Final Table Takedown -- Matt Stout

Matt “All in at 420” Stout has been playing poker tournaments for a living for four years. After some moderate success in college, his career took off in the casinos of Atlantic City, when he turned 21. Since then, he’s been a consistent contender on both the online and live-tournament circuits, with more than $2 million in cashes online and nearly $1 million live. Recently, Matt signed as a “Pro” with a site on the Cake Poker network, called Lock Poker, along with several other members of Poker Players International. You can contact Matt directly at [email protected].

Event WPT World Poker Finals
Players in the Event 353
First Prize $910,058
Finish Third

Hand No. 1
Matt Stout – 2,200,000 Soheil Shamseddin – 1,150,000 Tom Dobrilovic – 500,000 Anonymous – 1,120,000
Blinds: 12,000-24,000
Antes: 3,000
Players Remaining: 10

Hand No. 1
Key Concepts: Three-betting preflop versus flat-calling with a monster; stack sizes; inducing a squeeze

Craig Tapscott: Set this crazy hand up for us, Matt.

Matt Stout: This hand came shortly after we’d gotten down to the final table of 10 players. You can usually expect play to be pretty tight at this point, because everyone wants to make the televised final table while moving up in the money.

CT: Were you looking to target any particular player?

MS: Soheil had been avoiding confrontations with me in play leading up to the final table, despite the fact that he has quite a reputation for being a maniac. He’s one of the most erratic and unpredictable players I’ve ever competed with. I’d heard about a hand that he played earlier in the tournament, when he defended in a raised pot with 8-2 offsuit and flopped trips. And he showed and folded the K J to me from one of the blinds when I had raised from the cutoff with about 16 players remaining.

CT: What was your table image?

MS: My image was pretty sick at the tables. I hadn’t folded to any three-bets, hadn’t shown down any bluffs or weak starting hands, and basically managed not to lose any big pots deep in the tournament up to that point.

Shamseddin raises from early position to 60,000. Stout calls from middle position with the A A.

CT: Why the smooth-call?

MS: He definitely had a good stack size to four-bet jam on me with plenty of perceived fold equity if I reraised, but I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t get out of line if I, the chip leader with my table image, had three-bet against his early-position raise. My reverse implied odds were relatively low, in case he outflopped my hand, since we’d be playing an effective stack-to-pot ratio of less than 6-1 post-flop, even if we went heads up to the flop.

CT: Were you hoping for a squeeze from the stacks behind you?

MS: Lee Markholt (580,000) and Tom Dobrilovic (500,000) are very good, but on the tighter side. I don’t expect them to get belligerent with their squeeze ranges here, but they will definitely shove significantly wider against a raise and call than they will a raise and reraise, as will Adam Levy with his stack of 800,000. I also anticipated that if Lee or Tom moved in, Soheil would likely move in with a fairly wide range to isolate, since he’d be getting a pretty good price against the all-in player.

CT: But then, all hell broke loose.

MS: Yes (laughing).

Anonymous calls from the button. Dobrilovic shoves all in from the big blind. Shamseddin moves all in for 1,087,000. Stout moves all in, having everyone covered. Anonymous folds.
Dobrilovic reveals the K K. Shamseddin flips over the 9 9.

Flop: J 10 8 (pot: 2,893,000)
Turn: 7 (pot: 2,893,000)
River: 6 (pot: 2,893,000)
Shamseddin wins the pot of 2,893,000 with a jack-high straight.

MS: Needless to say, the end result of Soheil making a straight wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, but we can’t be results-oriented. I managed to build a pot of almost 2.9 million (of the 10.6 million in chips in play) before the flop with aces at a WPT final table, and am perfectly happy with that.

CT: So, you’re solid with your choice not to three-bet preflop?

MS: I clearly didn’t want Soheil to fold if I three-bet while holding A-A, and he would have, once Dobrilovic moved in, if I had chosen to reraise preflop. So, I’m good with my decision to flat-call in that spot. It was the optimal play, even though it resulted in Soheil taking the chip lead and half of my stack.

Hand No. 2
Matt Stout – 3,685,000 Soheil Shamseddin – 3,240,000
Blinds: 40,000-80,000
Antes: 10,000
Players Remaining: 3

Hand No. 2
Key Concepts: Implied odds; assigning hand ranges

Stout raises to 200,000 from the button with the 6 5. Shamseddin calls from the big blind.

MS: Now that we’re down to three, I expect him to be calling me from the big blind with a wide range, since he can’t just stay out of my way any longer … somewhere around 35 percent of possible hands, in Soheil’s case.

Flop: K K 4 (pot: 470,000)
Shamseddin bets out 150,000.

CT: What read did you have on him when he led out here? Had you seen him do this previously at all?

MS: When he led out on the flop, it marked the first time that I actually gave Soheil credit for having a big hand the entire tournament. He’d led out from the big blind in a three-way raised pot with Q-J on a 10-8-3 flop earlier at the final table, but had bet about two-thirds of the size of the pot in that case.

CT: What kind of hand do you think he’s leading out with by betting so small here? It seems like he obviously wants you to call or make a move.

MS: I thought he’d have led for more with a bigger flush draw than mine if he were going to lead with it. There was a chance that he’d lead here with fours full, but if he had that and I made a flush, I was just going to pay him off and move on with my life. I thought that his most likely holding was K-X, and that there were plenty of them in his range, as he’d defend K-Q down to K-8 (probably three-betting A-K preflop, though), and a few weaker suited ones, so getting maximum value from those each time would compensate for the times that I make a flush and still lose.

Stout calls.

CT: Did you think of raising?

MS: There was no reason to bloat the pot and reopen the betting when I had him on a pretty tight range and had a ton of implied odds if he did have a naked king. That’s why I decided to just call the flop bet.

Turn: 3 (pot: 770,000)
Shamseddin bets 300,000. Stout raises to 720,000. Shamseddin moves in for 2,580,000. Stout calls.

MS: I stuck with my plan of going for it all, and beat Soheil to the pot when he three-bet me all in. This was the second time that Soheil and I were wrapped up in the biggest pot of the tournament up to that point, and once again, he was about a 4-1 underdog. I was one card away from being heads up with a 2-1 chip lead, but …

River: 9 (pot: 6,530,000)
Shamseddin wins the pot of 6,530,000 with a full house.

CT: Wow!

MS: I played just about every hand as well as I know how to, and did everything I could do to put myself in position to become a WPT champion — and that’s about all you can do or ask of yourself.