WSOP Main Event Day 1B

I awoke Sunday morning surprisingly still a bit miffed from the previous days' events, but an Espressemente mocha did the trick because by 10am I was ready to go!  Derrick came over to the Venetian to pick up me and Gregg and we headed over to the Rio.  There were three different start dates for Day 1 play; I chose to start on Day 1B which was Sunday.  The room was pretty electric as we got ready to start play.  Derrick was seated in the same room as I was (Amazon) and not too far away.  Gregg started play in the Brasilia Room.  The Main Event starts with 30,000 chips at blind levels 50/100 (300 big blinds) and two hour levels, so it is a truly deep stacked event.  In all the tournaments I play my basic strategy is to see as many cheap flops as I can and hope to make some big hands and accumulate chips.  I am really not looking to play big pots early unless I have the nuts and that strategy definitely influenced my decision in a couple of early hands:

I raised 275 utg (S8) with JJ.  The button (S3) 3bet to about 800 and the small blind (S4) 4bet to 2300.  That puts me in a pretty tough spot.  If I call I am basically hoping to flop a set and I still have to worry about the button coming over the top of both of us with another raise in which case I would have to fold and waste 2300 chips without even seeing a flop.  I can 5bet here to about 5100 but now all of a sudden I am playing a really big pot with a very marginal hand.  You might say "how is JJ marginal?  It's the 4th best starting hand in poker." However, after a couple more bets I will have put in 100 bb already and JJ is not beating much when that many chips have been put in the pot.  That is what I mean by a very marginal hand.  The big argument for playing the hand came in the fact that you could already tell S3 and S4 were very aggressive players and there was a legitimate chance my hand was best.  Discretion was the better part of valor in this case and I mucked my hand.

I raised 275 from early position with AQs.  There was a call from a late position player and then a big re-raise from I think S5 in the blind.  For basically the same reasons as the previous hand I chose to let it go rather than starting to play a big pot with a marginal holding.  The big difference in this hand as compared to the previous hand is that AQs could flop really big, where JJ basically has to flop a set to become a strong hand.  I will discuss this hand much more when I give my recap of my Main Event play.

For the next few hours I did my best to make chips without much being dealt to me.  I think I played most hands fine but nothing materialized.  This hand I did not play fine and wish I had back:

It was folded to the button (S6) and with the blinds 100/200 he raised to 500.   He had raised his button when folded to him every time so far, and I was in the bb with 76.  I had let all the other hands go when he did this so I thought I would get some respect when I 3bet him to 1500.  He called and the pot was 3100.  The flop K92 of course missed me completely but could very well have missed him so I lead out with a bet of 2000, about 2/3 pot.  It was the same size bet I made when I won a hand against him earlier after a flop came out.  He called me and now I was toast.  The turn came and I had to check and fold, otherwise this charade was going to cost me a LOT of chips.  This was such a bad play on many levels:

1. You don't bluff the table donkey, especially out of position.  You wait for big hands and let him pay you off like a slot machine (just like S2 did later when S6 went bust to him with a shit hand)  I needed more discipline to either fold pre-flop or call and hope to hit something big.
2. If I was going to attempt to win this pot I think a check-raise on the flop would have been much much stronger.  I don't know if it would have worked or not but I wish I took this line once the flop came out. 
3. I didn't have a whole bunch of chips to waste on a bluff.  If I had chipped up to over 40,000 chips then I think this play might have a little bit of sense to it.

Basically I wasted 3500 chips here I didn't need to.  It's not like it cost me in terms of the tournament but I wouldn't make that play again, thus you can label it a bad play!

In the third level my tournament took a really big swing for the worse.  With the blinds 150/300 it was folded to S5 and he raised to 700.  I looked down at AK in the bb and was ready to go to battle.  S5 was a young and very (overly) aggressive player.  He had about 17,000 chips in front of him; I had about 23,000.  I 3bet him to 2100 and he 4bet me to 4000.  This represented under 25% of his chips so given that I had plenty of fold equity (players are generally committed to the pot once they've put in 30%+ of their stack; under 25% and they can still make an easy fold without a premium hand) and given the range of hands he had played so far I chose to 5bet him, committed to the pot regardless of what he did.  I raised to 11,000 and when he put me all in I knew I ran into a hand and made a disgusted but easy call.  He showed AA and after the board ran out I was down to 6000 chips.  I was truly devastated.  Once again nothing was going right for me and now I was down to 20bb in level three of the Main Event.  I was honestly very sad.  However, there is no time for pity in poker and I had to suck it up and play my current stack size correctly.  In the back of my head however I was wondering if I had played this hand correctly.  As I was folding my 20bb stack, waiting for a good hand to get my chips into the pot with, S7 starting talking with the little old lady that had just sat in S10.  Through their talk it was revealed that S7 was a professional poker player.  I was watching his play during the day and I had actually labeled him a "card rack" when describing players at my table to Will!  He hit a big hand against the donkey in S6 and actually messed up his river bet against him, getting not nearly enough value.  He played very good poker since that hand and it did make sense that he was a pro.  It turned out his name is Andrew Brokos, a famous player in the poker community.  He also writes a monthly column for Card Player magazine.  How the heck do I get stuck at these tables!?  With about 15 minutes before our dinner break I started chatting with him in hopes of getting his honest feedback on how I played my hand.  He was very intelligent and also seemed to be an extremely nice, humble, focused person.  At the break I asked him if I could play my hand any differently.  His response:  "Never.  Against him it was just a cooler.  Maybe against a different opponent you MIGHT be able to get away from it or lose less, but against him you had no choice.  I actually felt sorry for you when the hands got turned over."  That was actually really good to hear.  You can't control the cards but you can control how you play your hands and your chip stack so I went to dinner feeling much better about my bleak situation. 

BATTLING WITH UNDER 20 BIG BLINDS 

After the AK vs AA hand I went to dinner break with under 20 big blinds.  The reason that tournament poker is so much for fascinating than cash game poker is that your situation is always changing in a tournament.  Before my big set back I had enough chips to see flops, try to steal pots, raise if I sensed weakness, and so on.  Now, however, is a different story.  I am fast approaching the danger zone of under 15 big blinds.  Once we fall under this threshold we basically have one move and that is moving all in with a hand that can win.  Thus, when we are around 20 big blinds we cannot waste a chip.  We cannot do any of the things we just talked about.  Simply put, discipline and table awareness becomes of paramount importance.  During the 150/300/25 level I got no hands to play for quite awhile; meanwhile the aggressive players on my right were battling for pots so I just had to sit back and bide my time.  Then the following hands came up:

When I was down to 12-13 bb S3 raised from early position.  I looked down at 99 and this was plenty good to get my chips in.  I moved all in and after a short count of my chips he folded his hand.  This is quite a big mistake for him; he should not be opening any pot unless he’s prepared to call an all in from a player with under 15bb.  The greatest players are aware of all these little facts and don’t waste chips. 

With around 18 big blinds Andrew Brokos opened on my right. I moved all in with AQ and he quickly mucked his hand.

With around 16 bb S4 opened the pot from early position.  I moved all in with ATc and he pretty quickly mucked his hand.  This hand illustrates the change in poker over the last ten years or so.  A decade ago if you three bet with AT you would be considered a lunatic.  Today if you don’t three bet with that hand you are probably missing a prime opportunity to get chips!!

And here was my favorite one of all:  the player in S1 just went bust so we were now seven handed.  The chip leader was going to be in the small blind and the big blind just lost a big pot.  I was going to be second to act and here was a great opportunity to steal the blinds and antes.  Every time you steal the blinds and antes you are essentially buying yourself another round of hands without your chip stack going down. 

• Seven handed means it’s less likely someone else has a big hand, simply because you are up against less hands.  Duh!
• The small blind is the worst place on the table to play from, so there’s a much better chance the chip leader will let this hand go and not attempt to exert any force with his chip stack
• The big blind just lost a lot of chips and typically players are looking to re-group at this point and don’t want to get stuck playing another big pot with a marginal hand.  There’s a much better chance than usual he’ll just give up his big blind without a fight.
• I have been playing very few hands (because of my tournament situation) and I should have a tighter reputation among the players at the table.

As I often do, when a great situation presents itself and the cards are of little importance, I decided to raise as the second player to act (utg+1) without looking at my cards.  It really is a good idea to do this because by not looking down and seeing 72 off suit you can’t give off any physical tells as to the strength of your hand.  Heck, I might have AA!  I raised and watched the table muck their cards super fast.  Before I released my hand I looked down to see what I had – KK!  Come on!! It’s like I was being mocked…

In another hand S4 opened to 900, S5 three bet him to 2000, and I looked down to see my friend KK in the small blind with around 18bb.  I moved in for 6800 chips.  (Note that my other options weren’t very good: flat calling or min raising tells the table that I have an amazingly strong hand; moving all in is consistent with how I’ve been playing the past two plus hours and makes my hand much more of a mystery.)  So the pot contains:

·        Blinds and antes: 200+400+50*8 = 1000

·        Plus first raise to 900 : total is 1900

·        Plus the three bet to 2000:  total is 3900

·        Plus my all in to 6800 (17bb):  total is 10700

S5 now has to call 4800 more to win 10,700.  He is getting well over 2:1 to make the call, he has plenty of chips and yet he still decides to fold.  That shows you just how bad a hand he three bet with.

Those were most of the key hands I played the last four hours of day one, and at the end of the night I bagged up 11,700 chips.  That would mean I would have about 22bb with the blinds going to 250/500/50 heading into Day 2.  While I was going to be pretty short on chips I am really proud of how hard I battled after the massive AK/AA setback hand.  You can just never give up whenever you compete, and if you keep this mindset and focus then eventually great things will happen for you.  What’s pretty interesting to me is that this is the fourth time I’ve played in the WSOP Main Event.  Each year I’ve learned infinitely more from the previous year, and each year I’ve had less chips to end Day 1 than the year prior!  What a silly silly game I play!!