Hand 2 Hand Combat -- Jason Alexander

Event 2009 World Series of Poker main event – day 1
Stacks Jason Alexander – 40,000; Villain – 24,000
Players at the Table 9
Blinds 100-200

Craig Tapscott: Everyone knows that you love poker. Do you get excited each year when the main event rolls around?

Jason Alexander: Well, I have no great illusions about this tournament. I play because it’s a poker thrill. I’m in the room with amazing players, and I can feel the energy.

CT: Were you at a few fun tables on day 1?

JA: After the first break, I was moved to a different table and wound up next to my buddy Brad Garrett. Now I’m having fun, because Brad is a blast and a pretty good card man, at that.

CT: Was your chip stack starting to grow?

JA: I’m going up a bit and down quite a bit. My luck starts to turn and I’m catching cards and taking down pots, largely preflop. The few hands that I do play, I push them a little aggressively and the opposition folds.

Alexander raises from early position to 1,200 with the 10 10.

CT: That seems like a bit of a big raise.

JA: Well, I don’t want speculators to call with ace-anything. And if they are speculating, I want it to cost them if they don’t hit.

The villain calls from the big blind.
Flop: J 7 2 (pot: 2,500)
The villain checks.

JA: The jack is the only card that beats me. So, I’m thinking that I want to make a good bet, in case he’s holding a single diamond. Now, I don’t see a flush for this guy. Call me crazy.

Alexander bets 3,000. The villain shoves all in for 22,800.

JA: Maybe he has the damn flush, but my spidey senses are telling me he doesn’t. Maybe he’s paired up, and maybe it’s even the jack, in which case he’s got me. But I’m also thinking that if he’s playing the jack pair, he’s not playing a flush. And I’ve got the 10. With the jack dead, only three other cards can deliver a higher flush than mine. Also, maybe he paired up only one of the lower cards on the flop and is trying to represent a flush to get me out. The fact that he’s challenging me all in is not lost on me. I tried to make my decision on the notion that he has a flush, even though I don’t think he does.

CT: What’s your thinking at this point?

JA: My final thinking is that my chip count is OK, but not spectacular. I want to end day 1 at 60,000, or be done with this thing. I’ve got a lot of business going on right now, and I don’t need to come back for day 2 with chump chips. If I call and lose the hand, I’ll be at about 16,000 with 90 minutes to play. If that happens, I can play ultra-aggressively. I’ll either build my stack back up or, more likely, fail and get out of Dodge. So …

Alexander calls. The villain flips over the 8 5.

JA: Damn it, he’s got the flush. It’s a baby flush, but a flush. Now, while I’m not thrilled with my faulty spidey senses, I am still pretty optimistic that a diamond will come to give me a higher flush. So, I’m not actually devastated yet. Then the turn comes, and it’s a …

Turn: J (pot: 48,100)

JA: I’m not really thinking now. All I can see is that I’m down to one card to snag that diamond, and it ain’t feeling so good. But then …

River: J (pot: 48,100)
Alexander wins the pot of 48,100 with a full house.

CT: Wow.

JA: I wasn’t even thinking outside the flush, and suddenly I’m staring at a full house. Before I can even react, my opponent curses and stalks off. Everybody is whooping it up around me, and I can’t believe it.

CT: Well, you confessed that you were gambling. You were willing to go big or go home.

JA: I talked to a few pros, and not one said that he would have made that call. But several of them were awfully impressed that I did. The advantage is that I’m not looking to win; I’m only looking to play. I played edgy, and it paid off. I went into day 2 with almost 90,000 in chips when all was said and done, and I was ready to make more boneheaded calls.

CT: Jason said that we could phone a friend and get a pro’s point of view on this hand. So, we used a lifeline and called 2004 World Series of Poker Champion Greg Raymer.

First off, Greg, what do you think of Jason’s preflop raise-sizing?

Greg Raymer: I strongly prefer to always raise the same amount throughout a given level. For me, that amount is about 2.5 times the big blind. For many others, it is 3 times the big blind. The number you pick is not as important as always raising the same amount. By doing so, the amount of your raise does not give away the strength (or weakness) of your hand. If you’re in a small tournament or a cash game with strangers whom you don’t expect to play with very long or see again, avoiding patterns is not very important, as they won’t play with you long enough to spot the patterns. But in bigger events like this, you are likely to play with some of these same people all day long, and the better players will spot your patterns. By always betting the same amount, there is no bet-size pattern for them to see.

CT: Great advice. Please share your thoughts on Jason’s flop call, and what we can learn from this hand and his thought process.

GR: When Jason bet 3,000 into a pot that was that size or a bit smaller, and then got raised all in, he was given good information that he was likely beat. Of the times that he was not behind on the flop here, I suspect that many of them would be in spots in which he was not the statistical favorite to win. He could also find himself in a spot in which he was up against the Q J or some such hand that had him behind and drawing almost dead. Given all of this, a fold is pretty automatic. The only exceptions to this would be if he had a strong and dependable read on this opponent and was at least fairly certain that his opponent was bluffing with a weak hand or a draw. So, unless Jason told me that he had such a read and was going with it, I don’t like the call.

As for his plan to go large or go home, it is fine as long as he understands that he is intentionally playing worse than his best game in order to add a lot of variance to his results. But, obviously, this is not a long-term optimal strategy. Having said that, if that is his plan, he probably would be better off picking a spot in which he is likely to be in a coin-toss situation rather than one in which he is often behind, and sometimes almost dead. Either way, I’m glad that Jason won this pot, and drew my table for day 2. We had a lot of fun at the feature table, and it wouldn’t have been the same without him.

Jason Alexander began his acting career on the New York stage. In 1989, he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. He is best known as one of the key cast members of the award-winning television sitcom Seinfeld, in which he played George Costanza. In 2006, he won the Celebrity Poker Showdown championship on the Bravo Network, benefiting charities for victims of Hurricane Katrina.