Tournament Tales

World Series of Poker Part II

Well, day two of the main event didn’t exactly go as planned. Right from the get go it was a disaster. I misplaced my chip count receipt so I was late getting to my seat. I saw the dealer was just starting a new deal so i rushed into my seat to grab my cards. I just get hold of them in time and it folds around to me in the cut-off and I see A-3 offsuit.

The blinds are 200-400 and I make it 1,000. It folds to the big blind who is the only other young guy on the table, everyone else is 35 plus, and without much thought he makes it 3,200.

Assuming he is competent, it seems like a really easy spot for him to three-bet and win the pot, particularly because it is literally the first hand I have been dealt. So I elected to four-bet to 7,800. First because I think he’s going to be light a lot and secondly because I want to establish the fact that this is my table and I’m going to run it for the next eight hours.

Well, he pretty quickly moved all in over my four-bet. Well played Nick, great start. I sure showed him!

I played snug enough for the rest of the level winning lots of small pots until the hand that destroyed me. I was playing about 55,000 in chips at 250-500. This 50-something year-old American opened to 1,400 from mid-position. He had been opening a lot and I said I was going to look for a good spot to three-bet him in position because he definitely seemed very weak post-flop.

So I three-bet 4 3 to 4,200 from the button with a pretty solid image (bar four-bet folding my first hand at the table). He calls pretty quickly and the flop rolls down Jx 7 5. Not an amazing flop, but at least I flopped some sort of a draw. He checks and I fire 5,400, he calls without much thought.

It’s much easier to narrow his range now. I figured he could have a decent jack a decent amount of the time, so Q-J, K-J, and A-J and then paired hands a lot of time, 6-6, 8-8, 9-9 and T-T and also draws a small percentage of the time, hands like A-x of clubs.

He was just the kind of player who would, for sure, raise a set on that type of board and for sure four-bet Q-Q to A-A preflop. So with a good idea of his range, I thought there was a good chance I could get him to fold at some stage during the hand given his hand strength isn’t that strong.

The turn came an offsuit queen.

So the only hand in his range I have assigned that improved is Q-J. Thus a queen is definitely a card that should look to help my range. So he checks to me again and I bet 10,200 with the intention of firing a lot of river cards if called. Well, the guy went into the tank on the turn and finally called after what seemed like 2-3 minutes.

I know there are a lot of players who would put on a show like this to try give a big sense of weakness, however I didn’t believe this to be the case here. So when the river card came a meaningless 3 I decided to stick to my plan and read, and fire the final shell after he had snap-checked the river to me. I bet 20,400 and yet again the old guy went deep into the tank.

In my mind I’m saying, “Please fold, please fold, please fold.” After about 3-4 minutes someone else at the table called clock. I hate when people who aren’t involved in hands call clock, particularly so early in one of the best-structured tournaments in the world. Anyway, with about 20 seconds left on the clock he announced the word ”call” and tabled 9-9 — big sigh for me. Was it a sick call by him?

I busted a few hands later. My head wasn’t really in great shape after the big bluff gone wrong. I got it in on the turn for my last 13,000 or so on a J-T-7-3 board with three hearts with K[[suit:heart] Q versus A 9, so I was in pretty bad shape and whiffed.

All in all it was a great summer but yet again by the end of it I was completely drained by Vegas. Perhaps going for 6-7 weeks at a time is too much?

Look out for my bounty tournament on PaddyPowerPoker.com on Tuesday nights, I’ll be there so come get my chips!

Nick Heather finished fourth in a $1,000 no-limit hold’em tournament at the World Series of Poker 2010. He plays and blogs at PaddyPowerPoker.com.