Busy November

A few months ago, I thought I was going to be at home for all of November and December, allowing me to spend time with my family and work on various projects for my students. That all changed when I was invited to play on Poker Night in America at Choctaw Casino in Durant, Oklahoma.

I had the pleasure of playing $25-$50 with a fun cast of characters including Jennifer Tilly, Alec Torelli, and Kelly Winterhalter. After the first day of play, I was feeling great, mainly because I won $11,000 despite a complete lack of premium post-flop hands. I did, however, make lots of marginal hands, which happened to win more often than not.

The second day of play was completely different. It seemed like every time I saw the flop I either had the nuts or an ideal bluffing hand. I was up about $25,000 going into the last hour of play when the action got bumped up to $25-$50-$100-$200. Everyone was looking to gamble! I looked down at A-K and after a three-bet and four-bet, found myself all-in preflop against K-K for $17,000 (only 85 big blinds). That time, I didn’t make the nuts or a marginal made hand and lost a decent chunk of my profits. On the last hand of the night, I flopped a straight draw and turned top pair against Jennifer’s flopped straight. Fortunately, she slow played it and I elected to check behind on the turn, resulting in me only losing a small amount. Despite these two setbacks, I managed to walk away a $15,000 winner on the trip.

While hanging out with the crew, I was learned that they were heading to Punta Cana a few days later to film the PartyPoker Caribbean Poker Party final tables. To my surprise, I was told that PartyPoker added a $10,000, $25,000, and $5,000 buy-in event to the schedule. That was enough to convince me to make the trip. So much for being home in November!

I hopped in the $10,000 high roller event as soon as I arrived and lost about 75 percent of my starting stack in the first level when I kept making top pair, top kicker and running into the effective nuts. I grinded the short stack to the best of my ability and eventually found myself with one of the biggest stacks on the bubble and eventually the final table.

The final table was completely stacked. I may have been the worst player at the table. One play I have been tinkering with that worked amazingly well in this event is to three-bet with a wide range of hands that have a blocker and play poorly from the big blind when facing raisers who should have loose ranges. For example, if the cutoff raised, I would often three-bet K-3 offsuit or J-5 offsuit from the big blind to about 3.5 times the initial raise. This play really works well if your opponents think you primarily three-bet from the blinds with strong hands for value because they assign you a completely incorrect range.

I eventually found myself heads up with Preben “prebzzz” Stokkan from Norway. We battled for a while, but he correctly hero-called me with bottom pair on a four-flush board and then opted to run a substantial bluff in a spot where I happened to have one of the worst hands in my range. The blinds eventually went up and I found myself with 27 big blinds to his 55 big blinds. He open pushed all-in from the small blind (for the third time in about 20 hands) for 27 big blinds and I opted to call with 3-3.

While this call may seem loose, if he is primarily pushing with small pairs and A-x, my 3-3 has about 52 percent equity. When you will win 52 percent of the time and only need to win 48 percent of the time (due to the pot odds), you simply have to call against a world-class opponent. This time he had A-5 (the final table replay showed he had A-4 the other two times he made large pushes). I lost the flip to take second for $175,000.

From there, I skipped the $25,000 event (again, because I would have likely been one of the worse players in a completely stacked field) and busted the $5,000 main event and side events a few times. Despite those losses, November ended up being my best month of the year.

I fully plan to be home all of December with my next trip being to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas in January. If you see me there, be sure to say Hi! ♠

Jonathan Little is a two-time WPT champion with more than $6 million in tournament winnings. Each week, he posts an educational blog and podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com, where you can get a FREE poker training video that details five things you must master if you want to win at tournament poker. You can also sign up for his FREE Excelling at No Limit Hold’em webinars at HoldemBook.com/signup.