Final Table Takedown -- Matt Hawrilenko

Matt Hawrilenko attended Princeton, and was a co-captain of the wrestling team. He started playing poker during his senior year of college. After graduating, he worked at Susquehanna International Group as an options trader for two years, where he played poker (both during and after work) as part of the curriculum to learn how to trade options, then left to play poker professionally three years ago. He began playing 10¢-25¢ no-limit hold’em online with a $100 deposit, and never had to redeposit. Now he is a regular in the high-stakes mixed games online, playing for stakes of up to $1,000-$2,000.

Event: 2009 World Series of Poker, event No. 56, $5,000 six-handed no-limit hold’em
Players in the Event: 928
First Prize: $1,003,218
Finish: First

Hand
Stacks: Matt Hawrilenko – 1,400,000
Villain – 1,700,000
Blinds: 12,000-24,000
Antes: 3,000
Players at the Table: 6

Key Concepts: Hand-reading; reconciling a math-based strategy with a read-based strategy.

Hawrilenko raises to 65,000 from the hijack position (two off the button) with the Q 10. The villain calls from the big blind.

Craig Tapscott: Do you have any read on the villain?

Matt Hawrilenko: First, he’s a very tough, very aggressive player. I’ve played a few big pots with him already during this tournament. Second, he’s super aggressive and actually kind of crazy preflop, although I haven’t seen him do anything too wacky after the flop.
 
CT: Before we go deeper into this hand, share your thoughts about what hand ranges you will open at a six-handed table and from what positions, and why.

MH: I don’t like to discuss my specific ranges, but I will say that they can vary pretty wildly with the texture of the table. Obviously, you can play a lot more hands when both you and the opponents behind you are relatively deep than when you have a few shallow-stacked opponents who are sitting on a reraise-all-in stack size. When those shallow stacks are observant players, it handcuffs you even more. Without shallow stacks, it’s important to pay attention to who is in the blinds, and who is paying attention to the people who are paying attention to the people in the blinds. Hopefully, that was convoluted enough not to give too much away.

Flop: K J 9 (pot: 160,000)
The villain checks. Hawrilenko bets 75,000. The villain calls.

CT: You’re betting less than half of the pot. Are you hoping the villain thinks it’s an autopilot continuation-bet and will pull something here?

MH: I usually bet a bit more on dynamic boards. And it’s true that I want to give him the chance to make a move. I think it’s important not to draw the conclusion that just because he plays crazily before the flop, he also plays crazily after the flop. I see a lot of players make this sort of logical leap, and it’s often very, very expensive.
 
CT: Is it ever correct to check this flop to feign weakness?

MH: In theory, you should always play mixed strategies with the nuts. So, yes, you should probably check occasionally. But the biggest determinant of how you play this hand is how you’re going to play other hands.

CT: Explain, please.

MH: If this is a spot where you’re going to continuation-bet all of your weakest hands, you need to bet all of your strong hands, too. When you’re capable of holding a lot of weak hands, you’re going to get paid off more when you flop big like this. And the easiest way to get paid off is to grow the pot early so that you can make bigger bets later. I don’t like to cheat myself out of that money by checking. The object is to win as large a pot as possible, not to see who can surprise his opponent the most at showdown. That said, the downside to making the pot big with a lot of marginal hands early is that you may find yourself facing big bets in tough spots later. So, you should be prepared to make bigger, tougher decisions later. The more frequently you’re going to flop the nuts and check it behind, then raise the turn or river when blanks hit, the more frequently you’ll have to play the same line as a bluff. A lot of players are pretty terrible about balancing in these situations, and it makes it easy to lay hands down against them. You do not want to be one of those players.

Turn: Q (pot: 310,000)
The villain checks. Hawrilenko checks.

MH: This card is an action killer. If I’m not chopping (or losing, as A-10 is definitely in his range here — but it’s also important not to start seeing monsters under the bed), I’d generally bet, but I want to give this guy a shot at bluffing the river, so I check and hope to induce a bluff or enable myself to get more value on a lot of river cards. Depending on his bet size and the river card, I can still always raise the river.

River: K (pot: 310,000)
The villain bets 450,000.

CT: What the hell could he have here?

MH: He could be turning a hand like A-9 into a bluff, although it seems odd to make it an overbet-bluff. Could he have a 10 and be hoping to chase out another 10? It’s conceivable. But the big problem for me here is that I have a lot of full houses in my range, and I really shouldn’t have too many straights in my range, so I think it’s less likely that he’d be overbetting a straight.
 
CT: So …

MH: That pretty much leaves full houses. The hand that makes the most sense is K-Q, as I think he’d probably check-raise K-J or K-9 on the flop. And there are still at least some of these flopped two-pair hands in his range. My opponent is super aggressive, three-betting and folding to four-bets a lot preflop, but it’s important to realize that that’s a very different situation than the one we’re in right now. As I mentioned before, a lot of players — particularly when they have a tough decision to make — extrapolate too much from too little information, and try to rely on their “read.” This can be fine if you have a really strong, accurate read. But, more often than not, I see it happen when they really don’t know what else to do, and they turn it into a guessing game. When they guess right, they’re a genius, and when they guess wrong, they blame it, in retrospect, on tilt.

CT: What tools do you use to make the best decision?

MH: Well, a lot of people draw a distinction between a math-based player and a read-based player, and I think that’s a false dichotomy. I use reads all the time, but I also like to have good tools to use when a read isn’t very strong. When I’m in a tough spot, the first thing I like to do is go back to square one — reading my own hand. Where am I at in my own distribution? In this case, I’d certainly opt to check a lot of two-pair hands on the turn and bet a lot of straights. In the end, the combination of his overbet and the fact that I should have a lot of full houses in my distribution sells it for me.

Hawrilenko folds. The villain wins the pot of 310,000.

CT: Don’t you want to know, Matt? How can you sleep at night? Oh, right — you went on to win a million dollars.

MH: (Laughing) Yes, that helps. I had thought the beauty of winning a tournament is that you never have to second-guess hands that you played, but this one still bothers me.