Inspired by Tommy Angelo

I played my first major tournament since the World Series of Poker main event recently and it was a bit of a letdown. After all the pageantry and excitement of making a (semi) deep run in the main event, it was a bit hard to come in to a day 1 with 30,000 chips and 50-100 blinds. This is, however, my profession and it’s still nice to be able to play some interesting tournament hands. There is one that certainly sticks out from the day.

In the first level, I still have almost exactly the same starting stack. A player UTG limps for 100 and I make it 450 in the cutoff with two red aces. A long-time reg, who I have played with before, makes it 1,500 off of 31,000 from the big blind. I think this is usually A-K, A-Q suited, J-J+, and maybe a couple bluffing hands as well thinking that I’m raising a little light over the limper. I think he probably flats 2-2 through 10-10 and lots of other hands like J-10 suited, K-J suited+, 10-9 suited, etc. The limper folds and I often flat call here but I think his three-betting range is pretty strong, so I try to get some value from it in case a bad flop rolls off. I make it 4,300. He calls pretty quickly. A-K, J-J and Q-Q are his most likely holdings.

The flop is J 7 3. He checks and I bet 4,500. He calls without much hesitation. I put him on J-J, Q-Q, A-K or A Q. The turn is the 10s. He checks, and I check back as I don’t want to get check-raised if I bet 6,000 or 7,000 and I feel like I can get value out of his overpairs on the river. The river is the 7 and he checks again.

I feel like I almost always have the best hand in this spot, though it’s certainly possible he has J-J and possible, though less likely, that he has 10-10. I can definitely have some bluffs in this spot, like A K, A Q or naked A-Q so I decided to bet. But how much? There is now 17,750 in the pot and I have 20,700 behind. If he’s going to call 10,000 he’ll likely call more. I also get max leverage with an all-in bet if I’m bluffing, so if I’m going to bluff that amount I should value bet the same with what is the top of my range (minus J-J which I’m not sure I’d four-bet with preflop anyway). I jam and he deliberates for a little bit before calling with red kings.

In fact, I was the one with the kings in this hand but I thought the hand was more interesting from my opponent’s side. I think it’s a tough spot for me but one that I will have to call pretty much all of the time. I’m severely under-repped at this point and he has to feel like he can bluff me off of lots of hands on the river with this bet. He played his hand very well, kudos to him.

One of the reasons that I wanted to share this hand was to illustrate something about tournaments that I think escapes people pretty regularly. This is the second consecutive major tournament in which I had a huge hand that was second best. I’m not sure anyone in either situation would have gotten away from the hand and if I was in my opponent’s shoes and they were in mine, it would almost certainly have played out in a similar way. The poker philosopher and all-around interesting guy, Tommy Angelo (whose writing I’ve been reading for 15 years now) calls this reciprocality. It’s a very interesting subject. If you switched hands with your opponent, would the outcome be different?

There are lots of spots in tournaments, and poker in general, where reciprocality isn’t even. The way I would have played my hand is different from the way my opponent would have played it and vice versa. This is one, albeit cerebral and perhaps not scientifically rigorous, way to measure the value of your plays.

Because I think that in the opposite situations the hands would have played out the same way (getting all in in some fashion) I feel okay about the last two very big pots I played in major tournaments. Breaking even on reciprocality, even in very big equity spots like I had in the main event at least takes the sting out of it a little bit.

I do wish, however, that this was a great comeback story. That I ran my remaining chips all the way up to the sky. Alas, I did not and didn’t last much longer in the tournament. At least there were some good cash games to mess around in. ♠

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