This is the bad beat story, told by David “Seal” Eisenstein. The good thing beside "this bad poker beat": Booking the WPS St. Maarten Poker Tournament can be done even after "bad beats".
But read first here:
It’s been a very mild winter here in New Jersey overall this year. A local DJ joked that one day we’ll all tell our grandchildren the first sign of global warming was a bunch of 50 and 60 degree days in the winter of ’06. So when the only big snowfall of the year dumped more than two feet of the white stuff on my head right on my birthday, maybe I took it a little personally. “Thank goodness for online poker,” I thought as I logged into one of the major poker sites.
I jumped right into a $2/$4 blind pot limit Omaha cash game and my first hand was aces double suited. A couple of miracle cards hit the board and my hand held up. I went on to win the next three hands in a row and more than double my buy in. I stopped short of dancing around my desk like that guy in the TV commercial, but my mood had definitely improved.
As I waited out the inevitable flood of trash hands that always follows a rush I scanned the lobby for any good tournaments. My timing was perfect as a $30 re-buy satellite to win a trip to the Bahamas and a seat in the big poker tournament down there was just starting. A warm island sounded pretty sweet as I looked out on the frozen tundra that my backyard had become.
I really like to multi-table cash games and tournaments when I play. Sometimes I get bored and play bad hands just for the action in a tournament if I don’t have anything else going on. My multi-table strategy was dead on as I patiently waited for premium hands and the luck was with me for a change as they held up. I had almost 20k in chips at first break and I was also still ahead in the Omaha game.
Two more hours passed and I was playing well and my luck holding up. I’d lost back most of what I won in the Omaha game, but I was third in chips with 8 left in the satellite. They were giving seats to the top 4 winners and they were paying some cash to spots 5-7. The top two had over 500k in chips each, I had almost 150k, and the rest of the players all had less than 100k. One more good hand was all I needed.
In the Omaha I got my favorite hand, 89TJ double suited, and at the same time I got to play my 78 off-suit in a family pot in the NLHE. The Omaha pot was raised and re-raised pre flop, so there was almost $300 in it to go and the flop came 998 with two hearts. I had no hearts and I’m always scared of draws in Omaha so I came out swinging and bet the pot.
The NLHE game screen popped up and I saw another beautiful flop, 456 rainbow giving me the nut straight. I checked behind the small blind thinking that somebody must have an overpair and I can
double up on them if I let them bet. As I’m waiting for the guy to my left to act, the Omaha game popped up and I saw that the original raiser had pushed all in for about $20 more than I already had in the pot so I moved the mouse to call. Just as I click, the NLHE game popped back up and where the “call” button was in the Omaha is now the “fold” button for the satellite! Three guys all in and they all showed pocket pairs after I mistakenly folded. One of the small stacks had TT and it held up so he won over 400k in chips. Of course, a few hands later I went all in with my AQ and lost to an easy call by the chip leader’s pocket ducks. I took 6th and won only $200.
Later that night I posted my sad story on my favorite online forum, pocketfives.com, and asked if any site has a way to make sure this never happens to me again. Some guy told me to go to AmericasCardroom.com. He said I should check out a feature they have called “full screen”.
The first thing that surprised me was the number of players on the site. I was expecting there to be hardly anyone there as AmericasCardroom was not a site I had heard of before. Instead there were 12 full tables of Omaha cash games going on and the NLHE tournament that was registering had over 1200 signed up so far!
I jumped into a pot limit Omaha game and found the AmericasCardroom software to be just as good as any site I had played on. The action moved fast, I liked the layout of the controls, and I even liked the silver and red color scheme of the default table.
I checked the tournament lobby and saw they had a satellite for an upcoming live event in St. Maarten! A quick visit to worldpokershowdown.com told me they are having a whole series of events there starting April 29th and running through May 8th. I signed up for the sat!.
As soon as I got both games running I went to the lobby and selected “full screen” from the options menu. My screen blinked for a second and then the Omaha game took up my entire 21 inch monitor.
At the bottom of the game was a few tabs – one said “Main Lobby” and the other said “WPS sat”. When I clicked a tab the whole screen showed only the window that I selected, and when it was my turn to act in the other game, the tab blinked. I also liked that a button appeared that allowed me to go back to regular view with one click. This was exactly what I was looking for.
Well, I lost the satel for the WPS in St. Maarten that night when my pocket aces lost to a flopped set of eights, not when I miss-clicked.
But hey,that’s poker. David “Seal” Eisenstein
