Surviving a Tough Player on Your Left

In the main event of the World Series of Poker, you’ll frequently spend the entire day at the same table. You need to be conscious of how your opponents play and what they think of you. You play the most pots with the players to your immediate left and right, so you should primarily be concerned with them.

On day 5 of this year’s main event, I had the extremely talented Christian Harder on my immediate left. He didn’t start the day with many chips, but I knew he would be a threat if he ran up a stack. Sure enough, he nearly tripled his chips during the first level. It looked like I’d be stuck with him all day, so I formulated a plan for minimizing the damage that he could do.

Position is valuable because you get information from your opponent’s actions. If you check, I can use that knowledge to decide whether or not to bet. The more I know about how you play, the more valuable this information is. If I know you never slow-play, then I can bluff whenever you check. I also can bet marginal hands for value, confident that you won’t check-raise.

I figured that the less Christian knew about my play, the less his position would be worth and the fewer opportunities he’d have to outplay me. Thus, I resolved to play tricky and aggressively whenever I was in a pot with him — tricky so that he couldn’t pigeonhole my play, and aggressively so that he’d have fewer opportunities to see my cards at showdown. I wanted him to feel as little confidence as possible when playing against me so that he’d be forced to play more straightforwardly.

Hand No. 1

The first big pot we played together started with a raise from an early-position player. I called with J-10 suited, and Christian called on his button. I’m sorry to say that I lost my notes on this hand, so the details here are sketchier than I’d like, but I flopped a flush draw. The preflop raiser checked, and I bet half the pot. Of course, a flush draw is a good semi-bluffing hand anyway, but I also wanted to take an aggressive action against Christian any time it was close. He called, and the third player folded.

The turn was no help, but I bet again, an even larger percentage of the pot. Christian called again. The river completed my flush. I’d already shown a lot of strength, and with the most-likely draw coming in, Christian wasn’t too likely to call a bet. I had a few options: bet small, bet large, or go for a check-raise.

A check-raise would be the trickiest play, but it was too likely that Christian would check behind and see my cards for free. He’s a good enough player that I didn’t think it would make much difference whether I bet small or large. He’d call with an appropriate frequency such that the expected value of either bet would be about the same. A larger bet would result in him seeing my cards less often, though, so that’s what I chose.
Christian thought for a long time before folding. I didn’t get paid off, but at least I planted some seeds of doubt. He’d never know for sure whether he’d made the right laydown.

Hand No. 2

In the second pot Christian and I played together, blinds were 10,000-20,000 with a 3,000 ante. He raised to 43,000, and the action folded to me in the big blind. I called with A-Q off-suit, and we saw a 9-6-2 flop. I checked, and Christian checked behind me.
The turn was an 8. Betting now would be the best way to ensure that Christian never saw my cards. I didn’t expect him to call with many worse hands, though, whereas he probably would bluff if I checked, so I let fundamentally sound play override my other objective and checked. Christian bet 20,000, less than a quarter of the pot. Again, a raise only would be called by better hands, so I just called.

The river paired my queen. Unless Christian was up to something very strange, I was a lock to have the best hand. I still thought checking would be the best overall play, though, as he might bluff or even bet a worse hand for value. He bet 45,000, and now I got tricky. Even though I was almost certain I was good, there wasn’t a lot of value in a check-raise, simply because I couldn’t expect Christian to call with many worse hands. I raised to 120,000 anyway, though, figuring that at least it would deny him the opportunity to see my cards. After much staring, he folded. “Guess you have A-Q,” he remarked.

Of course his guess was correct, but I gave no indication of that. Hopefully I left him with the lingering doubt that I’d bluffed him or played an even stronger hand very slowly.

Hand No. 3

My psychological warfare extended beyond the table. I’d followed Christian’s Twitter feed, @realcharder30, for some time. I didn’t know for sure whether he followed mine, but I thought there was a chance.

We played a big pot in which I called a raise from a third player with A-J off-suit on my button, and Christian called out of the small blind. My opponents checked an A-J-4 flop, I bet, Christian called, and the third player folded. He checked and called a turn bet, as well, but folded the river. I tweeted a quick update: “1.4m. Triple barreled charder in weird spot.”

Technically this wasn’t a lie, though using “triple barrel” in this context would imply that I was bluffing. I also deliberately didn’t identify Christian’s Twitter name in my tweet, because then he’d know that I meant for him to see it. I was hoping that he would come across the tweet and conclude that he’d been bluffed.

Sure enough, he soon wrote back: “Sigh??? RT @thinkingpoker: Triple barreled charder in weird spot.”

Then he showed me the tweet on his phone. “Does this mean you were bluffing?” In answer, I gave him just an awkward little smile, trying to suggest that I was surprised or embarrassed that he’d come across my message.

I actually talked about this exchange during an interview with CardPlayer.com. At the time, I still had four more hours to play with Christian and wasn’t sure when the interview was going live, so I didn’t tip my hand. I did drop a hint about “Twitter psy-ops” at the end, though.

Conclusion

Catching cards had a lot to do with it, but I ultimately had a profitable day 5, despite one of the best players in the tournament on my left. Even though he got nearly every big decision against me right, Christian largely stayed out of my way, which was the best I could hope for. He didn’t three-bet me too often, he didn’t call too many of my raises, and he didn’t abuse his position nearly as much as he could have. My attempts to keep him on his toes paid off. ♠

Andrew Brokos is a professional poker player, writer and coach. He’s a member of Poker Stars Team Online and blogs about poker strategy on ThinkingPoker.net. Andrew is also interested in education reform and founded an after-school debate program for urban youth.