The WSOP Main Event

My WSOP was a very different experience this year than it has been in past years. My wife had our second son on May 29 so I decided to skip every event except for the main event. Luckily, I have a very sympathetic backer who is a family man himself, so he understood and has been wonderful overall with letting me take breaks to take care of my family and generally not really worrying too much about me putting in a ton of volume. Having a backer like that is really helpful and goes a long way towards making me want to work hard for him and play my best in the tournaments that I do play. It helps for him, of course, that I’ve made quite a bit of money for the two of us over our several-year history together, but I digress.

So, there I am, getting ready to head out to Vegas in a couple of days and doing my regular exercise which consists of one or two mountain bike rides per week. I know it’s not much, but it’s about all I have time for these days. About 35 minutes into my 45 minute ride there’s a pretty steep downhill to a tight right hand turn and then a quick left and I lost control lining up for the right hander, fell, and broke my left collarbone. It wasn’t much pain, but it was pretty inconvenient timing with a five-week old baby and the main event in a few days. The doctor at the emergency room got me all checked out and cleared me for everything except for lifting things with my left hand. It wasn’t too much pain except for when I woke up in the morning, so I didn’t need serious pain medication, just your basic ibuprofen (which I later found out from my orthopedist was an inferior choice to acetaminophen due to its anti-inflammatory properties). That’s good then, it won’t be much of a distraction.

And it wasn’t. I played very well on day one, getting a bit unlucky at the end of the day to end up with 97,000 instead of 140,000. I did play some very interesting hands because I decided to play a little more unconventionally than I usually do. I didn’t fold to a single three-bet that wasn’t all-in (which means I didn’t open as much as usual) and I generally played a stickier style looking to get more creative on later streets. It worked well against my opponents who I think weren’t used to playing against someone like that.

Day two I was continuing to play well and had my stack up over 200,000 before losing a pot or two to get down to 185,000 at dinner break when I played a hand where I made the biggest mistake I made in the whole tournament. It folded to me on the button with blinds of 500-1,000 and a dead small blind (SB). The big blind (BB) was relatively new to the table and had busted the guy on my left (mostly because he was thoroughly uninterested in continuing to play after taking a bad beat or two). I had two queens and raised to 2,000. The BB called to see a flop of J-8-6 rainbow. He checked, I bet 2,300, and he called. The turn was a 10 and he checked. My first instinct was to check because it’s a pretty terrible card for me and one that really smashes my opponent’s range. J-10, 10-8, 9-7, Q-9, 10-10 all just got there and 10-9 just picked up a little bit more equity. In addition, looking at it from a game theory perspective, this is a card I’ll check quite often with a big portion of my range, hands like A-K, A-Q, K-Q, Q-10, 10-9, 9-9, 9-8, 8-7, 7-6, 6-5, and probably Q-J and K-J. I’d be pretty happy to get two streets of value with my hand and will probably be more likely to get called by worse on flop and river than flop and turn. Instead, I bet 5,200 and my opponent raised to 12,000. I called and called a river bet of around the same amount and my opponent showed me 9-7 for the straight.

In a tournament as well structured as the main event, I should have checked back to play a little more carefully with my overpair instead of trying to get maximum value in a pretty thin spot. I ended that level with 158,000. The last level of the night went really poorly, with me not winning a single pot and ending with 66,000. More of the same on day three where I blinded and raise/folded down to about 15,000 with about 30 minutes left in the first level and finally doubled with 10-10 versus K-Q. I grinded out a 20-30 BB stack for the next two levels before finally busting about 20 minutes before dinner break when I jammed 20 BB over an early position open and late position flat with A-Q from the BB. My opponent had A-K and I didn’t improve.

My stats for the WSOP were simple: One tournament played, $10,000 in buy-ins, zero cashes for $0 and a minus $10,000 trip. I was proud of the way I played for most of the tournament and would like to have that turn bet back with Q-Q, but I was patient when I was short stacked and trusted my instincts in some very key situations. I wish I had done better, but my first ever day three in the main event is what I’ll have to settle for and I hope to improve on it next year. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG