Disclaimer #1: Slowrolling is not cool. I’ve never done it in my life until….

Disclaimer #2: I’m not a hateful person. I can be cynical, but there are very few people I actually wish bad things upon. Men Nguyen just happens to be one of those people. The rest are mostly terrorists and rapists.

So it all started on day 2. Matt Graham was at my table in the Circuit Event. He raised AA on the button, Men moved all-in from the blinds, and Matt insta-called and flipped up his hand. He held and doubled up through Men. After the hand Matt came up to me and said, “Oh my God, that was the perfect slow roll opportunity! I can’t believe I didn’t think to slow-roll him!”

We had sushi w/ some friends during the dinner break. I told the table how badly Matt butchered a hand with aces. He wasn’t sure what I was talking about, so I retold the story to the table. “Ok, so Matt has aces; he raises and Man shoves. Now listen to how badly Matt played this part: He insta-called!!”. It became a little inside joke over the next 24 hours.

Going into the final day, I was pretty tilted by Men. Despite the fact that I’ve caught him cheating three times (and either called the floor or written a blog about it each time), he had no recollection of who I was. I’ve played with him A LOT too: more than almost anyone I’ve played with live. He was trying to impress me, showing me his big laydowns, etc. Oddly enough, he wasn’t as huge of a douche bag to the dealers as he normally is, but I guess it’s because he wasn’t losing.

And to make things all the more tilting, he had sucked out on me three times already in the span of about two hours.

Here’s a brief summary of Men “The Master” Nguyen for those that don’t know:

A few years back he was cooking some rice in his hotel room. A fire started, and hotel workers came in to put out the fire. While there, they discovered a duffel bag full of tournament chips from around the country. For those unfamiliar with live tournaments, you never-ever-ever take your chips off the table. Turns out Men was forcing the players he staked to take chips off from their stacks to give them to him to slip into his stack when no one was looking. This is most likely how he was able to win Player of the Year multiple times.

My personal experiences with him consist of the following:

1) He’s a huge douche bag. Constantly mean to dealers, especially when drunk (common) or losing (even more common). He once was so pissed at a ~65 year old gray haired dealer (a good one IMO too) that every time he folded, he would pitch his cards one by one straight into the dealers knuckles. He had surprisingly good aim and force with his throws too. This lasted for about 5 hands before the dealer yelled at him (very rightfully so, that must have hurt).

2) I wrote a blog about him cheating at commerce. Basically he and another player used a common raise + reraise play to knock others out of the pot. This is mostly fine, except after it happened, the opponent folded in a spot where it is NEVER correct to do so (he was getting ~20-1 in a draw game where both players were drawing 1 card. You are never a huge dog in that spot). Turns out the player was backed by him and was forced to softplay him.

3) At Bay 101 Men had a 5k bounty on him. This means that anyone that knocks him out gets $5,000. He became extremely shortstacked and asked the table who would give him $2,500 back if they busted him. A few players said yes, and he said he was only going to go all-in against these players. Matt Savage was called over, and as much as I love Matt Savage, I’m still completely shocked that no penalty was given. This is a ridiculous form of collusion that should result in instant-disqualification.

4) He’s also a constant angle shooter. For example one time I saw him split a time pot (the rake for every 30 minutes is taken out of the time pot). Since the pot was split, they gambled to see who would pay the whole thing. “High card on the next hand pays it all” (they were playing Stud 8). Men gets an ace, other guy gets a deuce. Men refuses to pay because he claims ace is low. Ironically, the rules of Stud 8 stipulate that the low card brings it in, so the deuce brought it in. Men continued to refuse to pay. Everyone at the table agreed Men was wrong except for the Vietnamese player at the table that Men happened to be backing.

I could go on, but I want to get to the story.

So it’s the final table of the Circuit Event the other day and 6 or 7 players still remain. There are 20 minutes left in the level, and Matt Graham starts saying he’s not going to make it 20 minutes. He had to pee really bad. The guy next to him says, “Me too”. Matt responds, “No, you don’t understand. I’m REALLY in pain. I’m not gonna make it 20 minutes”.

A few minutes later it folds to my button and I look down at two aces. Men moves all-in from the small blind. As Grinder folds his big blind, I say to Matt G, “Go run to the bathroom. Quickly.”

He looks at me confused. “Wait… really?”

“Yes, go to the bathroom right now. You have time.”

I hem and haw for a bit, ask for a chip count, count out my stack, etc. After three minutes, Matt and the other dude come back from the bathroom. I know how bad he had to piss, so I tell him, “You owe me one.”

Immediately after that, I say call. Men flips up KQ, and I flip up two aces. Men looks at me annoyed, and I say something stupid like, “Was just trying to be nice to my friend. He really had to pee.” This is when I get karmad out and KQx comes on the flop. Yes, Men sucks out on me for a fourth time in the same tournament. !@*&$(*!@&#*(!@&#(*!@#

Now I need to clarify what I mean by karmad out. I DO NOT mean that I received bad karma for slowrolling Men. I feel completely justified and would do it again. Rather, the bad karma came from the fact that I pussied out and did not take full credit for it. I claimed I slowrolled him to be nice to Matt. In fact the online coverage was titled, “Bonomo tries to be nice to a friend.” So here I’m going to publicly get rid of the bad karma and take credit for my good deed: Yes I intentionally slowrolled Men, and would 100% do it again. I have no regrets.

For those of you that don’t believe any of my stories about Men, here is a bit of proof/justification: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRCbuoVnt8k . Again, I just want to clarify, this is the only time in my life I have ever slow rolled someone, and definitely think that in general it’s a very douchey thing to do.

Despite this suckout, I did go on to win the tournament! This involved a grueling 4 hour + heads up match against The Grinder (who was really tough to play). I’ll write about that in my next blog. I really wanted to get this awesome (IMO) story out there first.

-Thanks for reading
-Justin Bonomo