by Andrew Brokos
Originally Published in Two Plus Two Magazine
Intro | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6
When people think of luck in poker, they tend to think of catching lucky cards, like getting dealt a bunch of good hands or getting all in with the worst hand and hitting a miracle river to survive. But on Day 1 of the WSOP main event, I think that by far the most important element of luck is your seating assignment. There are thousands of weak players in the tournament, but nearly every good poker player in the world competes as well. On later days, a disproportionate number of good players will remain. But especially on Day 1, a good table draw can all but guarantee that a good player will advance to with a healthy stack. Conversely, a bad draw can mean that that same player will need to fight tooth and nail to survive at all.
My starting table was somewhere in the middle. Mostly, everyone was just very tight, and while that wasn’t ideal, it also meant that I wasn’t going to face a lot of tough decisions. Unfortunately, the one player I was concerned about was to my immediate left. He was a young Asian guy named Tony who plays online as Tongni. Tony is considered one of the best Limit Hold ‘Em players in the world, and he had already won a $10,000 buy-in event earlier in the series. He admitted that he rarely plays No Limit Hold ‘Em, but he has such a good poker mind that he was still my strongest opposition.
Level One: Blinds 50/100, I have 20K
Thankfully, I got off to a good start early on. The first big pot I played came in the first hour, when Tony made a small raise to 250 first to act. A player in middle position, whom I later learned was successful internet tournament player “basebaldy”, called, and I called with A5o in the big blind, since I was getting a good price. The flop was a beautiful 955.
With a hand this big, I wanted to be sure that three bets went into the pot, so I decided to take the betting lead myself. I led out for 600, Tony folded, and basebaldy called. The turn card was a 6. If my opponent held the last 5, which until now I was hoping he did, then a 6 was his most likely kicker.
Still, it was too soon to worry about that. I bet 1500, and he called. The river was something insignificant, I bet 3000, and he called again. He mucked when I showed my hand but later told me he had a pair of Kings. It’s a bit surprising that he didn’t re-raise them pre-flop, but I can understand why. I don’t think there had been a single re-raise at our table, and if he did it for the first time against a first position raiser, it would make his hand fairly transparent. But in this case, he ended up paying for it.
Not surprisingly, the first re-raise at the table came from me. It ended up being a weird hand. One of the weaker players opened for 500 from late position, and I found KK in the SB. This was the first time anyone had made such a big open, so while I didn’t know his exact range, I had a good idea. I popped him to 1500, and he called. The flop came T94. I wasn’t sure if AA was in his range here, but I didn’t think he’d continue with AK, and I wasn’t sure how he’d play JJ/QQ. Basically I felt like both of our ranges were pretty weird in this spot, and I wasn’t comfortable stacking off with KK for nearly 200 BB even in a 3-bet pot. So I checked the flop, and he checked behind.
The turn came a Q, which wasn’t great, since I was hoping he had QQ. I felt like he would bet most hands that would call a bet, and maybe bluff with AK, so I checked again. He checked behind. The river was a blank, I bet 2000, and he called and mucked. It was probably good for my meta-game that I showed I could play KK in such a strange way.
Level Two: Blinds 100/200, I have 27K
I was happy to get off to a nice start, but unfortunately Tony had done even better. He’d managed to get under the skin of the weakest player at the table and make some big hands against him, so he’d nearly doubled his stack to 40K.
The next sizable pot I won was on a very well-executed bluff, if I do say so myself. A pretty tight old man raised to 525 from early position, got one call, and I called with A [spade] 8 [spade] in my SB. The flop came T [spade] T [diamond] 7 [spade], giving me a flush draw. I checked, the old man bet 900, and the first player folded. At this point, I was pretty sure he had a big pair. Between my flush draw and my Ace, I am nearly as likely to end up with the best hand as he is, so I called.
The turn was a J, giving me a gut-shot straight draw as well. I checked, and he bet 1200 very quickly. This gave me my opportunity to punish him for being such a tight, predictable player. There was virtually no way for him to have a T in his hand, which meant that unless he made a very unlikely full house on the turn, he couldn’t have a hand bigger than two pair. I, on the other hand, could very plausibly have trips.
I raised to 4000, which is an amount I expected to be very scary. Even if he called this bet, he would have to fear a big river bet for most of his stack. He folded very quickly, and I collected a nice pot.
The whole “not a lot of reraising” trend didn’t last long, as the more aggressive players at the table started showing our colors. The player on my right tended to come in for a lot of small raises from late position, which was really disruptive to my strategy. I like to play a lot of hands from late position myself. If someone on my right is beating me into the pot, I can’t do that. So I needed to re-raise him a few times just to put him in his place.
Pretty soon, there was not only a lot of re-raising, but a lot of re-re-raising. Tony had been raising a lot from late position, and a young British kid was getting sick of it and had started re-raising a lot from his blinds. Tony, in turn, 4-bet him and showed K8s when the kid folded.
This eventually became an issue for me in a hand where the action folded to the player to my immediate right, who was in late position. He was obviously about to fold his hand, but then changed his mind and raised to 500. I re-raised to 1500 with ATo, and Tony in the small blind quickly came over the top of my raise for 4500. Against anyone else, this would be an easy fold, but he’d already shown himself capable of making a play like this as a bluff. Plus, it was very likely that he knew that I knew that the guy on my right was full of it. I was really really tempted to make a 5-bet bluff, but with so many bad players still in the tournament, I ultimately decided I didn’t need to risk 30% of my chips in such a marginal spot. And honestly, I couldn’t completely exclude the possibility of Tony 6-bet bluffing me. That’s just the kind of stuff I wouldn’t have to worry about it with a weaker player to my left.
Level 3: Blinds 150/300, I have 32K
After the break, it was my turn to start 4-betting. I did it once with Ace-King, because even though the player who re-raised me was very tight, my open raise had come from late position and I had a reputation as a thief. My raise was large enough to put my opponent all in, and he eventually folded, giving me a nice pot.
Then a little while later, I raised with KK and got re-raised out of the SB by another tight but aggressive player. This was the same guy whom Tony had bluffed with K8s. Hoping that that hand was still fresh in his mind, I 4-bet with KK but left myself enough chips that my opponent might convince himself he could get me to fold by moving all in.
He thought for a long time as I stared at the felt and did my best to send off weak vibes. Eventually, my opponent thought for so long that I was almost sure he was going to fold. Mike Caro once wrote that if you think your opponent is going to fold anyway and you don’t want him to, you should do something to trigger a reaction from him. It doesn’t matter what: shift in your seat, clear your throat, say something, whatever. The trick is to shake him up and maybe get him to misinterpret your action. Since he was going to fold anyway, you don’t have anything to lose.
Our table was immediately beneath an air conditioning vent, so I was wearing a sweatshirt. I pulled up my hood, hoping this would look like I was trying to hide my face because I was scared. My opponent threw his hand away instantly when I did this, and I remembered another of Caro’s tenets: Strong means Weak and Weak means Strong.
When a player knows he is being observed, he will usually try to deceive his opponent by acting contrary to his strength. Thus, if a player knows you are watching and picks up chips in preparation to call the bet you are contemplating, he is probably weak. If he actually wanted you to bet, why would he show you that he was eager to call?
This player seemed smart and good at reading people. It was obvious that he was observing me, so when I made a big action like pulling up my hood, he correctly interpreted this to mean that I was trying to look weak. Then, he correctly concluded that I was actually strong, and he folded. So my move kind of back-fired, but as I said, I was pretty sure the guy was going to fold anyway, so it was worth a try.
Despite the less-than-ideal table, I managed to keep accumulating chips. Still, I was thrilled when our table broke and I got to meet eight new opponents. We didn’t have long to play before dinner break, but some basic stereotyping suggested this was going to be a good table. I am always happy to see middle-aged white guys with facial hair, especially mustaches. Other good signs include NASCAR gear, generic poker clothing (eg shirts that say “I went all in at the World Series of Poker”, as opposed to branded stuff that players are paid to wear), and any sign that the guy might own his own business or have some other non-poker source of income. There were five guys who met this description at my new table.
The other character at the table was a. I could tell from the second I sat down that the Chinese guy on my left had a good sense of humor and would be a lot of fun. I introduced myself, and he told me his name was “Very.”
“Larry?”
“No, Very. V-E-R-Y.”
“Very? OK, good to meet you.”
“My last name Lucky.”
I’m so gullible. His real name was Jim, and he was indeed a blast to have at the table.
Level 4: Blinds 150/300/25, I have 32K
The other reason I was glad to change tables was that my old opponents had already pegged me as very aggressive. I spent my first hour at the new table establishing a tight image so that I could start stealing pots after the antes kicked in.
Within an hour, I’d gotten my stack up over 40K and had earned the ire of the table for my aggressive ways. But an aggressive reputation can pay off, too. One of the middle-aged, mustachioed white guys came in for a raise of 1200, and I called in position with a pair of 3’s. The flop came down a beautiful J53. He checked, I bet 1500, and he raised to 4000. This was a strange line by him, and I wasn’t sure what to put him on. It was possible he was bluffing, or that he had a pair he thought was good, or maybe that he had a flush draw.
Strange as it may seem, calling is often a stronger play than raising. When you raise, there’s always a chance that you are bluffing. Calling can never win you the pot immediately, so it’s much less useful as part of a bluff, which means that when someone calls, he usually has something. Besides, I wanted to keep building a pot before a third spade came and made a flush possible. So I re-raised to 10K, and my opponent quickly called.
The dealer turned a Q, and my opponent announced “All in.” This was a roughly pot-sized bet of about 25K.
The words were barely out of his mouth before I said, “Call.” His face sank as he realized he was toast. He turned over a pair of T’s, and I showed him my trip 3’s. This pot gave me a monster stack of nearly 90K and made me the table chip leader by a wide margin.
“I see you bring your A game after dinner, sir” Jim congratulated me. The next time I raised, he flashed a King at me as he folded and said, “You still on your A game, sir? I fold, I fold.”
Jim’s antics livened up the whole table, which was great for me. Since he and I were already friends, I quickly got friendly with most of the table, which made it easier to bully them. Eventually people get sick of getting pushed around and will play back at you, but their threshold is much higher when they like you and are having a good time at the table.
For his part, Jim seemed to be staying out of my way as well. He re-raised me twice, but both times he made a big show of getting excited about how strong his hand was. Once, he even feigned a heart attack as he looked at his cards. I quickly folded 6-5 offsuit, and he showed me a pair of Aces. Even though he was staying out of my way, I pretended to get offended every time he called or raised me and I acted like he was constantly playing back at me. Since he was to my immediate left, he was in the best position to mess with me, and I wanted to discourage that. I felt like if he thought I never believed he had anything, he would just wait for big hands instead of trying to bluff me.
He kept up the antics with the other players as well. When the pre-flop raiser checked to him, he would act surprised. “You look-a check-a-raise, eh, sir? Unh unh unh, I check too. Oh ho, you check again? Still check-a-raise? OK I check too.” There are so many stone-faced people at the WSOP that it was a nice change of pace to play with someone so friendly, funny, and talkative.
Level 5: Blinds 200/400/50, I have 90K
In past years, we’ve played six two-hour levels on Day 1, which always made things run ridiculously late. Last year, the sun was coming up when I got home after Day 1. So it was a relief to learn that we’d play only 10 hours instead of 12 this year. I had a huge stack, probably top 5% for the entire tournament, and I was at a great table. Everyone was so predictable that it was going to take some atrociously bad luck for anyone to do any damage to me. I was counting on a slow but steady accumulation of chips for the last two hours.
The plan worked for the first hour. I got up over 100K, and although people grumbled about how often I was raising, the only thing they did to combat it was to call me more often. This was virtually no deterrent at all, since I could generally outplay them post-flop anyway.
The player to my right was especially tight, so I started raising many more hands than usual when I was first to act. This is how I found myself holding K [heart] 4 [heart] after opening to 1100 UTG. A player in late position called. The flop came K [club] 5 [spade] 4 [club], giving me two pair. I bet 2000, and my opponent called. The turn was the 2 [spade], bringing a second possible flush draw. I was still feeling good about my hand, but there were a lot of draws out there, so I needed to bet. Also, this was one of the players who complained the most about my aggression, so I was looking to take advantage of that. I bet 6000, and he raised to 24,000. Really, though, he was committing 36,000, because he had another 12,000 chips in his stack that I knew would be going into the pot if I continued with my hand.
I didn’t think this guy would play 6-3 against me, and I was pretty sure he would have re-raised KK pre-flop, so those hands were out. There were only two fours left in the deck, so it wasn’t too likely that he had trip 4’s. Of the hands that beat me, trip 5’s were the only thing I was really worried about. It was very plausible that he had called pre-flop with a pair of 5’s, slowplayed the flop, and was looking to get the money in now that the board was getting scary and I was showing a lot of strength.
On the other hand, I was sure he wasn’t bluffing, and I was having trouble thinking of plausible hands that were worse than mine but that he would think were best. AA and AK would be good candidates, except that he probably would have re-raised pre-flop. 5-4 for a worse two pair made some sense, but there was a good chance he would have raised the flop with that. He might have been semi-bluffing with a draw, but he didn’t seem like the type.
Since I knew my opponent wasn’t folding at this point, I didn’t need to worry about concealing information. I groaned out loud and told him, “I have a better hand than you think I do, but I’m not sure it matters.” Eventually, I got him talking. He was able to hold up a conversation, which suggested he was confident. People who are bluffing or scared about the strength of their hands tend to clam up. But something I couldn’t put my finger on was telling me he didn’t want any action.
This was a huge decision, potentially an 80K pot. Even though it wouldn’t cripple me, I was in danger of losing more chips than roughly half the players in the tournament had.
At last, I decided to stick the rest of the money in and hope for the best. My opponent called off the rest of his chips so reluctantly that I actually thought my two pair was good. But he did indeed turn over trip 5’s, and I was in a world of hurt. Only one of two Kings could save me on the river. None came, and just like that, with less than half an hour left in the day, I lost nearly half of my hard-earned chips.
There wasn’t much interesting after that. I think I did a pretty good job of not letting that loss get under my skin. I won a few thousand chips and finished the day with 67,125, which was really a great result. It was well over average and would amount to more than 100 times the big blind when play resumed on Wednesday.
Although I’m still not sure I was correct to get my money in there, it isn’t actually a big deal. The truth is that when I have K4 and my opponent has 55, it takes exactly a K54 flop to get me into trouble. That this flop actually came was a stroke of extraordinarily bad luck. Such a situation comes up so infrequently that how well I handle it will have little to no bearing on my poker career in the long run. So I slept easy, confident in my chip stack and my skills and eager for Day 2.