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TOM ZUCCO$80,000 isn't bad, but amateur poker player Glenn Cooney knows he left money on the table.
TAMPA - He could see it coming, like a car accident about to happen. Playing high stakes poker means checking your emotions at the door. And Glenn Cooney knew that. But he had to silence the blowhard sitting next to him.
It was personal now. It shouldn't have been. But it was.
That's what Cooney kept telling himself as he sat at one of the final four tables of the 35th annual No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em World Series of Poker tournament May 27 at the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas. A wine dealer from South Tampa, Cooney had amassed about $400,000 in chips and had outlasted more than 2,500 of the best players in the world.
He was among the last 32 players left, and if he could survive one more day, the $5-million first place prize would be in sight.
Now he was facing the one player who had gotten under his skin the entire tournament, a middle-aged man with sunglasses and an accent, who had bragged that an American would not win the tournament.
"Might as well give me my chips now," the man said. "I'm going to be at the final table."
Cooney, 32, wanted him gone.
He had been dealt a king and a 10. Not the best cards to bet with, but not the worst. The annoying man bet everything he had. About $600,000. Cooney took a deep breath, pushed all his chips to the center of the table, and called the bet.
The annoying man smirked. And turned over a pair of kings.
Cooney's heart sank to his toes.
He was exhausted, drained by games that began each day at noon and didn't wind up until 2 a.m.
But he had come too far to lose now. Like this.
Cooney isn't a professional poker player. He was born in New Jersey, raised in Tampa. He has a wife who works for an accountant, and a 6-year-old daughter who thinks poker is funny.
And he's normally a conservative player who doesn't take a lot of risks. He plays golf, has season tickets to Bucs games, and drives a Nissan Xterra SUV.
"But I like the competition. It's not about the money. It's being able to beat somebody else."
Indeed.
Players start with $10,000 in chips and play no-limit Texas Hold 'Em, making their best hands out of two hole cards and five community cards. They play until they run out of chips. In no-limit hold 'em, players can bet as much as they choose, up to their entire stack of chips.
Cooney had watched professional tournaments on TV enough to know the names of such world poker tour stars as Chris Moneymaker, Sammy Farha and Phil Ivey; he could spot World Poker Tour TV host Vince Van Patten in a crowd.
He started playing on the Internet about six months ago, reluctantly at first. "I heard people say they played, but I didn't trust it," he said. "So I put in a couple hundred to see what happened."
He finished high enough in a tournament on PartyPoker.com to win the $10,000 entrance fee into the World Series of Poker. He also got $2,000 for plane fare and a hotel room.
"The first day I sat with Vince Van Patten on one side, and the guy who finished second in 2002 on the other side," Cooney said. "I was pretty nervous."
But Cooney finished the day with $34,000 in chips. Slightly above the average. More importantly, he was still alive.
"Everybody is just trying to protect themselves and maintain their chips that first day," he said.
"I could tell a lot of the players weren't that good. A lot of them were out within the first 15 minutes. It amazed me. They paid $10,000 and risked all their chips the first day."
By Thursday, the field had narrowed to 32 players. Cooney was toward the bottom with about $190,000. But as the day wore on, he built his stack to $400,000.
And then the man Cooney wanted most to eliminate bet all his chips. Cooney had drawn that king and 10 of clubs. Everyone else dropped out. Cooney knew he would be eliminated if he lost the hand.
So he called the bet.
"The only thing I could think of," Cooney said, "was that he was bluffing."
He wasn't. Against a king and a 10, a pair of kings is almost unbeatable.
The only cards that could save Cooney were two 10s or three clubs. The 10s would give him three of a kind, and the clubs would give him a flush. Either hand would be a winner if the other player could do no better than a pair of kings.
The dealer turned over the first three cards.
Heart, spade and diamond. And none of them a 10.
"As soon as I saw that," Cooney said, "I got up and started shaking people's hands and telling them good luck. I was out."
The dealer turned over the final two cards. The odds were astronomical, but a pair of 10s would still make him a winner.
Cooney doesn't remember what the last two cards were. But neither was a 10.
"The only thing I regret is the fact I made the last bet," he said. "You're not always going to win, but as long as you would make the same play again, you're okay.
"But with a king, 10 suited, I shouldn't have bet. Even before the bet I said to myself, "This will be a stupid call, but I could get lucky.' I bet everything about six hands earlier with a pair of nines. The other guy had two aces. The first card up was another nine, and I won.
"But I blew this one. I played bad cards against a guy next to me who was getting on my nerves. He was complaining about a lot of stuff. He was even yelling at people at other tables."
"If it was anybody else at table, I would have never called the bet. To knock him out clouded my judgment.
"I definitely learned a lesson."
Although he lost a shot at a bigger prize, he did win $80,000 for finishing 30th. After taxes, he'll clear about $52,000.
When Cooney and his wife returned to Florida, they spent the Memorial Day weekend unwinding at the Belleview-Biltmore Resort in Clearwater. And planning for more tournaments.
"My wife knows how much I like it," he said. "She has no interest in it whatsoever, but she knows I'm good.
"I know I've got room to get better. But I'm good enough now to compete.
"I just can't let it get personal."