Final Table Takedown -- Daniel 'djk123' Kelly

Daniel Kelly is a mechanical engineering senior at Villanova University, and he’s not your typical college student. In 2009, Kelly won Player of the Year honors in the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker. He captured that award with two wins, in event No. 2 ($215 razz) for $53,400 and event No. 44 ($10,300 H.O.R.S.E.) for $252,350. He had his sights set on winning an unprecedented third WCOOP bracelet in the main event, but finished fourth, earning $643,200. At his first-ever World Series of Poker, he took down the prestigious $25,000 six-handed no-limit hold’em event for his first bracelet and seven-figure score. He also became a member of poker site Doyle’s Room’s elite “Brunson 10.” It’s probably a good assumption that Kelly, who just turned 21 in March, has shown the poker world only a glimpse of what’s to come.

Event: 2010 World Series of Poker event No. 52, $25,000 six-handed no-limit hold’em
Players in the Event: 191
Buy-in: $25,000
First Prize: $1,315,518
Finish: First

Hand No. 1
Stacks: Daniel Kelly – 1,200,000; Bryn Kenney – 2,100,000
Blinds: 15,000-30,000
Antes: 4,000
Players at the Table: 6
Players Remaining: 11

HAND NO. 1
Key Concepts: Open-raise sizing; playing three-bet pots in position; extracting maximum value

Kelly raises to 60,000 from the cutoff with the A 4.

Daniel Kelly: A minimum-raise had been my standard open at this point in the tournament.

Craig Tapscott: I’ve seen you use that raise-sizing when deep in big online events. What’s your strategy by raising to that amount?

DK: It’s a cheap way of stealing the blinds, and it enables me to play more hands. Even if the blinds defend more often, I will be playing a lot of pots in position against a weak range of hands, which is like printing money.

Kenney reraises to 150,000 from the small blind. Kelly calls.

CT: Did you think about reraising, since you know that he knows that your range could be pretty wide from the cutoff?

DK: At first I was considering four-betting all in, but I decided that we were a little too deep for that. Folding was out of the question, given that Bryn three-bets with a wide range of hands, and, of course, I had position.

CT: You have a reputation of being one of the better online preflop players in the game. Can you share some thoughts on how players can improve that aspect of their game, and also learn how to do so in relation to the stack sizes?

DK: It’d be impossible to put into words my thought process, because so much of it is instinctual at this point. I’d recommend that players experiment with different ways of applying pressure and always look for good spots. In this specific hand, if the effective stacks had been around 30 big blinds instead of 40, I probably would have four-bet all in. A suited ace is a good hand to four-bet all in with, because it has a blocker to hands like A-K, A-Q, and A-A, and also has decent equity when called.

Flop: A A 4 (pot: 354,000)
Kenney checks.

DK: I manage to hit a miracle flop with the nuts.

Kelly bets 164,000.

CT: Why not check and let him catch up a bit?

DK: My decision to bet is obvious, because I want to build the pot. Bryn is rarely going to be giving up when he checks a board that is great to continuation-bet with air.

Kenney raises to 350,000.

DK: Once he check-raises, I decide to call. This is mainly because I want to continue to let him bluff, if he is in fact bluffing. I’m going to stack A-X regardless of what I do, but calling maximizes value from his bluffs.

Kelly calls.
Turn: 6 (pot: 1,054,000)
Kenney checks. Kelly checks.

CT: So, why not continue to build the pot?

DK: Since I had only three-fourths of a pot-sized bet left, there wouldn’t be any room for him to bluff-shove over a bet. Checking gives him one more chance to bluff, and it also gives him the chance to hit a worse hand on the river.

River: K (pot: 1,054,000)
Kenney checks. Kelly moves all in for 696,000. Kenney calls after tanking for a few minutes, then mucks when Kelly turns over the A 4 for a full house. Kelly wins the pot of 2,446,000.

CT: Did Kenney ever reveal to you what he held in the hand?

DK: No, but I have heard from other people that he claimed to have A-Q. I don’t believe that he had A-Q, because I would expect him to snap-call the river, since I would play any A-X the same way, not just a full house.

Hand No. 2
Stacks: Daniel Kelly – 5,500,000; Eugene Katchalov – 505,000
Blinds: 25,000-50,000
Antes: 5,000
Players Remaining: 6

HAND NO. 2
Key Concepts: Calculating an opponent’s hand range; being aware of your own table image

Kelly raises from the button to 100,000 with the Q J. Katchalov moves all in from the small blind for 500,000.

CT: Daniel, can we venture inside your head and get a glimpse of the thought process you go through in your preflop game when making a decision such as this?

DK: OK. The first thing you need to do in these situations is figure out what odds you are getting to call. There is 30,000 in antes, 50,000 from the big blind, 500,000 from the all in, and my 100,000, making a total of 680,000 in the pot. I have to call 400,000, so I’m getting 680-400 odds to call, or 1.7-1. Next, you need to translate your odds into the required equity that you need against your opponent’s shoving range, which can be found with a simple formula:

(100-x)/x = n, where x is the equity percentage required to call and n is the odds that you are getting, which in this case is 1.7. This equation simplifies to x = 100/(1+n). So, for this hand, x = 100/(1+1.7) = 100/2.7 = 37 percent

If you hate math, it is easy to estimate what equity you need if you know that 2-1 odds requires 33 percent and 1.5-1 odds requires 40 percent.

CT: What’s next?

DK: Finally, you need to come up with a range for your opponent and see if your hand has the required equity against that range. Since Eugene has only 10 big blinds and he knows that I’m opening with a wide range of hands, he’s going to be shoving with a wide range of hands. I can’t be sure exactly what range he is shoving, but I’d estimate it as 2-2+, A-2+ suited, K-9+ suited, A-7+ offsuit, K-10+ offsuit. Know that 2-2+ includes 2-2 and all better pairs, K-9+ suited includes K-9 suited, K-10 suited, K-J suited, K-Q suited, and so on. He could be shoving looser than this, but I think it is better to err on the conservative side when coming up with ranges in these spots.

CT: Then how do you determine your equity against that range?

DK: You will need to use a tool such as PokerStove, which can be downloaded for free online. Using PokerStove, you will see that Q-J offsuit has 37.67 percent equity against 2-2+, A-2+ suited, K-9+ suited, A-7+ offsuit, K-10+ offsuit, which means that Q-J offsuit is a close call. Obviously, you won’t be able to go through this process in the heat of the moment at the table. But, if you go through enough of these calculations away from the table, it will become second nature for you at the table.

Kelly calls. Katchalov shows the 6 6.
Flop: Q 4 3 (pot: 1,080,000)
Turn: J (pot: 1,080,000)
River: 4 (pot: 1,080,000)
Kelly wins the pot of 1,080,000.