WSOP Event 9: $3000 No-Limit Shoot-Out

Someone flopped a set against my Aces in a four-bet pot. Stack-to-ratio was less than three when we saw the flop. If I put it to you like that, it sounds like a cooler plain and simple, like I was simply destined to go broke. And maybe I was. But there’s more to the story.

I was approximately three minutes late getting to the tournament area, and consequently I missed the first hand. That’s not like me. I like to be punctual, and I don’t like to miss hands.

But I also want to be comfortable. I want to be unhurried. I got a little lost on my way to the Rio – leave it to me to screw up right, left, right, and then left on to Rio Drive. I didn’t panic. I didn’t run yellow lights. I didn’t sprint from my car to the Brasilia Room. In fact I stopped to go the bathroom. Postponing that would only mean missing more hands later, because no way I was going to last two hours.

After folding the first hand I actually looked at, I started sizing up the table. An Asian guy about my age was two seats to my left, then an amateurish-looking middle-aged guy, then a kid who was trying too hard to look like a good player, then another amateurish-looking and slightly younger guy.

In this particular hand, the kid bet and called a small raise from the amateur on his left when a third spade came on the turn. The board paired on the river, the kid potted it, and the amateur shrugged and called quickly. The kid showed a full house, and the amateur turned over a small flush like what-can-you-do? He was welcome at my table.

He and I played a small pot the very next hand. We’d both checked the turn, but the dealer wasn’t revealing the river card because she was puzzling over a receipt that Kevin “ImaLuckSac” MacPhee had just handed her. The other amateur hurried her along. She dealt the river, we both checked, and my opponent won a small pot. “You’re at the wrong table,” the dealer said to my opponent as she tossed him a few chips.

“You checked me in,” he told her, and presumably she had. I wasn’t there to see it, but the dealers are supposed to check each player’s receipt and photo ID as he claims his seat. She’d let this one sit at the wrong table and lose nearly half of his stack. The floor was called. He ruled to send the amateur to his assigned seat and put Kevin MacPhee in his, an unequal exchange if ever there were one.

I protested. “Are the stacks equalized in the second round? Or will the winner of our table bring more chips into round two than the winner of that other table?”

The floorman started to tell me that the stacks weren’t going to be equal anyway because some tables had more players than others, but Kevin cut in. “I just claimed my seat, no one’s been eliminated, yet I have less than the table average. That’s not fair to me. It’s not a big deal, but it’s obviously not fair to me.”

The floor ended up retrieving the player who’d been in the wrong seat – he hadn’t yet played a hand at the other table – and swapping him back, sending MacPhee over to the table where the amateur was supposed to be. That strikes me as the right decision. Obviously it’s not a perfect outcome, but that’s a problem that’s created when the dealer lets the guy sit and play at the wrong table. Provided dealers are generally diligent about checking these things, which in my experience they are, it’s not exploitable.

One guy at the other table was decidedly not happy about it, though. He kept arguing with the floorman. He insisted that Jack Effel be called. Then he argued with Jack. They seemed to settle it, but he was clearly still steaming, and in a few minutes he hopped out of his seat and chased Jack down to argue some more. I can only imagine how badly he hurt his chances in the tournament by letting himself get so worked up over this.

Meanwhile a new player had joined our table, a Russian who claimed the seat on my immediate left. He described himself as “a software guy”, not a poker pro, but he seemed to know what he was doing and in at least one past year he’d played in the 50K Player’s Championship event, so he was not just any amateur.

As we neared the end of the first hour, blinds were still 25/50. I had 7600 out of a 9000 starting stack when I found pocket Aces in the cutoff. I raised to 125, which was the amount I’d been raising all level. The Russian on the button, who began the hand with about 11K, made it 350.

The Asian guy in the small blind, who had about 9K, cold called the 3-bet, which was uncharacteristic and noteworthy given that he’d been playing a pretty snug game. This is a clear 4-bet, though I may have erred a bit on the small side. I made it 1100, the button quickly folded, and the small blind asked to see my stack. Then he called.

With 2550 in the pot and 6500 in my stack, we saw a T74 flop. He checked, I bet 1050, he shoved, I called, and I lost to a set of 4s.

I’m not going to go too much into the strategy of the hand right now because Nate and I discuss it on Episode 35 of the podcast, which should be out on Wednesday. Suffice to say that I thought he was probably setmining preflop – his double call and counting down my stack sure made it seem that way – which makes the flop a more tricky spot than it may seem.

So the largest WSOP event I’d played so far this summer was over and done with before the end of the first level. It was over thanks to a stupid spot that I probably didn’t play badly but that maybe – just maybe – there’s some sick soulreader out there who would have let it go correctly (as opposed to some nits who might have folded for the wrong reasons).

Walking to my car, I came to the sickening realization that this could be the rest of my summer. I’m not guaranteed any deep runs nor even any cashes. Plenty of players at least as good as I whiff the series every year. I knew that intellectually, but now I felt it in a visceral way that I hadn’t before. I guess there’s always a part of you that believes you aren’t going to be that guy, that couldn’t happen to you. But of course it could.

Given that I’d put in just an hour at the tables, part of me wanted to go play something else. There was a $1500 Fixed Limit Hold ‘Em starting at 5. I’m not good at FLHE, but I might still be +EV in a $1500 field. Or I could go play cash somewhere.

I was doing it for the wrong reasons, though. I would have been chasing losses. Instead I ran some errands, went to the grocery store. I suggested dinner to Ed Miller, a writer whose work I admire and who’s been a guest on the podcast but whom I’d never met in person. He accepted.

It was great, exactly what I needed when I was feeling frustrated. He recommended a Thai place that, though not strictly vegan, had a lot of vegan options on the menu. I selected one in his honor.

We talked about tournaments, where to find the best mid-stakes cash games during the series (no consensus), writing and publishing, Las Vegas, non-poker careers, and debate. Yep, turns out he too was on his high school debate team, which helps to explain why I feel like his thinking parallels my own so well. Serious debaters learn to think and to structure their arguments in a very specific way that manifests itself in their speaking and writing in many other contexts, and I’ve always been good at spotting a fellow debater.

I’m usually an excellent judge of how much time has passed, but that night I was way off. When I finally checked the time, I was thinking we’d been at the restaurant for two hours, and in fact it had been three. I walked out of the restaurant a lot less tilted than I was walking in. Thanks, Ed.