Finally, the
World Poker Tour was able to make a long overdue stop in Canada, more specifically, at the Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls, Ontario. I could actually see the Falls from my hotel room.
Going into the event, I was just hoping that it would be run well and would do Canada proud. Well, the event exceeded my expectations in every way. The floor staff and dealers were some of the best we've seen at any
WPT stop. The facility was fantastic, and the casino itself was beautiful. I actually wrote a more detailed report on the tournament, which is archived either at www.CardPlayer.com or www.FullContactPoker.com.
So, anyway, as a hometown boy, I put even more pressure on myself to do well. I really wanted to make sure that I put in my best effort and made a good run at this thing.
We started out with an unprecedented number of bets in this
WPT event. With $20,000 in chips, the blinds started at $25-$25 and we'd play 90-minute levels! Needless to say, it would be difficult to find a way to go broke in the first round.
Well, after about an hour of play, I found myself in an interesting situation. Tony O'Hagan, a Canadian player who made the final table in the $2,500 tournament played that week, limped in from under the gun for $25. He'd done that several times, so there was no real reason to suspect a big hand.
Two seats to his left sat Melissa Hayden, who raised to $300. I looked down at K-K and decided to just smooth-call the raise and see a flop first. The player on the button also called. Now, my worst fear quickly became a reality, as Tony reraised $1,700 more.
Melissa thought for a bit and made it extremely obvious that she had A-K, based on what she was saying. "What do you have, something like 8-8 or 9-9?" she said aloud, directing the question at Tony. She finally folded and I decided to call the raise. I obviously was worried about A-A at that point, and had planned on losing the minimum if I was beat.
The flop came Q-6-6 and Tony made a weak bet of $2,000. I didn't love that flop, as now I'd lose to both A-A and Q-Q, but I had to at least call the $2,000. On the turn, another 6 came.
Then, Tony made a very strange bet. We both had about $17,000 in chips and the pot had grown to about $8,000. Tony fired out $10,000, overbetting the pot. Now, before he made that bet, I'd decided that I had no plans of going broke with my K-K here, yet his bet size just didn't seem to make sense.
After all, why would he be so eager to bully me off the hand if he had A-A or Q-Q? If he had Q-Q, he should know that I could only call him with A-A or K-K, and based on my play of the hand, there was no reason to believe I had either hand.
I would have assumed that if he had Q-Q or A-A, he would have made a small bet on the turn or even checked to induce a bluff from me.I was puzzled by his bet, to say the least, so I decided to go over the range of hands he could have at this point. The only hands I could really beat were hands like 8-8 and A-K. Could he have either hand? Well, from my limited time at the table and past experiences with Tony, I knew that he was a wild, imaginative player with a lot of guts.
I also knew that his confidence had to be high after making the final table of the other event. It dawned on me that he may not have made a full adjustment to early-stage, ring-game tournament play. After all, to get to the final table, he had to play shorthanded with much larger sums of chips. That, coupled with his bet size, made me suspicious.
The other option was that he had the other K-K, but I didn't think that was possible, since Melissa gave her hand away. I could have been wrong about Melissa's hand, but it seemed pretty obvious that she laid down A-K, as I said before.
There was one other key factor that led me toward calling. Tony knew full well that I had no intentions of foolishly gambling in the early stages, so he might have been trying to exploit that. He may have believed that his big bet would get called only if I had Q-Q or A-A; thus, he could make that play with virtually anything. Was he capable of making that kind of a play? Well, I thought so.
Rather than call $10,000 and save my last $7,000, I decided to stick it all in. Tony quickly called, which is a pretty bad sign. He turned over Q-Q, and I was dead to a king or a 6. Nothing hit the river, and I was out in a flash.
In hindsight, despite all of the clues leading me to believe that Tony may have been bluffing, this was a trap that I clearly should have avoided - for no other reason than if I'd folded, I'd have $17,000 in chips with the blinds at $25-$25!
It's tough to second-guess yourself, but I wish I had that one back.
You can read Daniel's blog or play poker with him at www.FullContactPoker.com.
