Bigger Deal

"How do you spell ‘devastated’?"

John Duthie was in mid-text to his loved ones back in Blighty, all asleep as Gus Hansen’s bare pre-flop ace sealed Q-Q Duthie’s doom, when he asked me this poignant question. Walking back from dinner towards the tournament room late on Thursday, Day 3, I bumped into John coming the wrong way up the Rio’s corridor of fate. The first Poker Million winner, and founder-director of the EPT, had played well enough to get into the money - $25,1o1 for coming around 500th out of the 6,358 starters in the 2007 ‘main event’. But he was far from happy about it. After sorting out his spelling, I made a futile attempt to cheer him up.

"At least you’ve got the 25K," I ventured. Infected by the local lingo, I even added: "‘You played great."

"I don’t want the frigging 25K," he snapped back. "I’d give it up right now to be back in that tournament." Then he stalked off.

Yup, Duthie was devastated. D-e-v-a-s-t-a-t-e-d.

After the expressions of sympathy here at my own Day 1 bad-beat from Cindy, Peter, Al et al, then my friend Morley’s ruminations from Munich on the psychology of losing, then his friend Armgard’s telling quote from Goethe, I’d been expecting to see a Comment from one Dr. Freud of Vienna reminding us of his theory that no gambler is truly fulfilled, if not happy, until he goes broke. Here, in the shape of John Duthie, was flesh-and-bones proof to the contrary.

Or: a new twist on an old theory. Those who have won some money are distraught that they haven’t won more.

This was confirmed the following night, Friday, when I dined at the Wynn with David Flusfeder, who’d made his exit early on Day 4 in 321^st place, winning $39,445. Not a bad return, you might think, on his $10,000 entry fee – especially as it was in fact a freeroll sponsored by those shrewd folk at PokerStars, who might now be well advised to send the Telegraph’s poker man off on the forthcoming EPT.

What an achievement – the best ever, to my knowledge – by a British poker-writer! David confessed to being quietly satisfied, but hungry for more. Hungry not just for more tournament play, now that he’s built up such self-confidence, but for more money. His all-in move early on Day 4 was designed to make him a contender.

With 275,000, and A-K in late position, David sensed his chance when the short-stack pushed in for 40K, only to be called from mid-position by a guy with slightly more than David himself. "I’d already decided, before the start of play, that I was going to be prepared to gamble. I wasn’t going to just sit around hoping to limp up a prize level or two. This had to be my spot. I was sure I was way ahead of short stack and at the worst I was in a coin flip against the medium stack. If he’d had aces or kings, I felt sure he’d have re-raised, so I was confident that, at worst, I had two overcards."

David pushed all-in, and medium-stack eventually called. ESPN arrived to record the moment for posterity. Short-stack had 9-10, medium J-J. David needed an ace or a king to leap to 600,000, not far off the chip average at the time. As fate (or Anna Kournikova) would have it, he finished third in the hand, when the board gave short-stack two pair and medium a set of jacks. Flusfeder’s tournament was over.

As he waited in line to pick up his prize money, David told me, he got annoyed by people saying ‘Congratulations!’ Commiserations were what he wanted at that particular moment. So he got both from me, in the right order, and duly paid for dinner.

Then my son Ben arrived with his wife Salome, in town from LA for the weekend, and we had a nightcap at the Sports Bar before checking out the stunning view from their plush top-floor room at the Wynn. En route to the elevators we bumped into Neil ‘Bad Beat’ Channing, clutching a white plastic bag. It was around 1 am. Had Day 4 just finished ? Or had Neil been knocked out?

The latter, it transpired with an authentic ‘Bad Beat’ grimace. After a terrific four-day performance, Neil had just finished in the low 100s, with $58,570 to show for it. ‘It’s here,’ he said gloomily, ‘here in this bag.’ Ben and I squeezed it longingly.

But Neil was, to say the least, glum. Had he been right to push all-in with Queens? Should he have read the other guy for Aces? As I stammered to reassure him, Barny Boatman appeared out of nowhere to back me up, with rather more authority. Neil had done the right thing. How can you read someone for pocket aces? Victory would have made him a contender.

Duthie, Flusfeder, Channing – they could all have been contenders.

Compared with me, they WERE contenders. Between them they’d won more than $100,000. But none of them was happy. They’d all been close enough to the REAL money to smell it, almost touch it, to start dreaming about six figures, maybe even seven.

Not for nothing was it Friday the 13^th.