Off to a Good Start

On Day 3 of the World Series of Poker, I was feeling good. Nearly 6500 players entered the tournament, and now more than two-thirds of them had been sent packing. With roughly 2000 of us remaining, there was finally room for everyone to play on the same day. It had been a week since I played my first day, but now there were no more days off. Everybody would be playing every day until he lost his chips or there were only nine remaining.

Day 2 had been harrowing. I’d come in short stacked, and despite opposition so tough that Poker News called mine the “Table of Death”, I’d managed to finish the day with just over 90,000 chips, putting me right around the average.

What’s more, my Day 3 table draw looked to be a welcome respite. There were no names I recognized and only one or two other players who even seemed to be professionals of any stripe. Things were looking good for me.

They were looking even better for me after the first hand I played, where I called a raise from a young Czech player holding a pair of 2’s on my big blind. The flop came K52. Not wanting to risk checking and giving my opponent the option of keeping the pot small, I bet into him at every opportunity. He called the flop, he called the turn, and after considerable thought, he called the river. I showed my trips, he mucked his hand, and just like that was at 125K. Not a bad way to start the day.

A Turn for the Worse

About 20 minutes later, I raised with 5-4 of diamonds. It was a weak hand to play from relatively early position and not something I could have gotten away with at the “Table of Death” where there were strong, aggressive players willing to fight me for every pot. With this bunch, though, I was very clearly the best player and I intended to take advantage of that. The same Czech from before called out of the small blind, and everyone else folded.

The flop was JT3 with two diamonds. I bet 4400 into a pot of about 7500, he raised to 15K with about 40K behind, and I shoved. After some thought, he called with AJ. The turn was a 7 to give me a gutshot, but the river blanked and I was down to 60K.

The guy turned out to be pretty tight, and knowing what I know now I may not have shoved on him. With the information I had at the time, though, I think it’s a good play. I doubt he shows up with JJ+, so his calling range is probably AJ, JT, 66, and maybe TT if he doesn’t 3-bet it pre-flop. If he’s also calling KJ and QJ it’s probably a bad shove, but if he’s raise-folding stuff like that, which a lot of the randoms in this tournament are, I like the shove. I think he can also have stuff like AT, maybe bluffs, maybe even draws that fold. Yes, I realize I’m crushed by better flush draws, but I don’t think it’s inconceivable that he raise-folds them. What good are lots of chips if you aren’t going to use them?

Unfortunately, I soon lost another sizable pot. I raised from late position with a pair of 5’s, and the player on my left, who was one of the better amateurs at the table, moved all-in. Although it was going to cost me half of my chips to call, I really didn’t have too much of a decision.

My opponent had a suited Ace-9 and won the flip. The chips went his way, and I was down to 26K at the first break. Now, I was deflated. I knew, though, that I’d been in worse spots before, including last year when I ended up doing very well. Chips or no chips, I was still the best player at the table. Plus, there was an aggressive player on my right, meaning that with my now short stack, I would probably get some good re-stealing opportunities of my own.

The Frustrating Unimportance of Results

Some of you might be thinking that my play sounds needlessly reckless: “Hey, kid, you played two big pots. One of them you had a 33% chance of winning, one of them you had a 50% chance of winning. No wonder you’re broke.”

The most important thing to realize is that in both cases there was already a lot of money in the pot. At the point that I was considering calling the all in with 55, there were about 33,000 chips in the pot, and it was going to cost me 23,000 more to call. You can see, then, that although I have a 50% chance of winning, I don’t have to put up 50% of the pot. Taking odds of 33:23 on a 1:1 proposition is in fact quite a good wager.

The 54 hand is a little bit different. In that case, I wasn’t the one calling the bet, I was the one putting my opponent to a decision. It would indeed be a bad wager on my part if I knew for certain that he was going to call. What I am banking on, though, is that he sometimes folds and I win the pot outright. The flush draw is just back-up in the unfortunate event that he calls.

Since he did call, does that mean my play was bad? Maybe, but not necessarily, and that’s one of the things that’s so frustrating about poker. Sometimes you do everything right, get your money in good, and lose anyway to an unlucky card. Other times, you do everything right but get your money in bad anyway. Bad results don’t necessarily mean bad play, which is what makes it so difficult to realize when you are playing badly.

It might be that my opponent never raises the flop with a hand that isn’t going to call all in, in which case my re-raise was bad. Or, maybe he raises the flop with a lot of hands that will fold to an all in. In that case, my play was good and I just got unlucky that he happened to have a particularly strong one this time. I’ll never know.

Brrrrr

What I did know was that I was really short now. I had a plan for survival, though.
The guy on my right was a very aggressive Vietnamese guy who was friends with, and quite possibly backed by, Menh “The Master” Nguyen. I’d been looking for opportunities to resteal on him but it was never quite right. Finally I got QJs on my button. He opened to 4800 (blinds were 800/1600/200), and I shoved for about 34K. The big blind gave me a scare by asking for a count, but he eventually folded. The raiser folded AT face-up and walked away from the table, seemingly a little frustrated.

Next orbit, action folds to him in the SB. This is the third time that had happened. Once he limped, I checked and folded to a bet on an Ace-high flop. Second time, he raised and I folded.

This time he limped, and I checked 64o. The flop came 578 with a flush draw. He checked, I bet 2200, he started talking. “You hit that? You hit a piece of that?” Then rather abruptly he threw 6200 chips in the pot.

I was pretty sure he was hollywooding with a strong hand, but you know, the second nuts beats a lot of strong hands. Besides, there are a ton of turn cards that can kill my action. So after some silent contemplation, I made it 12,200 with about 25K behind. He asked for a count and then shoved, and I snap-called. I flipped over my straight, and he turned over 96 for the higher straight. The turn was a 6, which didn’t change anything, and the river was a blank to eliminate me.

It was a bummer, but I don’t think anything other than getting it in on the flop is an option. The only questionable thing from the day is the 54s shove, which granted was a big pot to lose, but like I said, I don’t mind it based on the information I had at the time.

I was eliminated somewhere around 1800th place, but I couldn’t tell you with any more precision than that. For the first time in my WSOP history, my showing was too poor for the tournament officials to track or record where exactly I finished.

Ego and Variance

The most difficult thing about playing poker for a living, far more difficult than being good at cards, is dealing with the ups and downs. Although I’ve always ended up with a nice income at the end of the year, I have periods every year where it feels like nothing is going my way and I am losing tons of money. Even after experiencing them multiple times, I still find it difficult to keep a clear head during these “downswings”. This is probably due in part to the fact that for the last few years I have been playing ever higher stakes, meaning that each year brings the necessity of getting used to winning and losing larger sums.

Still, it surprises me a little that although I understand intellectually that poker is a game of the long run and that the results of a single day, week, or month don’t mean very much, emotionally I get stuck on these short-term results. After a good week, I feel like I am the greatest player ever. After a bad week, I often question all of my instincts and decisions, even though in both cases the cards probably contributed far more to the outcome than did my individual decisions.

June was one of the worst months of my career online, and I was hoping that coming out to Vegas would be a nice change of pace. Unfortunately things didn’t go well my first week out, either, so I came into the main event lacking a bit in the confidence department.

Ego plays a funny role in poker. On the one hand, it costs a lot of people a lot of money when they convince themselves that they can beat people or games they cannot or that they can get away with fundamentally flawed play. On the other hand, playing your best requires a willingness to back up your reads with a lot of money, and that requires confidence. The best players can figure out when it is correct to execute a huge bluff or to call a huge bet with a very weak hand. When you feel like nothing is going your way and the stakes are high, it can be difficult to trust your instincts and your reasoning.

There were at least two big hands on Day 1 where I suspect I might have played differently if I were feeling more confident in my game, and unfortunately a few similar spots during Day 2 as well.

The Table of Death

There are many kinds of bad luck in poker. Sometimes you just get dealt a run of bad cards, and sometimes you get dealt good cards but someone else gets dealt better cards. Sometimes you get dealt good cards and get your money in ahead only to have someone “suck out” or catch a lucky card on you to cost you the pot anyway.

In a poker tournament, you can also get seated at a bad table. At the WSOP Main Event, where there are thousands of weak players, it’s a disaster to end up a table packed with very good ones. So of course that’s just what happened to me. There were so many successful professionals at our table that PokerNews took to calling it “The Table of Death.”

It didn’t start off so bad. Here was the lineup at the beginning of the day:

Ahlberg, Tom Vasa Sweden 5,200 B29 2
Boyette, Robert Archer FL 38,950 B29 7
Brokos, Andrew Catonsville MD 16,350 B29 5
De Bon, Cedric Suisse Switzerland 22,725 B29 9
Levy, Grant Sydney Australia 52,225 B29 8
Ludovic, Lacay Paris France 53,425 B29 3
Pagano, Luca Treviso Italy 40,125 B29 6
Warne, Shane Victoria Australia 87,625 B29 1
Wissler, Mike St. Louis MO 48,725 B29 4

Grant Levy and Lacay Ludovic are both professionals. In my opinion, neither was spectacular, but they were both very solid and not making a lot of mistakes. Luca Pagano is a very, very tough opponent. He was named 2008 Player of the Year on the European Poker Tour. Worst of all, he was to my immediate left, meaning that I had to act before him in nearly every hand that we played.

The others at the table were nothing special. Unfortunately, they didn’t last long. They quickly lost their money to the better players and were replaced by much tougher competition.

The one other player worth noting is Shane Warne, whom I referred to on my blog as “an Australian cricket player.” A British commenter informed me that this was like calling Roger Clemens “some American baseball player”, estimating that “any male in the cricket-playing world” would have heard of Warne and setting the over/under on people who know who he is at 2 billion. In other words, I was in the presence of athletic superstardom, though it meant nothing to me.

In that vein, a funny story was reported from Day 1 involving baseball great Oral Hershiser, who is also an avid poker player. Hershisher was eliminated from the tournament and “gave Patten [his opponent] a signed baseball encased in glass after his elimination. Patten appreciated the gesture, however, the Englishman admitted that he had no idea who Orel Hershiser was.”

In the first few hours, I didn’t adapt very well to the good players on my left. I was trying to steal too many pots, and at least half the time that I raised, one of them would call or re-raise me. It was like a game of Whack-a-Mole: I kept sticking my head up, and they kept knocking me back down. I did manage to make one big hand and win a nice pot with it, but I quickly lost it back with more failed steals. After two hours, I entered the first break with barely 10,000 chips, even less than the 16,000 I’d had at the start of the day.

Things did turn around for me during Level 6. I was so short that if someone raised in front of me, my only options were to fold or to move all in. I opted for the latter several times and had managed to pick up a few small pots without getting called.

Then Lacay, the French pro who’d been very aggressive, raised from late position and got called by a strong player. I was in the small blind and looked down at my cards to find two Aces, the best hand in No-Limit Hold ‘Em. With my short stack, this was a no-brainer. I moved all in, and after some thought, Lacay called. The good player behind him re-raised all in himself, causing Lacay to fold, which was the best case scenario for me. Two players had called my all in bet, but one of them had subsequently folded, so I only had to hold up against one hand to more than triple my chips.

Slowrolling

I should interject here with a bit of poker etiquette that live players take verrrry seriously: slowrolling. When a hand goes to showdown in an online card room, the software reveals all the relevant hands and awards the pot to the best one. That’s all there is to it, and it’s over in seconds.

When a hand goes to showdown in a live poker game, there is a whole song and dance about who is going to show his hand first. The vaguely accepted protocol is that if you are pretty sure you have the best hand, you should turn your cards over first. If you take your time before showing your hand, especially if your opponent has already shown and you have him beat, it is considered a “slowroll”.

I can hardly overstate how furious certain players will get if you slowroll them. I’ll admit that it is frustrating when you reveal your hand and assume it is good when your opponent doesn’t immediately show something better, only to have that hope (along with the pot) snatched away when he finally reveals that he had the winner all along. But I have seen players threaten physical violence, and I’m sure that many actual fights have started over a slowroll.

All of that said, I generally don’t show my hand until instructed to do so by the dealer. I don’t play live poker all that often, and I am paranoid that I will misinterpret the action and accidentally reveal my cards before everyone has acted or something. There are even situations where turning your hand over too soon can get it disqualified. Being not entirely familiar with the rules, I prefer just to wait until I am told to turn my hand over.

Which is what I did with my Aces. My opponent had already revealed his hand, a pair of Tens, and several other players asked what I had. I waited several more seconds for the dealer to signal me, then exposed my Aces. I didn’t think it was a big deal, and my opponent didn’t seem to mind either, but Lacay snorted and said, “Honh honh honh, nice slowroll” in his snooty French accent. I tried to explain the situation, but he just repeated “Niiiiice slowroll” in a way that really pissed me off. He wasn’t even the affected player, and I didn’t understand why he felt the need to interject and accuse me of being rude.

Meanwhile, my Aces held up and I more than tripled my chips to over 30K. Obviously that was exciting, but it was marred by Lacay’s obnoxiousness. I took out my Ipod and listened to some Rolling Stones to calm down and hopefully block out more comments, if they were forthcoming. The last thing I needed now was someone getting under my skin.

A few hours later, just before the dinner break, at 300/600/75, Ludovic raised to 1500 in second position and I called with JJ. Pagano called behind me, Levy called on the button, and a loose/bad Swede called in the BB. The flop came Tc 7c 5d. Ludovic bet 2600, I raised to 7000, the others folded, and Lacay called.

The turn was the 2h, and though it was a total blank, I didn’t feel my hand was good enough to warrant a bet. I’d raised not purely for value but also to drive the players, and any possible draws, out from behind me. Now that’d gotten the pot heads up with Lacay, I didn’t feel my modest overpair was worthy of my entire stack. We both checked.

The tiver was the 8d. Lacay checked, and I went into the tank. Granted my hand looks like a busted draw, but his range for raising in early position, betting into four people on the flop, and calling a raise shouldn’t be that wide. Given that my hand looks like a missed draw, he ought to be checking even his strongest hands to me on the river, but in reality he probably isn’t.

I checked and waited for him to show first; there was no way I was voluntarily turning my cards over against this guy now. He waited a few seconds and then said, “I haven’t got much,” then revealed an 8. After taking his hand in, I turned over the winner. He snorted and muttered, “Worst player I’ve ever seen,” under his breath as he walked away from the table. Although he said this as if he were talking to himself, he said it in English rather than his native French, so I’m pretty sure he intended for me to hear it.

In any event, it upset me on several levels. The first was just that this guy seemed to have it in for me for no apparent reason. I like to be liked, and I take that sort of thing personally.

The second was that he was right. In retrospect, I definitely should have bet my hand and he would have called with a worse one. Although I was happy to have 45K, I probably cost myself another 9 or 10 because I didn’t trust my instincts.

Thankfully I had the dinner break to cool off. I called my girlfriend, who pointed out that if Frenchy was being that obnoxious, it was probably because he was frustrated and in a bad mindset. That was of course spot-on and a very helpful thing to hear. I had dinner with a friend/co-worker from Poker Savvy Plus, where I’m an instructor, and that was helpful as well, as I got to complain about my table and strategize for how to deal with a tough situation.

When the Going Gets Tough

The most brutal addition to an already tough table was a young guy named Isaac Baron. If you aren’t an online poker aficionado, you probably haven’t heard of him, but there’s a strong case to be made that he is the best No-Limit Hold ‘Em tournament poker player in the world. Certainly no credible short list could leave him off. He’s won virtually every major internet tournament there is and has over one million dollars in live winnings as well. Oh, and he just turned 21, so he hasn’t even had a chance to start tearing up live tournaments in the US yet.

Funny story about Isaac: he once lost a $50,000 sports car. He drove it to a party, got drunk, and couldn’t find it the next morning. After hours of searching, he reported it stolen and eventually collected an insurance check and bought a new car. A few months later, he got a call from the insurance company: a neighbor was concerned that a Lexus had been parked in the same spot for months.

Not only was Isaac now at my table, but he was two seats to my left. I think the only guy who had it worse was the Swede on my right, who had to content not only with Isaac and Luca but with me as well on his left.

When I play a poker tournament, I am used to being the best player at the table. That means I can often get away with playing weaker hands than my opponents do, since I can generally outmaneuver them. Thus, my default tournament strategy is one that involves playing a lot of small pots.

In this case, though, I couldn’t count on a skill edge to compensate for weaker cards. I needed to play fewer hands and to make larger raises when I did raise, in order to charge my opponents if they wanted to try to play weaker hands against me.

I did execute one really big bluff that was important not only for building my chipstack but also for restoring my confidence. Blinds were 300/600/75. I opened to 1500 with KJo, Luca Pagano called, and Grant Levy made it 4500 on the button. I made it 11K to go with 33K behind. This isn’t a spot I’d put myself in against a player who can 5-bet bluff but I wasn’t worried about that here. If he had shoved one me, I would have folded quickly and felt fine about it. The flop was QTx with a spade draw. I bet 16K, he tanked for what felt like forever and folded.

In the four hours after dinner, I think I executed my strategy pretty well. I tightened up considerably and raised a little more, relative to the blinds, than I’d been doing when entering a pot. Lacay complained that I was a “Kill Phil” player, referring to a book offering suggestions on how amateurs can minimize the edge that better players have against them in a tournament. I just shook my head and smiled. He wasn’t entirely wrong, but he seemed to think that he was among the players I was worried about, which was not the case.

A part of me wanted to argue with him, to say something definitive to show him that I really was a good player, much better than he. But the rational part of me realized that it really wasn’t such a bad thing to be underestimated at the table, so I just kept on bluffing him and let him keep on muttering.

At 500/1000/100, I raised to 2700 with AQ first to act. Grant Levy, an Australian pro who was pretty loose pre-flop, especially against me, called in middle position. We were heads up to the Kc Jc Th flop. I bet 4400, he called. Turn 4d, I bet 10K, he called. River 4h, I bet 20K, and he shook his head, sighed, and folded JT face up. I guess he now loses to AK and AA, not that I’m triple barreling those. As tight as I’d been playing, I think he ought to have folded the turn. I kind of doubt he would have called the river even if it were a 2.

My disciplined play helped me to cut my losses against the experts on my left and also established for me the image of a tight player. I think I used this image well to steal pots selectively. The best example came towards the end of the day.

I raised to 2700 with AQ again in first position. Luca Pagano called Isaac Baron called, and Lacay Ludovic called in the SB. Staring down every one of my nemeses from the day, I was planning on giving up virtually every flop that missed me. However, I ended up betting 6000 at a J88 flop and taking it down. I think JJ+ is out there almost never, so really I am worried about Jacks, 8’s, TT, and 99. Smaller pairs probably don’t call, but I’m in fine shape even if they do. By the end of the day, I had over 90,000 chips. It may have been the Table of Death, but having started the day with only 16,000 chips, I felt like I’d been granted a new life.

Jack Links and NASCAR

The 2009 World Series of Poker was presented by Jack Links Beef Jerky. It takes some effort to step down from Milwaukee’s Best, the presenting sponsor for the past few years, but when a man in a Sasquatch costume appeared on stage to speak, or more accurately to growl, “Shuffle Up and Deal!”, it was apparent that Harrah’s had pulled it off.

Jeffrey Pollack, the commissioner of the WSOP, is a man with an admirable mission and an enormous task: to bring poker into the mainstream of American sports culture. A lot has been accomplished in this regard, much but not all of which can be attributed to Pollack: poker programming has appeared not only on ESPN but on such diverse networks as GSN, Fox Sports, the Travel Channel, and even NBC. The most prominent players are household names, and the WSOP itself is a two-month long spectacle that attracts tens of thousands of players and quite a few spectators as well.

Despite these accomplishments, though, poker has not yet “broken through” entirely. It is still poorly understood by the American public at large and viewed skeptically at best by the sports editors of most major news outlets. Even the WSOP, let alone smaller poker events, have had difficulty attracting sponsors outside of the immediate poker market: online poker sites, poker apparel, energy drinks, and closely related products such as beer and beef jerky.

Pollack comes to poker by way of NASCAR, so he’s very familiar with saturation advertising. He’s even said that he wouldn’t mind seeing players who resemble NASCAR drivers, with ads plastered all over their hats and clothing (though he did ban face tattoos this year, apparently in response to an actual incident).

At the same time that he is littering the felt of his poker tables with advertisements, Pollack is trying to infuse the WSOP with tradition and austerity. Giant portraits of main event winners from years past adorn the walls, and this year he introduced a new ceremony where tournament winners receive their gold bracelets as their native country’s national anthem plays and the Commissioner waxes poetic about the prestige of the event..

Yet Pollack’s insistence on emphasizing the solemnity of the event every time he is in front of a microphone smacks of wistful thinking. The fact that the former president of my alma mater, the University of Chicago, never allowed the words “Harvard” or “Yale” to pass his lips without adding, “our peer institutions” only served to emphasize that they were no such thing, and such is the effect of Pollack’s grand rhetoric as well. Not to mention that as he asks everyone to stand and be silent for a national anthem, he is standing on the same stage where he was so recently joined by the Sasquatch, who is now prowling the aisles of the WSOP handing out packets of beef jerky whenever a player makes four-of-a-kind jacks.

The Beginning: Levels 1 and 2

Even before Sasquatch gave the dealers the go-ahead, I had a bad feeling about my table. It was populated almost entirely by young guys roughly my own age. You might think that an older player would be more experienced and thus more dangerous, but the twenty-somethings who can afford to compete in a $10,000 poker tournament are a strongly self-selected bunch. If a guy my age is playing in this event, it’s almost certainly because he’s very good at poker, not because he has $10,000 to spend on a hobby as a middle-aged business owner or wealthy retiree might.

Plus, half an hour into the tournament, there were still two seats at my table paid for but not yet occupied. Again, only very good or very wealthy players can afford to be so blase about showing up on time for a $10,000 tournament, and the two who eventually filled those seats proved to be of the former variety.

I’m inclined to put WSOP participants into three categories: the weakest players who are just playing their own cards and don’t really understand the basics of tournament poker, the average-to-good players who know how to adapt to tournament situations and take advantage of weak players, and the really great players who will fight for a lot of pots and know how to take advantage of not only the weak players but those in the second category as well.

The third strategy is certainly the best, but it also requires the most skill and experience, and fortunately very few players are capable of it. Unfortunately, one of them happened to be sitting two seats to my left.

My goal, then, was to play pots with the slightly weaker- and I emphasize slightly, as many of them still identified as professionals- players on my right. There was a Spanish pro to my immediate right who had been raising a lot from late position. I figured one of his biggest weaknesses would be playing out of position to a 3-bet, so when I looked down at K [heart] 8 [heart] on my button, it seemed like a good spot.

He open raised to 250, I made it 800, and he called. The flop came A [heart] 2 [club] [4 heart], which was pretty perfect for my purposes. I had a strong draw to semi-bluff, and the Ace gave me a very plausible hand to represent. I bet 1100, and he called quickly.

The turn brought the 3 [heart], giving me the nuts (well, second nuts, but I wasn’t too concerned about him showing up with the straight flush) but making the board a lot scarier for my opponent. To my surprise, he took the lead on the turn, betting 2500. I took some time to count our remaining chips- more than 25,000- and then raised to 9000. He thought for a long time, stared me down, showed me a 5, and folded.

Curse these competent players! I probably stack a fish there, or at least get a 6500 call on the turn, even if he folds the river. Granted this guy had called my re-raise from out of position with a hand containing a 5, but he’d also been able to fold a straight to a single raise. Maybe it was overly optimistic for me to aim for his stack. It’s possible that just calling the turn and then betting or raising the river would have been better.

Ideally, the early stages of a tournament are an opportunity to win chips from weak players before they are eliminated. At this table, though, I largely had to stay inside of a bubble and hope that the table would break, which it eventually did. Towards the end of level 2, our table broke and I moved to a less tough table. By the end of that level, I’d managed to turn my 30,000 starting chips into 45,000.

Having played four hours of poker, it was time for a dinner break.

New Beginnings: Levels 3 and 4

We were only playing four two-hour levels on the first day, so play was already half over. This was a welcome change from my first WSOP, where we played six two-hour levels and didn’t finish until 4 AM, but it was if anything too short. The end result is that we have to play longer days later in the tournament, when it’s most important to be sharp and when there is less time to recover between sessions.

I was the first player back after dinner, so I found myself sitting alone at the table with a heavyset dealer whose nametag read “Diamond”. I asked him if that was his real name, and he responded that it was. “I was born to be either a dealer or a stripper,” he told me, then, glancing down at his ample stomach, added, “I think I made the right decision.”

In level 3, blinds had escalated to 150/300. A player in late position opened with a raise to 675. The player on the button, who was young and probably the best player besides myself at the table, called, and the small blind folded. I was in the big blind with QT of diamonds. I was certainly getting good odds to call the raise, but I decided to go for the squeeze.

I raised to 2500, the first player folded, but the second called. I didn’t know a lot about him, but it was a safe guess that he knew what a squeeze play was and wasn’t giving me a lot of credit here. Now we had a mind game going on: I knew that he knew that I didn’t have a strong hand, and he probably knew that I knew that, and so forth. I was going to have to make some tough decisions in this hand.

The flop came 972 with one diamond, giving me nothing but a few backdoor draws. Given the mind game I mentioned above, though, that was a good thing, because I didn’t feel I could profitably bluff just once with no further plan. My opponent will call too often to make that profitable. I decided to bet at this flop and then follow-up on any Ace, King, Jack, 8, or diamond turn. These were all cards that would improve my hand or be scary for my opponent or both. I bet 3500, and he called.

The turn was the Jack of diamonds, which vastly improved my hand. I didn’t have much yet, but now any diamond, King, or eight on the river would make me a huge hand. Even a Queen or a Ten could be enough to win me the pot. That’s nearly half the deck, so my hand was definitely too strong to give up on. I stuck with my plan and bluffed at it again, this time betting 7500. My opponent called.

The river was a 2 of clubs, missing all of my draws. I thought for a bit about bluffing one more time, but at this point the pot was huge and a bluff would cost me nearly all of my chips. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, and so with a sigh I checked. My opponent quickly checked also and showed a pair of 4′s, which was even weaker than I expected. If I had known for sure that he could have a hand that weak, I probably would have bluffed the river. Even without the river bluff, I still think I played the hand well, and I did have a nearly 50% chance of winning it on the turn. The cards just didn’t fall my way; that’s poker.

That hand cost me nearly a third of my chips, but I was still in fine shape with a little over 30,000. That’s where I stayed until the end of the day, when I found myself in a very strange spot. A tightish but pretty decent player opened to 750 in middle position. The cut-off called. I had KTo in the BB, which is not a hand I like playing out of position, but I called getting 4.5:1.

The flop came K [heart] 5 [club] 3 [club]. I checked, the pre-flop raiser bet 1600, the CO called, and I called. I think this is close but OK. There’s a good chance the raiser’s range is wide, as I imagine he understands continuation betting. The CO can have KQ, KJ, or a set, but I can also see him showing up with flush draws and stuff like 66-TT. At this point, I was not really looking to put any more money in the pot, but I thought I might be able to check down a winner.

The turn was the 5h, putting out a second, though unlikely, flush draw. We checked around.

The river was the Tc, giving me K’s and T’s. I led out 5000, the pre-flop raiser folded, and the CO pretty quickly raised to 12,000. This felt strong to me, but there were very few hands I could put him on. There were only two combinations of KK and TT possible, and one if not both of those probably 3-bets pre-flop. I think he bets bare trips last to act on the turn with two flush draws out there. So for value hands I think he has to have almost exactly the only 55 or one of the three 33 combos. Meanwhile, the draw missed, and I’m getting 3.5:1.
Nevertheless, I was pretty sure I was going to fold. It was the toughest decision I’d had all day, and I spent a good five minutes thinking and staring my opponent down. He was impassive, leaning forwards with hands covering his mouth and eyes revealing nothing. I’d nearly talked myself into a fold, but I decided to count out the chips for a call and see how my opponent responded to that. I slowly stacked up the 7000 chips I would need, which at that point was about 1/3 of what I had left, and watched for a reaction. Still nothing.

I picked up the chips, as though about to put them in the pot, and my opponent blinked. I thought I detected a subtle flinch as well. I dropped the chips into the pot. “Call.” Wordlessly, he turned over 33 for a full house. I thought I’d detected weakness, but I was wrong, and it cost me.

In just a few more minutes, we were done for the day. I finished with 16,000 chips, a lot less than the 30,000 we’d started with but still enough to maneuver in the early stages of the tournament. That’s the nice thing about the WSOP: unlike in some poker tournaments, there is room to make mistakes and recover from them. Let’s just hope I can.

Just before takeoff, the pilot announces that we are scheduled to arrive at about 11PM local, at which time the temperature will be 104 degrees. For the fourth year in a row, I’m spending the middle of the summer in the middle of the desert, braving the blistering hot sun to compete in the World Series of Poker (WSOP).

It’s surreal to think that three years ago, I was a young kid, barely out of college, who took a flyer on a qualifying tournament on the internet. Though even then I was earning a modest living at poker, I rarely wagered more than $200 at a time. I was more than thrilled when, with an investment of just a few hundred dollars, I won a seat in the $10,000 buy-in Main Event of the World Series of Poker. Though more than a little intimidated by the stakes and the competition, I was lucky enough to finish 279th place, winning almost $40,000 for my trouble. I’ve been back every year since, and remarkably, I’ve managed to win something every year, most recently finishing 35th in the 2008 tournament and winning nearly $200,000.

At my fourth World Series of Poker, I feel like a grizzled veteran. The stakes aren’t nearly so intimidating- I’ve won and lost more on a single hand- and in the last three years I’ve developed a haughty disdain for the competition, including most of the so-called pros you may have seen on TV. It’s still important to me that I do well, though.

The truth is that despite the hefty entry fee, the WSOP Main Event is hands-down the most profitable spot most poker professionals can expect to encounter all year. The prestige and excitement that surround the tournament entice all manner of amateurs, even a few who have never played the game before, to wager big money on their fledgling poker skills. A few get lucky- some have even won millions and the title of world champion- but most make big mistakes and spew off their chips in short order to seasoned professionals. I am not exaggerating when I say that tougher competition can be found in the average online poker tournament where the stakes are 1/100th of what they are at the WSOP. In short, this is the most profitable opportunity of the year for me, and I don’t want to blow it.
year!”

Stud/8

I am far from the world’s best Stud/8 player. It’s a game I enjoy and that I play at modest stakes with some success from time to time. I think I have a pretty solid theoretical understanding of the game, but I am not very experienced. In particular, I had never played it in a live setting before, and I quickly noticed some big differences from playing online.

For one thing, it is very difficult to pay attention to everything that is going on. There are eight people at the table, but unlike in a game like Texas Hold ‘Em, even the people who fold are important. As soon as the first three cards are dealt, it is vital to look at everyone’s face-up card. Knowing that three people folded 5′s on 3rd street is important if I later find myself needing to catch a 5 to make a straight.

There are some Rainmen out there who can remember every card that was dealt on every street. I am nowhere near that good, and I don’t try to be. My goal is just to take note of the small cards and notice if a lot of cards of any one suit are out.

Unfortunately, I was so busy scrambling to count the face-up cards before they were folded that I didn’t have much time to study the reactions of my opponents.

Despite these challenges, the tournament was actually quite a lot of fun. I felt I was playing pretty well, catching some good cards, and finding myself in some interesting situations. My table was reasonably tough, but there were a couple of very weak players, and everyone was friendly and having a good time.

Naturally, as the tournament progressed, it got tougher. The weaker players at the table were eliminated, and the players who replaced them were generally far more difficult and included a few pros, most notably Marcel Luske. Back when I was just a poker fanboy watching the WSOP on TV, he was one of my favorite players, so it was definitely neat to sit at the same table with him five years later.

Neat, and costly. I was in good shape, sitting on about 10,000 in chips when the stakes were 400-800. About half of the table folded, and it was my turn to act. I had an 8 showing, and a 7 and a 2 face-down. This is not a particularly strong hand, especially not with four players left to act behind me. Although I do have three cards to a low, I do not have an Ace, nor do I have much in the way of straight or flush potential. In other words, this is primarily a one-way hand, and not even a very good one at that.

That said, 872 is a playable hand when you think you have a good chance of stealing the pot on 3rd Street. Looking at the players behind me, I saw that no one had a very good card showing. Two players had a Queen, Marcel had a Jack, and the last player had an 8. Even if one of the guys with a face card had a pair, that wouldn’t be a terribly strong hand, and it was far from a guarantee that they would. So, I went for my steal raise.

Marcel called me with his Jack, and everyone else folded. There are very few playable hands that include a Jack, so at this point I thought he probably had a pair of Jacks or maybe something like TJQ.

On 4th Street, the dealer threw me an Ace and Marcel a 4. This was probably the best card I could have caught, as it both improved my low draw, gave me some high potential, and was likely scary for my opponent. Even if he had the pair of Jacks, he had to worry that I may have just made a pair of Aces. I bet, and Marcel called.

On 5th Street, I got a useless Ten, while Marcel caught a 3. Usually, little cards are good cards, but I didn’t figure Marcel for a low draw, because as I said, there aren’t really any playable low hands that include a Jack. I thought he was just being stubborn with a pair of Jacks.

6th Street brought me another 8 and Marcel a 2. The pair helped me a little, but not much. If Marcel had Jacks, he was still ahead, but now I could either make a low on the river or pair any of my cards to make two pair. Plus, Marcel had to worry that I had a pair of 8s and just made three of a kind. Between all of the cards that could improve me on 7th Street and the reasons why Marcel ought to be afraid of my hand, I felt I had to keep betting, so I bet again.

To my shock and dismay, the Dutchman raised me! That was entirely unexpected and forced me to reevaluate the whole hand. It just didn’t make sense, but I also didn’t think he could be bluffing here. I’d shown nothing but strength, betting or raising at every opportunity and catching some pretty strong cards. This would be an insane spot for a bluff.

I looked at Marcel’s cards again: J432. The only thing I could figure was that he had a suited A5J, was playing rolled up Jacks very strangely, or had made trips with something like J(22). Folding here might actually be the best play, but I called, bricked the river, and check-folded. Another player at the table called Marcel’s hand as a suited AJ5, so he showed his hold cards. They were indeed an A5, but only the 5 was suited to the J.

Based on my limited understanding of the game, it seemed like a loose call on 3rd. I was a bit irritated that he’d made runner runner runner perfect to scoop the pot. I later asked a more knowledgeable friend about the hand, though, and he told me that although Luske is not particularly good at Stud/8, his play in this hand was defensible. If he puts me on a steal on 3rd, then he can call with his weakish holding with the intention of stealing the pot on a later street. My friend compared it to floating the flop against a likely continuation bet in no-limit hold ‘em.

Not long after that hand, I got moved to a new table. It seemed a little softer, and I managed to get the last of my money in good with ….

The 6-Handed Tournament

Poker, of course, pre-dates the internet by at least a few centuries. The advent of internet poker, though, has changed the way people play the game even in a live setting. One of the most significant of these changes is the introduction of short-handed games, where there are fewer people to contend with at any given table.

Ordinarily, if you were playing Texas Hold ‘Em in a casino, you’d be at a table with nine other people. From the casino’s perspective, this is the most efficient use of its personnel and floor space.

From a player’s perspective, this is boring. When there are more players at the table, you generally need better cards to win the pot and thus cannot play as many hands. That means you spend most of your time not playing poker but waiting to play poker, waiting for a hand that has a good enough chance of holding up versus nine other hands.

Online, personnel and floor space are non-issues. Thus, internet poker rooms began offering games where you can play with 6 or even just 2 people at a table. This is my preferred style of play: it’s faster-paced and more rewarding to the skilled player. Anyone can win with a good hand. When there are fewer people at the table, you have to be able to win pots with hands that aren’t so strong, and that requires a lot more skill.

Once internet players like myself began invading brick and mortar casinos, we wanted to play the short-handed games that we enjoyed online in a live setting as well. They still aren’t easy to find, but the WSOP has begun offering a few 6-handed and even heads up (2-handed) tournaments.

On Tuesday, I played a $5000 6-Handed event. Like the main event, that buy-in is a strain on the bankroll, but I justified it to myself on the grounds that a) there aren’t that many opportunities to play a live 6-handed game; and b) I’m going to be a lot more comfortable at a 6-handed table than a lot of my opponents are.

I don’t think it was a bad decision, but it did go terribly for me. About half an hour into the tournament, I got what the poker world colorfully calls “cold decked”. I was dealt an incredibly strong hand, the second best possible hand in fact, which was easily worth all of my chips. Unfortunately, another player at the table happened to have the only hand that could beat me. So not only did I not win anything, but I didn’t even get to enjoy the experience as I did with the Stud/8 tournament, where my buy-in at least bought me a full day of play.

Cash Game Cassanova

After cursing my luck and sulking in my room for a bit, I decided to check out the cash games. Although the WSOP is a series of poker tournaments, there are plenty of live-action, or cash, games going on on the side. These are your traditional poker games, where you buy-in for whatever amount you choose (within the constraints of the game- all have a minimum and most have a maximum), play as long as you want, and leave whenever you choose with whatever amount you’ve managed to win or not lose.

I only played for about two largely uneventful hours, so I won’t bore you with the details. There was one colorful character at my table, though, who’s worth mentioning. He was a wealthy, heavy-set Texan in his mid-fifties. I don’t think he was actually an oilman, but he had an air of tycoon about him. He was wearing jeans, a blazer, and a Stetson and speaking with a broad grin and a heavy Texas drawl.

When I first sat down, he was on his cell phone placing a long list of sports bets. That’s always a good sign. Though it’s possible to make money sports betting, it’s a good guess that anyone who makes a lot of sports bets is a guy who likes to gamble even when the odds are not in his favor. Usually that means they’ll take some bad-odds gambles against me at the poker table as well.

I overheard the Texan make two more calls as well. The first was to a woman named “Becky” whom he seemed to select somewhat arbitrarily from his address book. He hadn’t seen her in a few months but it turns out she was available for dinner on a few hours’ notice. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about what was going on there.

On his next call, he left a voicemail that I’ll attempt to transcribe to the best of my memory: “Hey Jimmy, this is Dicky. Happy 20th birthday. That’s a big one. I’m sorry I won’t be able to make it for your party tonight, I’m going to be tied up. I’ve got a little present for you, though— it’s $50- your mother will have that for you. You’re growing into a fine young man. Hope you have fun. Bye.”

Gearing Up for the Main Event

All in all, it’s been a frustrating few days. I’ve lost money at poker (and thankfully I’m disciplined enough not to play anything else in the casino) every day I’ve been here, often in especially frustrating ways. I also haven’t been able to hang out with as many people as I was hoping I would if I arrived in Vegas a few days early. As it happens, most of my acquaintances in the poker world are very good players who have been too busy tearing it up at the tables to grab dinner or a drink.

Actually, on the day of the $5K tournament, I did manage to barge in on dinner with a remote acquaintance of mine and a few of his friends. The three of them are all better tournament players than I am and were all coming onto their dinner break in fantastically good shape in the same event that had put me on ice in the space of half an hour. They were all giddy and swapping stories about hands they’d played and big pots they’d won, talking about how it was “so easy” to outplay everyone at their tables. I was thinking how easy it would be jab a dinner fork into their tracheae.

On Wednesday night, though, I finally got what I badly needed: a very enjoyable night out with a great group of friends new and old. Technically, it was a meet-up for Poker Savvy Plus, a video training site with which I work. Several times a month, I and a few other successful poker players record ourselves playing poker online, along with commentary about what we are doing and why. Subscribers to Poker Savvy then have access to all of our training videos so that they can see how successful players handle certain situations and think about the game. For me, it’s a very nice amalgamation of my poker skill and my interest in education.

I ended up getting dinner and drinks, and later playing cards, with the owner of the site, two of the other instructors, and one of the instructor’s friends. We had a fantastic meal (compliments of Poker Savvy!) and some great conversation as well. It was the pick-me-up I needed, and though I woke up a bit tired and hung yesterday morning, I’m feeling more energized for the main event than I’ve been in weeks. Play starts in a few hours- wish me luck!

Early in level 7, the Flying Dutchman joins our table, upside-down sunglasses and all. Almost immediately, he takes half my stack.

Action folds to me in middle position. I’ve got 8(72), hardly a premium hand, but there’s nothing but junk behind me: two Queens, Marcel with a Jack, and an 8 on the bring-in. I raise, Marcel calls with the J, everyone else folds.

On 4th, I catch an A, Marcel catches a 4. I bet, he calls. Odds are good he’s got a pair of Jacks (though maybe I should expect him to 3-bet that more often than call?), but I’ve got outs to both halves of the pot plus the A is a scare card.

On 5th, I brick, and Marcel catches a 3. I bet, he calls.

On 6th, I pair my 8, he catches 2. I bet, he raises. That was unexpected. I think for a while and can’t figure what he has. A5 suited with the Jack seems most likely, or maybe rolled-up Jacks that he’s been slowplaying. Somewhat less likely are 65 suited with the J or a smaller pair in the hole that’s since made trips. I seriously consider folding but decide to call.

Thankfully I brick the river and check-fold. The guy on my right asks Marcel to show the suited A5. Marcel shows A5, but only the 5 is suited to the J. Obviously not a standard call on 3rd, but Marcel’s almost certainly a better S/8 player than I am, so I don’t want to write it off as an error. Possibly he put me on a steal and had a plan to take it away later if he didn’t go runner runner runner perfect.

I could have sworn that they’d said we were only playing 7 levels, but there indeed 8, and I busted about halfway through the last level. I got it in on 5th with four to a low and a pair of Aces against an open pair of 7′s and what turned out to be Kings up. They both made full houses on the river, and I missed my low.