When the Rochas job fell through, part of me was relieved to return to New York. I had been feeling homesick and missed all my friends back home. Meanwhile, my brother was finishing up his final undergraduate year at Duke University. After he graduated, he flew out to visit me in Paris and then we embarked on a trip to a few different cities in Europe -- Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, Florence, and Rome. I drove him crazy by trying to get him to see museums and other tourist destinations; he drove me crazy by insisting on staying in half the time and playing online satellite poker tournaments. He was trying hard to win a spot in the World Series of Poker, which would be in a couple of weeks. He didn't get a spot during our trip in Europe, but once we returned to New York, he managed to finally win a spot the very last day before the tournament began. I drove him to the airport that evening to catch a flight to Vegas.
While my brother started the tournament, I started interviewing for jobs at places including Zac Posen and Elie Tahari. Meanwhile, I monitored his progress online. The beginning of the tournament is spread over several days to accommodate all the players (that year there were over 8000), so in the beginning the progress was slow. However, my brother kept hanging in each day. At first I expected him to get knocked out quickly, but once he managed to stay on past the first few days, I started paying closer attention, particularly once he started cashing (I think the pay levels started at 20K). Each "day" he would manage to not get knocked out, generally staying somewhere in the middle of the pool of contestants, and the pay levels kept increasing -- 50K, 100K, 500K, until my brother was a millionaire! As my friend Ben put it, it was like watching someone win the lottery in slow motion. Finally, he made it to the final table where the top prize was $12 million.
There was one day between the second to last day of the tournament (I think it was day 6?), and the final table. Once we found out Doug had made it, I convinced my parents to fly out to Vegas with me to watch him. Some of my friends watched it on PPV. It was surreal. We stayed at the Palms, where Doug was staying. We were given special passes. Doug had accepted a sponsorship from PokerStars so we had a big dinner with the other PokerStars players and met previous WSOP champions Greg Raymer and Joe Hachem.
The next day we went to the big convention room where they were holding the final table for the Main Event of the 2006 World Series of Poker. There were bleachers blocked off for the family and friends of each of the nine players at the final table. The playing was really slow -- when you watch it on ESPN they edit it and only show the key hands. When Doug was finally knocked out in 7th place, we were a little relieved that we no longer had to sit in the cold air-conditioned room on the uncomfortable bleacher seating. After he had been knocked out (my heart dropped to my stomach when Paul Wasicka flipped over his pocket queens), he had a couple of exit interviews and we went to the Bellagio to eat an expensive steak meal (on Doug, of course). You can watch his final hand here (start at 2:10)
My dad later scolded my brother, saying he shouldn't have gone all-in, but everyone I spoke to who actually knew poker said he made the right play. He was also the one player at the table who wasn't knocked out by Jamie Gold (the dude who came in first place). As Doug put it, "I was going for first place, not to move up another pay level." If you've read my previous posts, you'll know that I'm obsessed with Vincent Van Gogh, and had always told my brother that he would be my Theo. You can imagine then, that his win made me reevaluate what steps I should take next.
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