My playtime last week was limited because of my trip to Vegas, but a last minute nine tabling session on my laptop Saturday night let me break the all-time weekly TLB record previously held by Holdem_NL with a score of 2893. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get enough play in to break 3,000, but holding the record at 2963 isn’t too shabby.

For the next week my picture will be on the PokerStars front page. I didn’t think much of it at first until I realized that hundreds of thousands of people will see that picture every day. That’s kind of cool! Also, I get to play Tom McEvoy this Sunday in a heads up match. I heard a rumor that he sucks at PLO8B, so I chose that for the match despite the fact that I suck at it as well. Hopefully, I’ll suck less than he does. It should be interesting either way. The match will be on Christmas Day (ugh) at 2pm EST, so I hope some of you will be able to watch despite the scheduling conflict.

In Nat’s blog, he somehow left out one of the sickest things I have ever seen. Patrik Antonius was heads up vs. Random McRandomerson in the WPT. The winner would receive $2,000,000, while the loser would get a consolation prize of $1,000,000. I was part of Patrik’s huge cheering session which consisted of Noah Boeken, Marcel Luske, three Mizrachi brothers, Chino and the rest of the Miami crew, Gus Hansen, and a thousand other people. There was a lot of commotion when Patrik (with a very slight chip lead) announced all-in and Random McRandomerson said call. The villain turned over A4 of diamonds, and we all cheered when the hero flipped over AK of spades. We had him dominated!

Then all the sudden things got ugly. The audience held a collective gasp when the flop came 765 with one spade and one diamond. We were still ahead, but just barely. It was practically a coin flip at this point. After a two minute pause, a three hit the turn. The audience died. Patrik’s cheering section was suddenly so disillusioned. I thought it was over until I heard Noah shout out, “Spade!” The three on the turn gave Patrik a four flush! He had nine outs left (as well as three more to split the pot).

The entire audience began chanting, “Spade! Spade! Spade! Spade!” It got louder and louder and soon it seemed like there wasn’t a single person in the room not cheering for that spade. After a few minutes, the dealer was instructed to deal the river card, and the audience was silenced. The red ten was shown on the monitors, and I probably wasn’t the only one who threw up a little bit in his mouth. The audience let out an “Ugh” in unison, and we all felt cheated. What a sick beat. Somehow, Patrik seemed a bit dejected, but overall much more content than his fans. Did the man not realize he had just been screwed over for a million dollars? I suppose he plays some ultra high stakes games so he’s used to some terrible beats, but man, this was just horrendous.

I love poker, but every now and then something like this happens and I begin to question my faith in the poker gods. It’s such a sick game sometimes, and I hope I never have to face a beat that bad, but it’s almost a certainty that I will. I guess I better start preparing for it now.

Despite the fact that Random McRandomerson “bested” Patrik in the end, I want to throw out some props to Patrik. He has had a lot of success in Europe, and since moving to Vegas, it didn’t take him long at all to start having some major success in the US as well. Expect [more] big things from him in the future for sure.