Making Moves and Pocket Sixes

At last, it’s time to rest a bit. I was swamped at the 2009 World Series of Poker, where I played roughly 10 hours of poker a day for six weeks straight! At the end of it all, I felt like a failure, although my friends tell me that my six cashes and my deep run in the main event make for a pretty good year. To me, it felt like a bad year, because for nine straight years, I had made at least one final table at the WSOP (a record), and this year, I didn’t make any. Yet, all of my records at the WSOP stayed intact: most final tables (41), most cashes (74), and most bracelets (11). I watched with amazement as Phil Ivey won two bracelets (he has seven now) and made the main-event final table, as Jeffrey Lisandro won three bracelets, and as two others won two bracelets each. This shows the amount of skill that exists in WSOP tournaments!

Every day, I worked out, meditated, and thought about poker, poker, poker. Did I play perfectly that day? What worked that I could hold on to and use the next day? What could I do better tomorrow?

In one no-limit hold’em event in which I made a deep run, I was disappointed because I lost two coin flips, and I missed a few opportunities along the way. The tournament started with around 2,000 players, and late on day two, I felt like I could have made a few more moves earlier. With the blinds at 6,000-12,000, I had folded my hand more than a few times on the button, when I felt like a better strategy, in retrospect, would have been to raise and steal the blinds — especially inasmuch as the player in the big blind had only about 70,000 in chips and I had 250,000. Instead of making a big raise of about 50,000 from the button, I opted to fold over and over again. Instead, I found myself making a big raise with 6-6 from the cutoff, and then calling when the player with 70,000, now in the small blind, moved all in. He had A-10, and I felt a bit tortured when the river card was an ace! It wouldn’t have hurt as much if he had hit an ace on the flop.

An hour later, I was in the big blind with 6-6, and the player in the small blind moved me all in. The blinds were now 8,000-16,000, and I had only 80,000 left, so I called. He had J-10, and the board came down Q-4-2-K-A! Another ace on the river to torture me! So, I was eliminated at 1:45 a.m. in 30th place, with five hands left in the day.

Being a slave to the cards (playing only when you have a strong hand) is not the way to win, although that very tight strategy does afford you a great chance to go deep. In fact, I used that tight strategy to propel me to the final four tables, but I wish I had made a few more moves along the way; not many more, just maybe one every 25 hands or so. Of course, it would have been nice to win either one of those coin flips when I had pocket sixes. Maybe I wouldn’t regret not raising from the button all of those times had I simply won one of those coin flips.

I must say that it was important for me to make it through those last five hands of day two, so that I could come back fresh after a late-night workout and a good night’s sleep for day three. Making it to the next day, so that I can come back to the game at full power, has always been a key for me. For that reason, perhaps I could have folded the pocket sixes on my last hand.

Learn more about Phil by going to his website, www.PhilHellmuth.com, and visit his webstore at www.PokerBrat.com.