"No!"

At the World Poker Tour's $15,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em championship at Bellagio in December, first place was $1.8 million, and a lot of prestige was at stake. During the five-day marathon event, the following hand came up between Player X (an amateur) and me on the third day.

We had just redrawn for tables with 45 players remaining (out of 376), meaning that everyone had been randomly reshuffled to new tables. With the blinds at $3,000-$6,000 and a $500 per player ante, Player X opened for $15,000 from the No. 7 seat, and I looked down at K-K in the small blind in the No. 3 seat.

What should I do? Although I loved having pocket kings, I couldn't decide how to play them. Should I smooth-call the bet and hope to extract lots of chips from my opponent later on in the hand? Or, should I reraise it before the flop and give him a chance to misplay his hand?

On one hand, smooth-calling entailed merely calling the $15,000 bet in order to disguise the strength of my hand and make it seem much weaker than it was. Then, later on in the hand, I would try to win another $40,000-$120,000 when it appeared I was weak. On the other hand, a reraise before the flop would alert my opponent to the strength of my hand and most likely scare him – causing him to fold before the flop. The benefit of the reraise was that it might cause my opponent to move all in with J-J, Q-Q, A-K, or even worse hands, thus resulting in my being a healthy favorite for a ton of chips.

Finally, I opted for the safest possible play: I would make a huge reraise before the flop, for two reasons: First, I wanted to protect my hand from being beat; and second, I wanted to move all in for the rest of my chips on the flop if he called the massive preflop reraise and no ace hit the flop (something like Q-9-4 or 7-2-2) – thus protecting my hand again from losing.

So, I raised it to $80,000 to go, making a relatively huge $65,000 reraise into the $40,000 pot. I thought the hand was over, but when my opponent studied awhile, I realized that he may actually play his hand. Thus, I started acting as weak as I could. I reached down deep and tried to send out a "weak tell" to fool him. My hands nervously caressed my face, and I tried to turn a bit white while thinking about the last big bluff I had made; I fooled myself into thinking I had 4-3 in the hole. I knew that talking would give away the strength of my hand, so I sat there trying to turn white while being as silent as a church mouse and simultaneously imagining that I was bluffing with 4-3 in my hand.

Finally, my opponent went for it! He moved all in for $164,500 total and I immediately announced, "I call." I turned my K-K faceup and his face looked ashen as he showed me the A J. I thought to myself, "How badly did he play this hand? He just stuffed $164,500 into the pot with A-J – yuck!" Then, the flop came down K-Q-J, and I was about to take the chip lead (I still would have more than $100,000 left if I lost), when the turn brought a 10, giving him a straight.

I fully expected the last card to pair the board, as I believed I deserved to win the pot. However, the last card was an 8, and I lost the pot. Of course, I went crazy. I shouted, "No!" and proceeded to flop myself on an empty adjacent table while staring straight up into space. I complained loudly about Player X's play, saying, "That was one of the worst plays I've seen all year." I shouldn't have said it, but I do believe it. He had $15,000 invested, and was looking at the A J and a $65,000 reraise with only $164,500 in chips left. It all added up to an easy fold.

In any case, three days of nearly perfect play, one bad beat, and the best laid plans of mice and men go down again!

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