2009 L.A. Poker Classic

Day one of the tournament was all right, and I felt pretty good going into day two with about 30,000 in chips, a little more than average. My table draw was much better than on day one. In addition to Chris Ferguson, there were many faces I didn’t know who, I soon would realize, loved to gamble. There also were a few Internet kids at my table (including Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke), which was sure to mean the chips would be flying.

The more I play with these Internet kids, the more I like it — not because they’re bad players, but quite the opposite. They’ll make strange, imaginative plays that always keep me on my toes, and I enjoy that. There’s no sitting back and putting the headphones and autopilot on with these kids. You have to watch their every move or they’ll eat you up!

Once the antes got significant, I decided it was time to become very aggressive. I was able to increase my chip count by more than 70 percent without any kind of serious resistance. Then, two hands came up that were virtually the same.

As I said, I had been on the prowl pretty much unopposed, when someone finally moved in on me. Both times, my opponent had about a third of what I had, and both times, I had pocket jacks. Since I had been so active, I knew both times that there was a broad range of hands that my opponents might hold, including any pair, A-K, or A-Q.

Knowing this, along with the fact that they didn’t have enough chips to really hurt me, I decided to gamble with them. Both times, my opponent held A-K, and I won them both! I shouldn’t complain here, but both times, I flopped a jack and they didn’t hit anything. So, the one pair of jacks would have been good enough. The third jack was overkill that I wish I could have saved for when someone did hit an ace or king, but I’ll take it.

These hands put me toward the front of the pack, way above average. Antonio Esfandiari had like 450,000 (and didn’t even finish in the money, somehow), and the average was around 50,000. I had somewhere around 200,000 when the following joke — I mean, hand — happened.

If you’ve read my columns before, you know that I always say that I think people wait around all year thinking of the dumbest plays they can make, and then try them out on me. (And they always seem to work, for some reason.) This is one of the better ones. It came down like this:

The blinds are 500-1,000 with a 100 ante. Everyone folds to the button, who has about 70,000 (remember, 50,000 is average). He opens the pot for 3,000, a normal open, which is fine. What’s not fine is what happens next. I look down at two kings and figure he’s either on a steal and I’ll just take it here, or he has a legit hand and puts me on a resteal, and I can bust him.

What happens is a combination of the two. He is on a steal and puts me on a resteal, and goes berserk. When I reraise him to 12,000, he moves all in for 56,000 more! I mean, WTF? This guy has only 3,000 invested here. If he throws away his hand, he’s still almost 50 percent above average. But no, he decides to be a hero and goes all in against pocket kings with Q-10 offsuit! Queen on the flop and queen on the river — push the genius the chips.

I still held about 150,000 at this point, but I gotta admit, I was feelin’ the heat. I would have had almost 300,000 had my kings held up, and been a clear second-place runner. Instead, the tide had turned against me, and possibly my patience, too. The next two pots I played, I lost in very borderline decisions that could have gone either way. I obviously went the wrong way, and it was probably that play that made me lose my focus.

A few hands later, a guy who has played a lot of pots raises my blind. I call him with 6-5 offsuit. The flop comes K-3-2 rainbow. I decide to check-raise him here with my gutshot and see if I can move him.

He calls me, and a 5 comes on the turn. This is obviously a good card for me. If he has a king or a pocket pair, I just picked up five more outs. If he was calling with just air to try to take the pot away on fourth street (which was my read), I just made the best hand.

For some reason, I decide to check here. I think my logic was that I now had a strong enough hand to call him, so I’d let him bluff his chips off, or lose the minimum if he did have a king. To my dismay, he bets enough that I can see that I’m going to have to commit to the hand or dump it. I dump it, and my steam factor rises a few more degrees.

Another round goes by, and a guy who has just played two pots in a row (and got bet out of both of them) raises my blind. Maybe I have found someone who’s more on tilt than I am. I call 2,400 more with 10-8 offsuit. (The blinds are 600-1,200.) The flop is 8-6-2 with two hearts, and I check to the raiser, who bets 6,000. I make it 21,000, and he quickly moves in the rest of his chips, about 5,000 more than my starting stack of 100,000.

This is a big raise, and it looks either really strong or really weak. Taking into consideration that he has been bullied out of the two previous pots (and that I am steamed up myself), I decide to call, figuring that he has either air (I’m a huge favorite), a flush draw (I’m either around a 3-2 favorite or somewhere around even money or a slight dog depending on his overcard situation), an overpair (making me about a 4-1 dog), or an underpair (making me a 7-1 favorite).

Well, he had something that I didn’t even really consider, a set of sixes. I managed to get all of my money in as almost a 30-1 dog! My opponent made either a really good play by overbetting the pot like that, or a really bad one. Normally, I would auto-fold, but he picked the right time to do it, so I guess it was really good.

I’ve always prided myself in being extremely even-tempered and well-disciplined at the poker table. This just goes to show that we’ve always got to work on our game, and I guess I have something else to work on now.