Winning Hands: Excerpt 7

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In 2019, I published FossilMan’s Winning Tournament Strategies, a 42-chapter book covering all of the basic concepts behind being a winning tournament player, as well as many of the more advanced strategies. This book could be compared to the lecture portion of my seminars. I have been working on a second book, however, and thought it should more resemble the live hand labs.

For this book, I will go through several dozen hands I have played and break down each decision along the way. Although not yet finished, I thought it would be fun to provide excerpts of some of those hands here for Card Player readers.

Of all the hands I played in the 2004 WSOP main event, this one was the most satisfying. There were plenty of hands I played better, and certainly hands that gained me more equity/money, but because of our history over a couple of days in this tournament, it just felt so damn good to win this pot.

It is day 4, blinds are 2,000-4,000 with a 500 ante. We are almost down to 100 players, and I am not the big stack at the table anymore, having dropped down to 278,000, just slightly above average.

Mike Matusow is the table chip leader with about 380,000, and open-raises from the hijack position to 12,000 with 9 7. I am in the big blind, and reraise to 36,000 with A J. Mike calls, and the flop is 10 9 3. I go all-in for 241,000. Mike tanks a long time and gives an entertaining speech before calling. The turn is the 2, and I double up to more than 560,000 while Mike drops down to just over 100,000.

Fans will bring this hand up often when they meet me and ask me how good it felt to bust Matusow. As a matter of fact, I did not bust him. Not then, nor an hour later when he lost to a bad beat. However, of my four all-in hands that week, this was the hand where I was most at risk, and the one I most wanted to win.

Mike’s raise was pretty standard. He had the big stack, position, and a very playable hand. By the standards of 2004 this was a very loose-aggressive hand to raise with, but we have since learned that this is exactly the type of hand you should add to your range, whenever it is correct to play non-premium hands. He raised to 3x the big blind, the common standard in 2004. I was one of very few players at this time who regularly raised a little smaller than 3×.

Against his range, it would be ridiculously tight to fold. The only question, is it better to call, or reraise? Calling somewhat disguises the strength of my hand. I might get more action when I flop top pair if I just call preflop. It also keeps the pot smaller, creating more room to maneuver post-flop, and possibly outplay my opponent.

If I reraise, many players will fold some or all of their weaker hands. This lets me narrow their range when they continue, and possibly make better decisions post-flop. Overall, I think the two options are close in value, and which is better depends upon what you expect from the opponent, how well they play post-flop, and how easy they are to read and manipulate.

I decided to reraise, and Mike called, which was probably the best of his options. Even if he thinks I will fold often enough to make a shove profitable, he will be risking over 70% of his stack to do so. That is a lot of risk for a modest profit. However, calling will let him risk only 10% of his stack to see a flop. You can see, however, why so many players just end up folding.

As it played out, Mike made the correct play post-flop by calling my shove. Even though he was less than 50% to win, he was getting too good of a price against my hand, and my range. Yet, he was then back in the same spot as shoving preflop. He is risking a huge fraction of his stack for a modest profit.

Many players are uncomfortable taking large risks like this. They want more certainty. There is almost never certainty in poker. Even when there is certainty, it is so rare that by the time you find it, you have bled off more chips than you win. You need to become comfortable taking on risk, as long as it is a profitable risk.

Having said all that, I misplayed my hand by shoving. The flop was excellent for me. I had the nut flush draw, two overcards, and a backdoor straight draw. There was 78,000 in the pot, and I had about three times that in my stack, another 241,000. Normally, as the last aggressor, I would always continuation bet any flop. My normal c-bet size is just slightly larger than my raise, about 38,000-45,000. But that sizing would have set up a great situation for Matusow to just shove in, and either make me fold, or call off my stack on a draw. And with a draw this strong, I would have called.

What if I had checked instead, with the intention to check-raise all-in? That is an excellent option, with one big problem. What if he doesn’t bet? If I catch a good card on the turn, all is fine. But what should I do when the turn misses me? I can now try to make a delayed c-bet, but will I call if he goes all-in? Two chances to hit is better than one.

Should I check the turn? If I’m ahead, I am giving him a free card, for the second time, to maybe get lucky and beat me. And would it be correct to check-raise all-in, with only one card to come? As you can see, things could get very tricky.

In the moment, I picked the nuclear option. Instead of facing any of these doubts, or any of these tough decisions, I just shoved all-in for three times the size of the pot, and forced him to make the tough decision.

And there is a lot of merit to that. For one thing, most players won’t call with less than top pair, especially most players in 2004. A shove here will get many better hands to fold. Small to medium pocket pairs that missed the flop will often fold. Overcards such as A-Q and even A-K will often fold. I never get paid off by a worse hand, but that’s very minor, since almost all such hands are drawing quite live to beat me, and I’m getting them to fold their equity.

But in most situations, against most opponents, I will make more profit, on average, with something less extreme. One option is to make a smaller than usual c-bet. If I c-bet 25,000 instead of 40,000, it looks suspicious. Many players will be concerned about raising without a very strong hand, as this looks like a bet meant to induce just that. Yet, if they have nothing on this flop, they probably will still just fold.

If they do call, hopefully you can judge from their reaction and demeanor how to best play the turn. In any case, a play like this can lead to you facing a tough decision. And sometimes it is better to pick a line that avoids all such hard decisions. In the long run, however, you will get better results by not always avoiding tough decisions, but rather by learning to get them right more often.

Have fun, and play smart! ♠

Greg Raymer is the 2004 World Series of Poker main event champion, winner of numerous major titles, and has more than $7 million in earnings. He is the author of FossilMan’s Winning Tournament Strategies, available from D&B Publishing, Amazon, and other retailers. He is sponsored by Blue Shark Optics, YouStake, and ShareMyPair. To contact Greg please tweet @FossilMan or visit his website.