Poker Pro Describes Embarrassing Moments From WSOP

Ville Wahlbeck is a high-stakes cash game player from Finland, who turned pro back in 2004, and has since gone on to become one of his country’s highest profile players, along with Patrik Antonius and Juha Helppi.
As well as cash games, Wahlbeck enjoys competing at tournaments, especially the World Series of Poker, which accounts for $1,177,486 of his $1,626,398 in casino winnings. The multiple award winner even captured a prestigious bracelet in 2009 at the $10k World Championship Mixed Events 8 Game for $492,384, but despite his past successes still describes the tournament series as “that brutal, masochistic thing..[with] more tournaments than anyone can handle and enough cash game action to drive people insane.”
Recently, Wahlbeck posted an interesting article on his pokerstarsblog entitled “My embarrassing WSOP memories” in which he describes some of the memories he would much rather forget about from his time playing at poker’s annual showcase series.
One such event occurred in 2006, after Ville Wahlbeck had just busted from the WSOP Main Event and was about to fly back to Finland as a small winner, but first decided to kill some time at the cash tables before catching his early morning flight. Taking his $40,000 stash to the table, Wahlbeck then explains:
“Four hours later, I was broke. I did have some small change to buy a sandwich from the airport and I managed to pay the cab driver. But that was about it.”
That experience may have been painful enough, but Ville Wahlbeck describes one of his most embarrassing moments coming in 2004 whilst playing a $5,000 Stud event. During a dinner break, Wahlbeck said he went off to play the slots and lost $2,000 over an hour and a half before then returning to the poker tournament, only to find someone else sitting in his seat. As he subsequently explains:
“I walked to the table and looked at the dude and the other players. They looked at me and one of them said: “It wasn’t a dinner break. It was just a normal break. Your stack got blinded away.” I probably went all red from my face. It didn’t really help that one of the players staring me from the table was one of my poker idols, Doyle Brunson. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just blurted, “Shit happens,” and walked away.”
Over the years, however, Ville Wahlbeck says he has now learnt to organize his time better so as to avoid burnout and avoidable mistakes. At this year’s WSOP, for instance, Wahlbeck says he has limited himself to playing just three tournaments, namely, the $50,000 Players Championship, $10,000 PLO, and the Main Event.