WSOP 2013, Event 17, Part II

In my last column, I took my readers through the anatomy of building a Day 1 stack in a massive field at the World Series of Poker. Now we’ll look at what can happen to that stack as the tournament progresses.

Heading into day two of event no. 17 — one of the many $1,500 no-limit hold ’em marathons that were featured this summer — I had 96,000 chips. The average stack was about 48,000, and there were 225 players left out of 2,105. Two hundred sixteen of us would get paid. Walking to the Amazon room to find my table (and more importantly, the plastic bag filled with my chips), a fellow player walked up to me and said, “how about giving someone else a chance this year?” He said it in an obviously joking manner, and with such a broad smile, that I could only laugh, wish him luck, shake my competitor’s hand, and be on my way.

When the action started at my table, it quickly became obvious that one of the big stacks would be playing hyper-aggressive poker. He raised almost every hand, and with several good players on my left, I mostly stayed out of his way. The question was, would he keep up his brute force approach after the bubble burst? Once it was announced that all players had reached the money, our table captain did start toning things down — but he was still the most aggressive of my opponents by far, and I knew that eventually we’d have to play a pot.

It happened when an early position player raised and I flat called in middle position with a suited A-J. The table captain counted out raising chips, and then three-bet squeezed from the big blind (BB). The original raiser folded, and I called. The flop came down Q-10-4 with one of my suit. The captain put out a continuation bet (c-bet), and I called. The turn paired the queen. This should’ve been a disastrous looking card for my opponent. A lot of his range consisted of big overpairs (namely aces and kings), while for my part, it would’ve been extremely easy for me to have A-Q or K-Q suited or even Q-J suitred and played it exactly this way. But undeterred, the captain bet again. I quickly decided that I could believably represent the queen, and put out a small raise into what had become a very big pot. After not too much time, my opponent, thankfully, threw his cards into the muck. I sincerely doubt that he folded an overpair.

A few hours later, a new player sat down to my immediate left. I recognized him right away, mostly because he had the same chill vibe he’d had when I met him in the hallway earlier. This time he didn’t ask if I’d let someone else win a bracelet, but he introduced himself as Athanasios (a name I made sure to repeat several times until I got it right). I learned fast that he wasn’t just a friendly guy, but a heck of a poker player — putting in lots of raises, making timely folds when he had to, and amassing chips.

Shortly after he arrived, Athanasios raised under the gun and I defended my blind. After he checked back the flop, I bet the turn and river before he finally folded. “You didn’t miss clubs, did you?” he asked. I had actually missed everything, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. Two orbits later, Athanasios raised from under the gun again, and again I defended — only this time when I bluffed the river, he called me down and showed K-7 suited (a seven had flopped). Hmm. It was then that Athanasios revealed to me, and to the other players sitting near us, that he had won a bracelet two years earlier, in a $1,500 no-limit hold’em event. I mentioned that he had a chance to become one of the very few poker pros to win the same WSOP event twice (I’m not among them, by the way).

I went to dinner with 225,000 chips. The average stack was 179,000 and 53 players remained. Those of you who read part one will remember that I got a lot of chips early in this tournament by check/calling three streets against a button opener with just one pair. Well, after we got back from dinner break, I made a similar play, using similar logic. Just like the day before, I defended my BB against a button raise, and check/called the flop and turn with middle pair. There were so many combinations of hands my opponent could’ve been bluffing with, and so few hands he could’ve been value betting, that I was actually rooting for him to bet all-in on the river. Which he did. Thinking that he would need a huge hand to be betting for value, and that it would be hard for him to have it, I called relatively quickly. Unfortunately, the button did have a huge hand. He’d flopped two pair with the unlikely holding of J-4 offsuit and I doubled him up, costing me half my stack.

I battled back with all-in steals and resteals, none of which got called, and with 27 players remaining I had a chip count of 160,000. And then Athanasios got moved next to me again, this time on my right. He opened in middle position for 20,000 and I had a fairly easy decision to move all-in with A-J. I wasn’t happy when the BB announced that he was all-in for 350,000, and even less happy when Athanasios called us both! The big blind held A-Q, but Athanasios had us both crushed with his A-K, and soon the big blind and I were eliminated in 26th and 27th places respectively. As I got up from the table, I leaned over to Athanasios — a man who makes his home in the same town where I grew up, and with whom I made plans to grab a beer with after the WSOP ended — and told him, “win this thing.”

A day later, he did. ♠

Matt Matros is the author of The Making of a Poker Player, and a three-time WSOP bracelet winner. He is also a featured coach for cardrunners.com.