A Primer for the 2014 World Series of Poker $1,500 Dealer’s Choice Event – Part I

The 2014 World Series of Poker $1,500 Dealer’s Choice event presents a fresh spin on tournaments. In addition to struggling with whether to bet, call, or fold, players will take turns choosing one of 16 games to play for an orbit. Anytime you get to make a decision in poker is an opportunity to win or lose money, so I’m going to examine this choice in preparation for this unique event.

Highest Win Rate

Players should pick the game where they show the highest win rate. This usually means choosing the format they are most proficient in, but not always. The sixth best badugi player in the world should usually pick badugi when it’s her turn, but that would be a terrible idea if she is playing with the five sharks who happen to be better than her in that discipline. The best game for each player will be the one where they have the largest skill difference against the other players at the table.

In evaluating this disparity, it will usually pay to pick a game your opponents are weakest at, over one that you are simply strong in. This can be a lot harder than it sounds because players know more about their own strengths and weaknesses than those they merely share a table with for an afternoon in Las Vegas. Even if you were armed with the poker superpower of knowing all your opponents’ skill levels in every game, there’s no guarantee you would be able exploit weaknesses if you don’t end up in pots with them.
Basing your game selection on the players you will be tangling with the most improves this idea. People tend to get involved with those seated next to them as well as those who, unsurprisingly, play the most hands. As Team PokerStars Online member Mickey Petersen says, “focus on the loosest players at the table, you’ll be battling them the most and they tend to be your most profitable opportunities.” (Not a big surprise to see the man known as “Nit Mori” advocating against loose play.)

Start of the Tournament

Therefore, discovering how strong your opponents are at each game is one of your first missions upon being seated. It’s a task within itself and doing so will be quite useful if you can extract subtle conclusions from it. Here’s an incomplete list of assumptions I regularly use in mixed-game tournaments.

• Players tend to transfer how tight or loose they are across games, even though different formats necessitate different play styles. Cornering a loose player in a game favoring tight play (limit hold’em, badugi) is a recipe for success. Games with antes, especially big ones, favor active play, while games without them reward tighter strategies.

• A rounder skilled in one of the stud games will likely be competent in the others. Keeping track of upcards, non-fixed starting hand selection, and three streets of big bet play are relevant concepts across all three disciplines.

• The triple-draw lowball draw games (deuce-to-seven, ace-to-five, and badugi) are similar to each other, but very different from most other forms of poker. For this reason, I expect players who are generically “good” at poker to struggle with the transition to these games without proper experience.

• Split-pot games have the underlying theme where the focus should be to win both halves of the pot (and not just because you can yell “SCOOOOOOP” and make a shoveling motion after winning them). If someone struggles with this concept in one of the games, they will likely do so in another one as well.

• Someone who picks pot-limit hold’em over no-limit hold’em just wants to watch the world burn.

This is without mentioning the obvious point that figuring out your opponents strengths and weaknesses will also be useful in-game. Players with little experience in a game are more likely to play straightforward — unaware of what lines represent, they will not be executing fancy bluffs or thin value bets.

This also means that paying more attention to the play at the table will go farther than normal. Not only will you have a very limited sample to judge everyone’s ability at each game, but you need to use this limited sample to decide on what game you should pick. This is not one of those tournaments where it’s advisable to goof off on the Internet when not involved in hands.

These concepts also apply from your opponents’ perspective — just as you should jealously guard your hands at showdown, you should also hide which games you are adept or weak at. In the early levels, I will tend to pick a variety of games. This allows me to gather information about how competent others are at each game, while hiding what format I actually prefer until the levels increase.

A Look Forward At The Later Stages Of the Tournament

The highest win rate should be the primary concern as long as stack management and the money bubble are not considerations. Once these factors rear their heads, it’s way more crucial to select games that favor your stack size and positioning within the tournament. A significant portion of the advice in this article becomes obsolete and an entirely different ballgame of strategies prevails, which I will cover next time. A lot of these choices are ground in each game’s structures, meaning there are objectively good or bad choices to make. I’m not going to pick the game I’m the best in, I’m going to pick the game that is best for my stack and place in the tournament.

For instance, as a sneak peek, It’s interesting that no-limit hold’em changes from a well-positioned game to play as a small stack because of the antes and ability to leverage folds, to a terrible one at middle stacks because you could get bullied, then back to a great game if you get to play the role of said bully. There are a lot of interesting intricacies like this to analyze — hopefully, you look forward to reading about it as much I do exploring it. ♠

Ben Yu attended Stanford University but knew even before finishing that he wanted to embark on a journey to become a one of the finest professional mixed-game players. He made his debut onto the tournament scene in 2010 with a second-place finish in the World Series of Poker $1,500 limit hold’em shootout and followed it up in 2011 by leading the WSOP with seven cashes across six different games. In 2012, he moved to Rosarito, Mexico in order to continue playing online and was enthralled to perform well at the World Championship of Online Poker, including a final table appearance at the $10,300 poker 8-Game High Roller, and a cash in the main event.