WSOP 2009 Trip Report: Part 3

Part 1| Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

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.