Two Plus Two Newer Archives - All you can suck out, baby!

I tried posting this in Tournament Circuit, but the feedback I got was absolutely worthless. I guess maybe it belongs in this forum because it's a BEAT. Seemed like a good story to me. Hope you enjoy it.

I normally do not tell bad beat stories, for a few reasons, but I decided to make an exception today based on the circumstances and the severity of the beat.

Today I played Event #6, $550 NL, at the WSOP Circuit Event at Caesar's Indiana. For some reason, the poker room managers decided to run a bunch of live games regardless of the fact that Event #6 was being played at noon and was followed by Event #7 ($550 PLO w/ rebuys) at 3 PM. As a result, the room could not accomodate the 400+ players at noon. Therefore, there were over 100 alternates, which seems ridiculous to me when they could just not run some of those side games for a little while...but that's another story.

Anyway, about an hour and a half in, they are still seating alternates when a player goes broke at our table. Guess who the lucky alternate is...Men "The Master" Nguyen. Of course this creates quite a buzz at our table and among the railbirds. Not too many pros were around this week. The only other "TV" pro I saw was Young Phan.

Men was a riot. He sits down and starts talking and joking around with everyone. It was a blast. Plus, he signed autographs for everyone at the table and a couple railbirds as well.

Sometimes on TV he comes off as a jerk and I know he has a bad reputation in some circles, but he was a really nice and fun guy today. Maybe he only gets a little abrasive when he drinks. He said he won't drink before 6 PM.

He intended to play the Omaha at 3 PM, and it was already 1:30 by this time. He was getting into a lot of pots and mixing it up. At the 50-100 level, he was down to about 700 (we started with 2,000). One hand, he open-pushed from middle position and some guy near the button with less than 2,000 himself decided to look Men up with KJ offsuit. Flop and turn are all rags, but Men spikes a 10 on the river to stay alive. The table goes nuts.

About 10 minutes later came one of the sickest hands I've ever been involved in. I'm down to 975 myself thanks to a previous cooler. I pick up AQ of diamonds in middle position and raise to 300. It folds to Men in the small blind, who immediately gives us the patented "All you can eat, baby," and puts his stack in. He has me covered by a few hundred. Well, I figured he had me beat, but AQ was the hand I picked, and since I already put in 30% of my stack, I figured it was good enough to go broke with there, rather than leave myself with 675 and the blinds soon to be 100-200 with a 25 ante.

I said, "This hand can't be good, but it would be pretty cool to get knocked out by the Men the Master." I call.

Men says, "Suited," and turns over AJ of hearts. Sweet. (Me 67%)

The flop comes Qc5d3d. Nice. Very nice. (Me 98%)

Turn is the Ks. This improves Men from 0 outs to 3 outs. Haha. (Me 93%)

You guessed it...River: 10h. (Men 100%)

The table explodes, obviously, and I'm just dumbfounded. I shake Men's hand and make a quiet exit. He said something about how he can't believe it and I said, "Yeah I have no idea how I lost with that flop."

It's probably the sickest beat I've ever taken considering the flop, but it's a story I'll be telling for a long time. Cool that it was Men who did it.