Going into day two, I was satisfied with my chip count. I had set a target goal of $80,000 and came up just short at $71,850. On day two, I set another modest goal, hoping to end the day with $200,000. The Bellagio tournament structure and setup is excellent for the player. Unless you get down to the final table, you won't have to play more than five one-and-a-half-hour levels a day. Play starts at noon, with 15-minute breaks after each level. There is no dinner break, since play finishes at 9 p.m. The other
World Poker Tour stops would do well to take a lesson from Jack McClelland and Bellagio on setting up a tournament that is fair to those young and old. Foxwoods, for example, forces players to play a grueling first two days of 15 hours, followed by 13 hours. That is just completely unfair to some of the older players on the tour.
Anyway, day two went pretty smoothly for me, although I wasn't able to increase my stack much at all. I floated around $100,000 for most of the day until very late in the evening. With the blinds at $600-$1,200 with an ante, a player I knew, Kevin O'Donnell, raised from middle position to $6,000. Thus far in the tournament, all I was able to really pick up on Kevin was that he had a tendency to overplay his hands in certain situations - either reraising preflop too much or making continuation bets in multiway pots when checking would have been safer. He seemed to be an excellent, aggressive preflop player, but I thought I might be able to exploit him after the flop.
I looked down at A-A in late position, and rather than make a standard-sized reraise, I decided to set the trap and smooth-call. In fact, in the first two days of play, I never reraised before the flop even once. In tournaments with deep stacks, like those on the WPT, it leaves you room to be creative. Poker creativity is most beautiful after the flop, since there are so many more variables.
The big blind called, as well, so three of us took the flop: 9♥ 6♦ 4♥. The big blind checked and Kevin followed through with a $12,000 bet. At this point, I was hoping he had an overpair, like Q-Q or J-J, figuring that it might be enough to get him to put all of his chips in.
I made a small raise, making it a total of $28,000. The big blind folded and Kevin shook his head in disgust, saying something to the effect of, "Oh man, did you hit one of your junky flops, Daniel?" as he then let out a sigh.
The more he thought about the hand, the more I believed he had a hand like J-J or Q-Q and was contemplating whether or not this would be the one. His stack was virtually identical to mine. Finally, he said, "All in," and put me all in for my last $74,100. After putting in $34,000 already, coupled with the fact that my read on the hand was that he had an overpair, I quickly called the bet. I was a little surprised to see Kevin turn over A-Q. He didn't have a heart in his hand, so I was in pretty shape after this flop with a 99.7 percent chance to win! That's the way that I like to flip coins, baby!
Generally, in deep-stack tournaments when a large pot is played, it's rare to see the money go all in in such lopsided fashion. Often, it's a set versus an overpair, or maybe a big draw against a made hand.
So many players out there are afraid to slow-play a hand, because their focus is on protecting the hand when it often should be on maximizing a premium hand. You don't get aces very often, and when you do, winning the blinds and antes alone is not such a great result. True, you didn't lose with them, but you can't allow yourself to think negatively.
If there was only one tip I could share with you that would help you to get over the hump in deep-stack tournament poker, it would be this: Don't be afraid to let your opponents catch up, even if that means they'll outdraw you from time to time.
In this particular hand, I doubled up in a situation where had I reraised before the flop, chances are that I would have simply picked up the raise and the blinds and antes. That's not terrible, but it's not the maximum, either.
Of course, when you live by the sword, sometimes you die by the sword. You may remember my 27th-place finish at Foxwoods when I had my A-A beaten by K-6 after slow-playing the hand against the eventual winner Nenad Medic. The thing is, that's just not going to happen that often, and if you allow your paranoia of losing to affect your decision-making, you'll often end up leaving a lot of chips on the table.
I see this mistake made all the time by amateur players. Early in the 2005 World Series of Poker main event, for example, I saw an amateur player go broke with A-A against Sammy Farha in a strange hand. With the blinds at just $25-$50 with no ante and $10,000 in chips, this player raised to $1,000 before the flop with A-A. There was no one else in the pot, yet he raised it to 20 times the big blind! Sammy made a loose call with 3-3, flopped a set, and sent the youngster home early with a bad-beat story.
So, after doubling up with my aces late in the evening, I ended day two just above my target goal of $200,000, at $203,500. So far, the tournament was going exactly as I was hoping. On day three, we would play down to approximately 36 players, and I set my goal this time at about $500,000. In the next issue, I'll let you know if I got there.
Read Daniel's blog or play poker with him online at www.fullcontactpoker.com.
