Michael Karnjanaprakorn

“I call!”

Those were the last two words that came out of my mouth at the 2010 World Series of Poker. It was Day 3 of WSOP with 1,800 remaining players out of the original starting field of 7,319 (and the top 800 makes the money). The blinds were $1,600/$800 with a $200 ante and I had around $30K left in my stack. Not a lot but enough to make a huge dent in someone else’s stack and double up. There were lots of pre-flop raises, re-raises, and re-re-raises. For those of you that don’t play poker, it’s similar to the scene from The Big Hit with the phone tracer blocker that gets trumped by the phone tracer blocker blocker. In other words, the cards in your hand don’t really matter anymore.

UTG, I get KQo, which I normally never play in early position, but it was the perfect stealing hand, considering I haven’t played a hand in the past 30 minutes (which is an eternity when you’re short stack). People would respect my raise and fold to me right?  I raise to $4,100 which was the opening raise at our table (the least amount you can bet to get people to fold). And if everyone folds, I easily pick up $4,200 for nada. Not bad. I decide to take the risk.

I try to look calm and represent a “strong” hand like AA, KK, or AK. First guy folds. So does the second. Then the third and fourth and fifth. The guy on the button stares at his cards, and stares back at me. He looks at his cards again, thinks about calling or maybe raising, but I give him the “if you raise, I’m putting all my chips in the middle” look and he decides to fold. The small blind folds. Almosttttt there! And the big blind decides to call. Shit.

** Backstory: I’ve been hammering away at this guy all day. Every time I sit at the poker table, I pick 2 people I want to stay away from, and 2 people I can get involved with. This was my numero uno target all day. I think I stole around $20-$30K from him. He had his tells written on his forehead. Unfortunately, this was the one time he decided to stand up for himself. **

The flop comes Qo8s4s. He quickly checks, and I bet $5K thinking he would fold (like he did all day). Surprisingly, he instantly check raised all-in for my remaining $20K. I wanted to punch him in the face for pulling the 2001 amateur internet poker player move on me. I tanked and thought about all the possible hands this guy could have and narrow down that range to a few. I put him on the flush draw or AQ (worst case scenario for me), or JJ or lower (best case scenario). I didn’t put him on a set as he was the type of player that would bet big on his draws and value bets when he hits. I thought about my other option: folding. If I folded, I still had enough chips to double up and wait, but I decided to call. If he had the flush draw, I was the huge favorite to win, majority of the time.

He flips over 9s5s for the flush draw against my KQo on Qo8s4s flop. Woo! The turn came the Ks and river 7d. Busto!

So, there you have it. After playing poker for 3 days, I’m out. Looking back, I’m real proud of how I played and wouldn’t take it back for anything. I made a lot of hero calls when the other player was bluffing. I re-raised when I thought players were weak when I didn’t have anything. I went with my gut in a lot of marginal situations which is how I lasted so long.

Pushing how I played aside, looking back over the project, I’m really proud of our accomplishments. I had three major goals for WSOG.

1) Raise over $100K for various charities. We raised over $150K!
2) Get on ESPN to spread awareness about the project. ESPN wrote an article and did a short video about our project. We’ll also probably be on Day 1 of 2010 WSOP since we all wore lady track suits : )
3) Get the professional poker community on board. Rafe Furst, Annie Duke, Phil Gordon, Phil Ivey, Joe Sebok, Ali Nejad and Andy Bloch stepped up to support and encourage the poker community to get involved.

Wrapping up, I would like to thank everyone that donated on Kickstarter. We raised a little over $5,000 which I matched to get us to the $10K buyin for WSOP. And thanks to all the professional poker players, charities, and everyone else that made this project a huge success. Thank you! I could’t have done it without all of you.

Until next year…