UltimateBet in Aruba

One of my favorite stops on the tournament poker circuit is Aruba. Each year in the fall, UltimateBet.com hosts the Ultimate Poker Classic. I first went two years ago, made a little money, and met a pretty Southern girl. It was a successful trip, if you ask me. Times have changed since then. This year, 647 players entered, first place paid a million dollars, and that pretty Southern girl will be my wife by the time you read this. Did I just say wife? Oh, how times have changed.

I made it to the second day with a relatively large chip stack. I was moved to a table that I shared control with David "Devilfish" Ulliott. Control of the table is very important when playing a no-limit hold'em tournament. As we both reached a mark of $60,000 in chips, a kid came to the table with about 25 racks of chips. His name is Josh Schlein, and he is only 20 years old, so this was one of the few tournaments in which he can play each year.

Josh had about $275,000 in chips and had to be one of the top three players in chip count. He raised about 80 percent of the hands and took control away from us on the first hand by snatching 60 percent of Devilfish's chips. After not getting a raise in for three rounds, I was down to $30,000. I decided that it was time to play with Josh and teach him a lesson. Without getting into the boring details of the hand (it is really quite interesting, but I don't want to embarrass myself), Josh outplayed me so much that I shook my head for the entire two-mile walk back to my hotel. Of course, my hotel was about a block away, and I was thinking about the hand so much that I walked right past it. Even though I got crushed on the hand, it was nice seeing skill prevail. Unfortunately, the skill was on his side, and I was the victim.

At that point, I decided to cheer for Josh, because he was playing his chip lead so beautifully and I wanted my chips to go to good use. Two days later, the final six players were Freddy Deeb, Josh Schlein, Stacy Matuson, Robby Border, Johan Storakers, and Devin Porter. I don't know Devin, but Freddy is an assassin at any table, I just spent a paragraph on Josh, I met Stacy in Aruba two years ago and we have been friends since, Robby is my favorite dealer at Bellagio, and Johan and I have played at the same table in most big events in the last year, and I love his play.

For whom was I going to cheer? I couldn't take the pressure, so I left and went to the beach, only to run into Devilfish playing the guitar and Johnny Arrage (he has a World Series of Poker bracelet in limit hold'em from 2003) playing the sax with a local band. At that point, Devilfish took over as the lead singer and I forgot all about poker. Freddy Deeb won the $1 million and Josh won more than $440,000 as a 20-year-old.