WSOP Main Event Wrap-Up

Sorry I haven’t posted any Main Event updates. First I was competing, then I was apoplectic. I’ll start with the good news: Carlos Welch, Nate Meyvis, and Leo Wolpert all squeaked into the money but did not survive Day 3.

Nate folded to Queens to two shoves that turned out to be from AK and JJ; the story he’s sticking to is that both players were at the bottoms of their ranges and he would make the same fold again. Then he lost QQ to AA to get pretty short and then lost AQ < 87s if memory serves.

Leo jammed the nut flush draw into a made full house. He claims it was a punt but he’s harder on himself than any poker player I know, so probably it was just a cooler.

Although cashing the Main Event was clearly going to be a very significant notch in his belt, Carlos had the stones to stick his stack in twice near the bubble, once jamming KJ over a raise and once open jamming KK for 15 BBs very close to the money. Thankfully neither was called. Interesting question whether turning the Kings face up and eating a one-round penalty would be the most +EV play, but that’s neither here nor there. Ultimately he was busted after shoving 77 into a raise from a “mangy” Russian woman who slowrolled him with Aces. It was a poetic exit, at least!

Former podcast guest Clayton Fletcher is still in the hunt with nearly 600K chips and a top 10% stack! Follow him on Twitter @claytoncomic.

As for myself, it’s tempting just to tell you I lost with Kings vs Aces and let you assume it was an unavoidable cooler, but the sad truth is that 5-bet jamming the Kings was probably the worst option available to me. Here was the situation:

It was early on Day 2, my stack was slightly above average, and the table was generally pretty decent, though not amazing. There was one really tough player (Jonathan “driverseati” Tamayo) on my immediate left. He’d been flatting a lot of my opens, running and playing well, and generally making life difficult for me.

He opened for 1200 UTG at 250/500/50. UTG2 called. I began the hand with about 58K, and both opponents covered. I made it 4800 with KK, which I think is already a mistake. I don’t mind squeezing Kings (though it isn’t as automatic as it may seem), but think my range should be very narrow here, probably just QQ+ and some big suited Aces, because of how strong both opponents’ ranges are and often I’ll be called and end up playing OOP with a lot of money behind. Neither of these players is very likely at all to 4-bet, so I should use bigger sizing, probably 6K.

Anyway, Jonathan threw out two more orange without much hesitation, making it 11,200, and I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t think too hard before I shipped my stack.

In retrospect, there’s little doubt that his range for calling a shove will be exactly AA, which means that no matter how light he might be on this 4bet (and to be honest, because of how profitably he can flat call and how quickly he raised, I suspect he isn’t that light to begin with), jamming can’t be better than either calling or 5-betting small and calling it off (the latter only being good if he has a very 4betting range, which again I doubt). Nate pointed out, and I agree, that even folding would be better than jamming.

So… I dunno what else to say. It was an unlucky spot, and I know a lot of people would have gone broke there, and it’s possible I would have lost most or all of my chips even if I’d called, but the more I think about it, the more I think my play was pretty clearly suboptimal.

Maybe next year!

12 thoughts on “WSOP Main Event Wrap-Up”

  1. WOW, I thought this was a classic cooler, but snowie says the play lost about 6.5 bb (calling even worse at -8.5). Had you done any simulations on situations like this in the past? Hopefully cash treated you better on your trip.

  2. CO opens. I shove something like 15-18bbs from BTN with the KJo and an Asian lady in the SB tank folds. That was hella scary. I’m guessing something like AT-AJ or 66-99 for her.

    I happily shoved the KK in my naivete. In hindsight, showing would have likely been correct to do. I folded for the next round anyway. Would have been devastating to get called by AK or QQ and lose with less than 50 people to go.

  3. Sorry to hear it, Andrew. One nitpicky question: in the writeup, you say you have both opponents covered. Was there a follow-up where you lost short-stacked, or was this just a typo?

  4. Not sticking to the story any more. It’s sort of possible to construe the fold as a good one, but my best estimate is that I had roughly 38% equity against their ranges getting 2.3-1. I do think they had the bottoms of their ranges, but even if these are the bottoms of their ranges, I have to call (unless their ranges only include fractional parts of these hands and more of others, which is probably less likely than their including yet weaker hands).

    Anyhow, this is a pretty bad mistake. In my defense it’s a spot that comes up roughly never (open for 2.5 BB with 27.5 BB behind; 30 BB jam behind you; 40 BB jam from the big blind; all with the dynamics we have in the Main). That said, it’s a mistake that shouldn’t have happened.

    • Just for whatever it’s worth, here are a few simulations from ProPokerTools. There are plausible interpretations of the physical and betting information such that these are the best-guess ranges for the two players.

      Of course, these are all simulations that are somewhere from quite charitable to very charitable to me. When I folded I thought there was roughly 0% chance either player had AQ or 99, but you would be justified in questioning that assumption.

      QQ 35.70% 203,116 23,020
      [AA-JJ], AK 37.49% 197,729 55,232
      AK, [KK-JJ] 26.81% 133,611 55,326

      QQ 39.80% 225,312 27,848
      [KK-JJ], AK 30.20% 148,220 66,747
      AK, [KK-JJ] 30.00% 147,021 66,810

      QQ 32.71% 186,792 19,747
      [AA-JJ], AK 33.62% 176,927 50,453
      AK, [AA-JJ] 33.67% 177,213 50,467

      QQ 29.61% 161,836 32,492
      [AA-TT], AK 38.77% 225,116 15,815
      [KK-JJ] 31.62% 173,836 32,624

      • Do you think you can discount AA at all from the first shove? In the online tourneys I play, you can heavily discount AA (at to a smaller extent KK) such a large reship because players tend to 3bet smaller with AA. These are smallish tournaments ($20-60$ buy-ins) with plenty of bad players though, maybe this dynamic wouldn’t hold in the main.

        • Yes, I do think it can be discounted, and that’s reflected in some of the simulations. That said, this person had made a bunch of 3-bet jams that were large overbets, and I could see him thinking that he’d “set us up” and should also do it with AA. Moreover, his table talk and physical information suggested that he was very confident in his hand.

          That said, there’s definitely a reason I left AA out of some of those ranges, and I do think you’re right that a lot of players who would jam 30 BB over 2.5 BB with some hands would not jam 30 BB over 2.5 BB with AA.

    • “The thing is, you only got to fuck up once. Be a little slow, be a little late, just once. And how you ain’t never gonna be slow, never be late?”

  5. Eric Beck sent me this comment, and with his permission, I’m posting it here:

    As a reader of your blog and listener of your podcast I have noticed a few times when you are pretty quick to talk down feel players. And if you do you usually are referring to feel players who know next to nothing about theory, have never read a book, or learned any of the math. You know the 50 year old feel player who just plays poker on weekends for fun. The thing is I think there is a whole other type of feel player. I think the best example is Patrik Antonius who always says stuff like “it took me a while to understand what my feelings were telling me.” I assume you believe he understands the math etc. I really think any decision that involves your stack you should take at least a minute. If people complain let them, and then take their money to give them 2 things to complain about.

    Anyways keeping that in mind. I believe, and yes it is totally just an educated opinion at best, is that the reason you lost with the KK is because you didn’t take the extra moment to ask yourself how you felt about the play.
    I think if you would have taken the time to ask yourself how you felt about shipping KK in that exact spot it would have given you the ability to access your intuition which people sometimes refer to as the low road. In closed system activities, which poker is pretty close to, your intuition is a powerful tool. Your intuition allows you to access ALL YOUR KNOWLEDGE about a situation rapidly. In the KK spot I just don’t think anyone has the time to analyse such an unusual situation consciously. There is too much information to consider. Your brain or your high road of thinking essentially becomes a traffic jam of knowledge. Now if you had taken the time to ask yourself how you felt about it, just maybe you would have got a funny feeling and figured out you should have folded or done something differently.

    Said in a different way…your feelings are how you access your intuition. And please if you take anything away from what i wrote here take this, your intuition does not ignore your knowledge of poker it does the exact opposite, it harnesses everything you know all at once and puts it together in ways you can’t be fully conscious of in the moment.
    Now granted if you are a 50 year old poker player just on vacation then your intuition doesn’t have that much too harness.
    The thing is you have a pretty elite poker mind. I really think you could increase your EV by getting better at harnessing the power of all of your mind.

    Anyways those are my thoughts. Take’em or leave’em.
    Run well, Eric

Comments are closed.