Dealing With a Bad Table Draw

Now that the WSOP is in full-swing, many players will be taking a shot or two at events well above their usual buy-in levels. This can be a great opportunity, because the $1000 and $1500 NLHE events attract hundreds of players weaker than what you’d see in an average $20 MTT on PokerStars.

What sets these tournaments apart is that, unlike the $20 donkament, they also attract some of the best tournament players in the world. This means that if you run bad at table drawing, you could end up with David Baker or Tony Dunst on your left. Understandably, this is a stressful thought for less experienced players considering these events. I have a couple of pieces of advice for these players:

1. Take Advantage of the Opportunity. Presumably part of the reason you are playing this tournament is for the experience of playing at the WSOP. Well, part of that experience is butting heads with the best of the world. Of course you’d rather watch them from afar than from their immediate right, but you can’t control that now. Observe them closely and try to pick up a few things that you can add to your own game. Even if they end up taking your chips, at least you’ll have learned something in the process.

2. Don’t Freak Out. Not even the best pros are gods. Their cards are dealt from the same deck that yours are, and when the action is on them, they have the same three choices: raise, call, or fold. Don’t assume that they are capable of feats of superhuman card skill. In fact, the correct strategy for them is generally to play a relatively straightforward game when stacks are shallowish and the table is full of amateurs. If you make the effort to study them and think through what they are doing, you may be surprised at how much you can figure out.

3. Don’t Be a Hero. Any type of poker play that could be preceded by the adjective “hero”, as in “hero call”, “hero fold”, etc., is generally not going to be a good idea against a player who is better than you. As I understand it, this terms generally refers to making a play with the opposite extreme of your range, so a hero fold means folding one of the best hands you could have in a given spot, where a hero call is calling with one of the worst hands you could have. By definition, these are exploitive plays that seek to take advantage of a perceived glaring imbalance in an opponent’s range, ie that it will be either extremely bluff-heavy or extremely value-heavy. Also by definition, you will have trouble identifying such holes in the game of a superior player, if he even has them in the first place. Better not to get into a leveling war against such a player in the first place.

4. Re-read Rule #1. The bottom line is that you should just relax, play your best, and make the most of the experience no matter what happens.