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Hand 2 Hand Combat

Stellar Preflop Play With Soren ‘Kongsgaard’ Kongsgaard

by Rebecca McAdam |  Published: Jul 01, 2009

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06-07 H2HC Event

Blinds are 12,000-24,000 with a 3,000 ante and Soren Kongsgaard has 1.3 million in chips.

Rebecca McAdam: With 12 players left and the blinds so big, for many at this stage each hand is crucial. What happens next?

Soren Kongsgaard: I have so far been playing extremely tight aggressive, not playing many hands post flop. Carlos Mortensen is in the big blind, I find K-Q off-suit in the cutoff and ask him for a chip count, he answers 240,000 to 260,000. I asked him the same question one orbit earlier, where I picked up the blinds with a standard raise.

I decide to make a large raise making it 80,000 to go, to avoid Carlos shoving over the top thinking he has fold equity. I thought he was more likely to fold hands like A-2s, A-9s, A-6o, A-10o, K-Q, and small pairs, to my large raise which he would have pushed to a standard raise. If Josh Prager (who was in the small blind) reraised me I would have insta-folded, but I would obviously be forced to call a push from Carlos.

RM: So you must have had some kind of idea in your head then at this point as to how Mortensen was playing?

Soren Kongsgaard

SK: My read of Carlos was that he plays quite aggressively when he has a big stack, but tightens up a lot when he becomes short stacked.

RM: What happens next?

SK: Now Andy Black looks at his cards and instantly reraises to 300,000, leaving himself with a bit more than 600,000.

RM: What was your read on Black?

SK: Andy got moved to the table only a few orbits before. I had never played with him before this but I knew he likes to pound whenever he senses weakness. I’m pretty sure Andy had never heard of me before, don’t know if he knew I was a qualifier or if he had asked anyone about my game, but I guess he just did not care and wanted to take control of the table and push me around, like he usually tends to do. All the way from day one he had been a giant chip leader and I guess he could be a bit tilted at this point, and I think he wanted revenge and control of the six-handed table. Not long before this I won a decent pot from him in a blind battle where I played very carefully with my straight and checked it to him twice to get him to bluff at it. I guess it looked really weak to him, and the money for the final table was huge, so I think that might tighten me up also.

I had a feeling that Andy would perceive it as weakness when I asked Carlos about his chip stack, and I already planned that I would push over the top of him almost every time. I did not expect him to reraise my raise of 80,000 to 300,000. I thought the range of hands he would do this with were the bluffs I knew he was capable of making, and maybe middle pairs, A-Q, and A-K. I thought it was more likely he would make a smaller reraise with semi-high pairs like 10-10 to Q-Q, and also A-Q and A-K, because he wanted me to think I had fold equity if I pushed over the top of his 930,000 stack, but he might just think he was too good a player to take a 60/40 gamble against me and wanted to take down the pot now even with these quite strong hands. Most people will always feel committed in Andy’s position, but again my gut said that his range was really leaning towards pure bluffs with this bet sizing. If he would show up with one of the stronger hands I expected to be in his range, I would obviously be in really bad shape, but I took a gamble.

RM: Did you ask Mortensen how much he had because you wanted people to think you were weak then?

SK: I don’t think it affected Josh, but I’m sure it opened up Andy Black’s reraising range. If he had a good hand he was going to reraise me anyway, but by acting weak I think Andy was more likely to try and bluff me.

RM: Did you have a strategy?

SK: My strategy in this deep stack tourney playing against almost exclusively world class players was to be really tight-aggressive. I was just 19-years-old, and this was the first really big tournament I had been able to cash in. I did not have much live experience and I would prefer to take marginal gambles preflop instead of playing a lot of hands after the flop because most of my opponents would be able to own me.

RM: Is your strategy different now?

SK: Yeah, it’s completely different because I have become a much better player than I was back then. Now I prefer to keep the pots smaller and I feel much more comfortable playing pots post-flop.

RM: What do you think the skills are that you have to learn to move from being good at playing hands preflop to being able to handle other, perhaps better, players post-flop?

SK: I think experience is the most important factor. Back then I had not played any deep stacked tournaments like this and especially not six-handed as we played for several hours in the end-game. If you only play online tourneys you don’t really get to play a lot of hands after the flop because an average stack is 20-30 big blinds and all the action is preflop. Being able to read your opponents betting patterns and pick up tells from them is also really important because you will have one more street of information about your opponent. Confidence and aggression are also key factors, because if you don’t have them, you will be folding too many hands after the flop.

RM: So you took a gamble.

SK: Yeah, I decided to push all in, and Andy acts like he is considering calling for a while to save face before he mucks his 8-4 off-suit.

RM: If you were playing this hand now, would u play it any differently?

SK: I think I would play this hand the same way if it occurred today. It’s of course easy to say when Andy’s got eight-high, but I think I played it quite well. But in general you will not see me three-betting, squeezing, and reshoving as I did back then. The high stakes tournaments both online and live have become extremely aggressive the last two years. The young Internet guys play a bit like I did back then but not many of them are able to adjust their moves. They just squeeze every time they got the chance to do so. This has made me tighten up my game a bit because today I will get called much lighter than two years ago. When you are a young blonde Scandinavian guy you just don’t get any respect at the tables and this really makes it difficult to play very aggressive.

Kongsgaard went on to place third in the 2007_ EPT Grand Final_ for €610,550. Andy Black came seventh for a payday of €238,910.

Dane Soren Kongsgaard, or “Kongsgaard” as he’s mostly known as online, has been playing poker for six years — almost two of those years professionally. Although only twenty-one years of age, he has more than $2 million in lifetime winnings, and consistently produces some astounding results both online and live. As he is now of age to hit the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, only time will tell what damage this young Dane can do on a broader live spectrum. Spade Suit