PLAYER PROFILE

Name: Bernard Herkey
Profession: Financial journalist.
Experience: 12 years of serious poker.
Level: Marooned at average tournament player level.
Playing style: Very steady and ultra-patient, a bit like a sniper. Some say more like moss.

Every faith has its holy places; some have several, the cult of hold ‘em has just one: the World Series of Poker. That’s why 1000s of deluded individuals flew in from around the world for this year’s main event, all of them ponying up $10,000 cash, and all of them facing a 90% chance of going home empty-handed. Two thirds of them wouldn't even make it past the first day. It’s every poker player’s duty to make the pilgrimage at least once. This year it was my turn. I'd sold some property (so I had the cash), had left my job to set up a business (so I had the time) and my wife said I’d probably never get another chance (so I had the permission). “I’m just hoping to make it past the first day,” I lied as, in my mind, I sprawled like a porn star over the winners’ mountain of hundred dollar bills. My brain calculated how much interest I could make on an seven-figure first prize. Who knew ruminating on 4.3 per cent of anything could be so invigorating? But after all, poker is a never-ending series of expensive lessons.

"TO MY LEFT THE BEST PLAYER IN THE MIDDLE EAST. TO MY RIGHT, A QUIET BUSINESSMAN"

I’ve been playing poker for about 12 years, for most of the last seven in clubs in New York. My fascination with the WSOP started with two books, Anthony Holden’s Big Deal and Al Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town, both written in the eighties, before the amateur hopefuls started complicating things. The world described in those books had gone. No more Binion’s, no more smoking, no more intimate one-day events. Instead, the game is now staged at the Rio, in a hall the size of a football field, and with so many entrants there are four consecutive first days. The romance may be gone - but the prospect of a $8.25 million first prize helps soothe the pain. Before I sat down on at table 115, seat 2, I cast my eye over the vast hall of baize. My stack of $10,000 suddenly looked microscopic compared to the challenge ahead. To my left I had the self-proclaimed “Best Player in the Middle East” a baby-faced truck driver who had just returned from Iraq, looking. To my right I had a quiet businessman. To my great relief there were no scary pros at our table, and to my amazement the standard of play was lower than I was used to in New York.

"THE DAY'S FIRST CASUALTY CAME AFTER JUST THREE AND A HALF MINUTES"

Before the event I’d heard stories of crazy action as the fashionably aggressive players made a scramble for chips in order to bully the table. Our table had all the drama of a Victorian ladies’ bridge night. Everyone was so overwhelmed that for the first two hours almost every hand was folded to the big blind or a small raise. Clearly there was action elsewhere - the day’s first casualty came after just three and a half minutes. While our table took shape with a silent Norwegian and an aggressive young kid making the moves, I found a whole new way to ruin my day. I don’t know if it’s technically possible to experience the anguish of a bad beat when you’re not even in the hand, but keeping to my super-tight game plan, I folded pocket sixes in the big blind to a raise and a call from the small blind. I know I’m supposed to play that hand, I really do, but I was playing an iron-discipline, raise or fold game. The flop came 4-6-6. Every day since I’ve been consoling myself that I probably would have just won what was in the pot. I sat there and gave myself a stern talking-to, hoping my shame didn’t leak out.

"ONE OF THOSE GUYS YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE, EVER, MOVED TO OUR TABLE"

Besides my strategy of superhuman tightness, my other plan was to keep up with the average chip stack. And for most of that first day it worked. I made a few hands, pulled in a few pots and was motoring along nicely. I made it to the first break, then the second break, then the dinner break, and allowed myself the luxury of thinking how I was going to plot out Day 2. Then, in the last hour of play, one of those guys who you really don’t want to see, ever, anywhere, was moved to our table. Loud, obnoxious, rude, critical of other players’ play. He was down to the felt a couple of times but hit some wonder turns and rivers to stay alive. I should have seen that fate had moved this jerk to my table and allowed him to survive in order to torment me. But I didn’t, and when I looked down and found (A-J) in late middle position I dug my own grave by putting in a small raise. The jerk, on the button, called, throwing his chips in a way that told me he didn’t have much. The flop came A-rag-rag, and I bet out. Jerk calls. The turn was an eight, and instead of thinking, I pushed all in, about 15,000 chips, into a pot with about 10,000 already in it, because I wanted to teach him a lesson. He called, turned over A-8, the river was a rag. My stack crumbled to 3,000.

"I WAS SO ANNOYED WITH MYSELF FOR LOSING CONCENTRATION"

A few hands later I was out, when my last ditch K-10 ran into K-K and the open ended straight on the flop never improved. I was so annoyed with myself for losing concentration after playing well. I couldn’t even find my way out of the Rio. It was midnight and I had to find a cleaner to show me the exit. All mistakes are punished in poker, usually by a sharp dose of reality. And so what if I didn’t come away with a bracelet – next year it’ll be even bigger.