Groundhog Day

Well, it's Groundhog Day, and with what's happening across like more than half the states in this country right now, I'm pretty much positive the little guy ain't seeing his shadow, whatever that means. I got news for you though -- regardless of whether some disgusting rodent in BFE sees his shadow or not, this winter is going to suck balls, and it's going to be loooong, and frosty. Six more weeks of winter? We'll probably be wishing it was only six more weeks from now, come April Fools Day.

Anyways, with Groundhog Day here, and I'm thinking about the awesome movie of the same name starring Bill Murray which has always been a personal favorite of mine -- as Goat astutely points out, it is now clear as Bill Murray's single best movie -- and it got me thinking: What personal poker memory would you most like to relive if you could right now?

For me, I think the answer is clear: Day two of the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza in late June of 2009. Yes, the day ended with my biggest ever poker tournament win, but the road to get there on Day 2 was about as sick as it comes, one of those crazy sick runs you just hope you get to be along for the ride for once or twice in your life and you just hope not to eff up along the way. This was truly the 90-minute roll in craps, or the 18-straight-winning-hands shoe in blackjack -- one of those couple-of-times-in-a-lifetime things, if you're lucky.

I was starting Day 2 in 32nd place out of 48 runners remaining of the 792 who had started the day before, and I came in to sit at a table with 5 of the top 9 stacks remaining in the tournament seated at it. It was insane -- multiple guys had like entire stacks of a certain color chips, each one of which was almost more than my entire stack. I had 157k in chips but at this table, it felt like 157 chips. Not only was my starting M on the day just a hair short of 6, but I was also completely dwarfed, chip leader two to my left (whose blinds I would be in best position to steal -- yippee), and other four huge stacks across the table and to my right. As soon as we started I knew I was either going to double up a couple of times early to get back in contention with these monsters, or I would be making the lonely stroll back to the MGM with my head hanging low.

And then it happened. What followed was definitely the sickest heater I've ever been on over a short period of time in my poker career. After a slow start to the day, things really started popping in Hour 2. First, the big stack directly across from me got allin behind against me in three separate pots in fairly rapid succession, and over the span of maybe ten hands he had shipped his entire huge stack to me and me alone, jumping me from 157k to over 425k in mere minutes, and then within maybe 10 minutes after that, I won a massive pot against the chipleader when he unfortunately folded TPTK to my allin raise on the turn after extracting over half of his stack already in the process. This hand put me just south of a million chips, where not even 20 minutes earlier I had been sitting on 140k and at my low point of the last several hours of tournament play. Things slowed down a bit after that, but over the remainder of round 3 I won a couple of more big pots and after just the first two hours of play, I was the prohibitive chip leader, with a stack of over 1.6 million. By the second break -- after just four total hours of play -- my stack had swelled to 3.1 million chips, and I entered the final table shortly afterwards with almost three times the table average.

157k to 1.6 million chips over the span of two hours, and on to 3.1 million over the next two. As far as poker tournament heaters go, it hardly gets any better than that. Although there have been a number of fairly triumphant moments in my poker playing life, that incredible run in the Venetian in June 2009 will I'm sure always be the ultimate poker moment to relive for me.

What poker moment would you most like to relive?