There is also an article, in spanish oddly, which basically recounts the blog post I made detailing the $100/$100/$100/$200/$400 Sammy Farha/Jerimiah game in LV from 2013, which to this day remains the most insane day of gambling and poker I've ever had.
Tell this story?
Ha, sure, it doesn't end so well but It's a fun tale...
PLEASE NOTE,I've just got in from a very long, very stressful poker session so the typing might be a bit all over the place, but I can't sleep so here goes!!
Towards the end of the summer 2013 and I've been playing in Bellagio mostly at $50/$100 and $25/50, after going behind nearly $80k I have managed to pull somewhere near level for the trip as I'm pretty close to going home. This day starts at 11am I stroll down to the card room in the B to see a $100/$200 game which has been running all night and everyone looks exhausted, and a $25/$50 game, which looks pretty tough. I get on the list for 1/2 and play some 25/50 in the meanwhile...
I only play about 45 minutes in the 25/50 and hit the deck like a train, manage to win about 18k, then a seat comes up in the 1/2 and I take it, my seat is fairly awful as I have Haralabous Voulgaris and JC Tran to my direct 2 left seats the rest of table is made up of pretty meh guys who have all been awake for about 24 hours straight so I decide it's worth while to play and gamble it up a bit try leave LV with some money
THE very first hand I get AAxx (good aces i remember) and get in 3 ways for 20k each vs some other awful AA and some really terrible hand, KJJ8 or something, the other aces manage to ship it all, so im pretty much level for the day, but kinda tilted. I go on to loose another 30k in this game and when it breaks at 5pm I'm stuck about 33k.
**I was playing a props game with JC and Haralabous, you got $500 for a rainbow hand, $1,000 for trips and $5,000 for quads, if you win one you get double stakes next hand, I was actually crushing the props (which I play 100% on my own money, having sold 40%of myself in the poker games) the rules are though that you have to be dealt in the hand to be involved. Then JC goes to take a phonecall so is me and Haralabous, he gets trips, then a rainbow so I lose $2,000 to him, he breaks off to go somewhere and its just me, first hand I get dealt trips myself - but with neither at the table I miss out on $1,000 each, very next hand I get dealt 7777 miss out on $10,000 from each of them, so $22,000 I would have won any other moment in the game ($11k at the very least) not overly relevant to the day but a apt story for the way it was going to pan out.**
Next thing I did after the $50k downswing was to go for dinner with Kev and Richie Allen, I remember VERY clearly eating steak but can't for the life of me remember where it was... Morale was easily restored after 90 mins with the Allen boys and I headed back to the card room to try and get my monies back. I was expecting, at 7.30pm to have a real lengthy wait to get back into a game but as luck (or so I thought) would have it they had just opened a new table and there was 3 seats - John Depa, a friend of mine was on the table (he's outstanding poker player) and one other good regular but the rest of the table was ok so it appeared a really great spot for me, THEN who takes the last seat two to my right but Sammy Farha!
I've played a fair bit with Sammy now and whereas he is amazing for a poker game, he brings with him a very dangerous aura, there is one thing you have to do with Sammy, and that is call him...quite often...for quite a bit of money...
The $200 straddle comes on and the game goes decently mental and I am right in the thick of nearly every pot for 6 hours, Farha himself even told me I was "so very dangerous..." (I wasn't so dangerous as I was just "getting stuck in" with a favorable run of cards) I must have played in this 6 hours 10+ pots $40k+, including one pot I'll never forget losing getting $28k in preflop with AAJ9ds vs KK63r (might have been single suited, I forget, but for the purposes of my story we'll say it was rainbow!), and despite flopping very well (I can't remember exact texture) he manged to runner a straight with 63 (452) . Remember at this point I have not seen his hand, so when he announces "straight" on the end, I'm pretty stunned to see which straight he actually has...I thought AA3 was the only possible straight I be facing... He told me after the hand he "put me on Queens" was just one of these hilarious days
I also, in this session played the biggest pot I've ever actually won, (I think I've played maybe 8 or 9 bigger that I've lost boo-hoo poor me
) where I called Sammy down with 2 pair on a pretty iffy board for ~$30k on the river. When all was said and done I was winning on the day nearly $80k (a $120k win at this table nearly) and obviously feeling fucking ecstatic given that the trip is nearly over and I've turned a 80k deficit into and 80k profit. Sammy gets the hump with the dealer at Bellagio (you will never see a worse man to dealers in your life than SF) and decides he is moving to Aria to play, losing a lot of money in the game himself he tells whoever he fancies playing with to meet him in Aria in 30 mins to reconvene...part of me pretty tempted now to just quit and go home,but then 20 minutes later I get a call from John saying the Jerimiah is going to play the game also, and that he and sammy are currently loosing about 1/2 mil at baccarat between them...
For those of you who don't know Jerimiah, he runs some of the California home games which is effectively like owning a money press, you hear people say things like "yeah he doesn't give a fuck about the money" usually it's BS, everyone, even hugely wealthy people care about money irrespective of it's relevance to their overall net worth...Jerimiah however is the exception, he does not give a donkeys he's just a hyped up addict, I've seen him call $17k preflop at 25/50 with J663...The prospect of a game with both him and Sammy tilted up is too much to refuse, so off to Aria I go...
What actually happened at Aria is still a bit of a blur, I played another 9 hours in this game - I've now been playing poker (minus my dinner break) for 25 hours, at one point I had nearly a 1/4 of a million dollars in front of me. It's an insane feeling playing such high stakes (the game was 7 handed, $100/$100/$100/$200/$400 and frequent $800, standard opening raise over the $400 was to $1,500) it doesn't matter how tired you are you are so focused and so aware, the Adrenalin of a game like this and the buzz you get off every pot is a feeling words just can't describe, I'd have played another 30 hours if I could have done...
Unfortunately this wasn't an option I got, things took a drastic turn for the worst, I lost the biggest pot I've ever played ($145k) and on my last hand, as I was all-in for $20k (which felt like pocket change at this point), I had the NFD and second pair vs Sammy top 2 and he says to me "Let's play like gentleman nits, take $5,000 back each" I accepted, got beat in the hand and walked out of the Aria at midday with the blistering sun stuck for the day $189,000... (was 189 because as I got to my hotel door I realised I had a $1k chip Id forgotten to put in play lol)
Strangely enough...I think that night is the best nights sleep Ive ever had in Vegas, I felt completely at peace with it all - was utterly surreal, I even chatted on FB to Stu before I slept and when he asked me how the game went I simply replied "bad session, what can you do!" I think back to that game and it's despite the crushing disappointment I'm actually pretty proud of how I played, the money didn't intimidate me in the slightest and I really went for it, I played the kinda of session where I could easy have won $500k, if the cards had of fallen.
That is currently the last hand of poker I've played in LV.
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