicken fingers, followed by Adam who needed a nutritious meal before returning to play for just under a million dollars (first was $820,000.) Of course, nothing could be more nutritious then deep fried chicken and French fries so he got the same thing. This left me no choice, I would also have to get the chicken fingers.

So here we are over dinner, listening to Brian’s stories of winning and losing a million dollars in a month and discussions of his matches vs. Durr (regarded along with OMG Clay Aiken as the best 2 online players in the world) and we are all enjoying meals off of the kiddie menu. This is when I knew I was in the right profession. I am guessing if I was sitting with 2 of the top lawyers in the world, I would not be able to order the chicken fingers without looking like a fool.

I am gonna describe in a quick paragraph what took over 4 hours to happen. When the players returned from dinner, Bennyamine was in the mood to gamble and was quickly eliminated in 3rd place. This left Phil Galfond and Adam playing heads up for the gold bracelet and $820,000 first prize. Adam was well behind in chips when the match started and and never got it closer than a 3.8 to 2.6 million chip disadvantage. Pollo and myself were getting pretty drunk in the crowd and doing our best to cheer loudly every time Adam won a pot. Phil definitely had the crowd on his side, as it was essentially a who’s who of online poker cheering him on. The match finally ended around 2:15 am and we waited around while Adam was interviewed and Phil was presented with the bracelet. We then ran off to the poker cage, where Adam sat up a wire transfer for close to half a million dollars. What a sicko. Pollo, Adam, myself, and Dave drove back to Panorama to change our shirts then head to Jet where another player had already got table.

I was already pretty drunk by this point and don’t really know what happened during the hour we spent at Jet. All I know is the bass was loud, we had a table on the club floor and Adam got a bottle of Goose while someone else got a bottle of Crown. Pollo was only in town for 1 night and wanted to gamble, so the 4 of us left the club and hit the Mirage casino. We plopped down at Judith’s blackjack table who proceeded to take every dime I had brought (I had smartly left the majority of my money back at the condo when we changed.) All in all this was about an $800 hit. We then ventured to the $1-2 no limit hold em tables to donk around in some cash games after I hit the ATM. For some reason when you are drunk and playing way below the limits you normally play, it is a huge thrill to just act arrogant and shove all your chips in with any 2 cards. This is universally done by all successful poker players I have ever met. So this is what we did. Before I could blink I was down $400. Adam had dropped a few hundred, David was up a bit having called my open shove of AQ with nine deuce offsuit and spiking the deuce. Pollo had just lost his stack and everyone was ready to go. I had around $300 in front of me and told them to give me one more hand. I picked up 6 4 offsuit in the big blind. Someone raised to $10, and the Small Blind who had seen this act before just called the $10 out of the Small blind. I quickly shoved all in. The original raiser called and the SB shoved all in for $500 more. As the original raiser was determining whether or not to call the additional raise, the asshole in the small blind reveals he has AA. A huge breach of poker etiquette. The original raiser knowing the SB has AA, still makes the call. The pot was about $800. The flop came 37Q, the turn was a 10. My only chance at winning the pot was for the river to be a 5. Boooooom!!!! Sure enough the river peeled a 5, and I scooped in an $800 pot. The dickhead in the small blind was visibly upset that this drunk ass just cracked his aces. I quickly stacked my chips and that was that, we were headed home. It was bright as day by the time we got home (around 7 am.) All in all this was my favorite day in Vegas. I met some of the best online players in the world and went to the after party of a friend who had just made half a mill. I can’t even describe how much respect I have for Adam. The kid had met me once before, but treated me like I had been one of his best friends. I am sure he was happy to have someone else cheering for him, but he introduced me to a lot of cool people and played ridiculously well in the tournament shipping the cool half a mill.

Random Thoughts

While watching the tournament from the second row in the early stages, Mike Matusow, Joe Hachem, and Eli Elezra were sitting directly in front of us. Phil Hellmuth was consistently coming over talking about how bad he runs, but how good he plays. The man is no different whether the cameras or on or not. Also, Matusow is the same in real life regardless of the cameras. Mike has also lost about 150 pounds.

The highlight of my poker career was probably buying Durrr a water. We had drinks over dinner, so when we returned for the final 3 I wanted to offer to buy a round. I asked Brian (who was sitting next to Durrrr) if he wanted and thing and then asked Durrr. Durr wanted a water so obviously I obliged.

The tournamnet was a rebuy tournament, which means in the first 2 hours you can rebuy for another $5,000. Most players rebought 4-5 times. It is a sound strategy to play super aggressive and rebuy a lot of times early. This gets a lot of chips at your table after the rebuy period, making it easier to build a big stack. Daniel Negreanu rebought 17 times ($85,000) and Durrrr rebought 21 times ($105,000), what a couple of sickos. Miraculously enough Adam Hourani, rebought 0 times!!!! A bigger sicko.