Basics Sometimes More Important Than Advanced Moves

Recently I won a couple of tournaments at the Australasian Poker Championships at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia. When I won the second event, $1,600 seven-card stud, I was particularly happy because I figured people might think, "Anyone can win one tournament, but if he won two, he must know a little something."

Returning to the United States, I have now heard that the hottest expression in poker is, "Any fool can win two tournaments, but if someone wins three, he must know a little something."

I expect further refinements in the old line until/unless I get to at least five wins for the year, at which point it would change to, "Anyone can win poker tournaments, let's see how he does in money games." For now, though, let's look at a few key seven-card stud strategy elements that – along with a key card – came to my rescue once I got heads up with New Zealander John Wylie.

There was $180,500 in chips in play in this event, a figure that was on my mind when I counted my stack and saw that I had $15,000. With $500 antes, a low-card bring-in of $1,000, and a completion to $4,000, playing $4,000-$8,000, I had a little time to find a hand worth going with: I could afford to wait almost 10 hands if I caught total trash and got lucky avoiding low-card bring-ins. Three hands later, I managed to double through while that still meant something, and eventually worked my way back to something just below Wylie's total when the key hand came down.

By this point, we were playing $6,000-$12,000, so every decision was huge.

I started with (Q-J) J, a fine heads-up start, although naturally vulnerable to any random ace, king, or queen pairing. Wylie held (?-?) 10, brought the hand in for $2,000, and called when I completed the bet to $6,000. I caught 2-5 and Wylie 6-7 on fourth and fifth streets, and he again flat-called my bets in what was now a substantial pot.

On sixth street, the action got kind of interesting when the boards now read a rainbow-like:

Glazer: (?-?) J-2-5-J

Wylie: (?-?) 10-6-7-3

(By the way, if you followed this tournament online, amidst an otherwise great job, they got the cards all mixed up on this one. For some reason, like the whole tournament being at stake, I remember them pretty well.)

I led out for $12,000, and was a bit surprised when Wylie made it $24,000. One of the more fundamental seven-card stud principles is that you need to be careful when your opponent pairs his doorcard. Naturally, the values change a bit once you get heads up, and Wylie could easily have thought I had been pushing one big pair or even just high cards.

While there were all kinds of hands with which Wylie could have rationally raised that couldn't beat three jacks, there was only one that could, and I wasn't going to slow down. I hesitated briefly while making sure I wasn't missing something, but there was no danger of anyone calling a clock on me as I made it three bets – $36,000.

Wylie didn't hesitate at all. He made it four bets, and I visibly slumped in my chair (nice poker face, Andrew). "Oh, no," I thought. "He has a straight." Even heads up, I just couldn't imagine him putting the fourth bet in unless he had something that could beat three jacks.

Still, my call was trivially simple. The pot was immense, there were 10 cards left that could improve my hand to a full house or better (one jack, three queens, three deuces, and three fives), and there was a chance that Wylie was hoping an aggressive play could get me to throw away three jacks or a trailing hand that had four outs (like aces up).

I caught a blank on the river and checked, and Wylie bet again.

Here, it was possible that my sixth-street "no-acting-involved" shoulder slump might have helped encourage the bet, and I actually stopped to count out my last few chips before calling. I'd come back from 11-1 down before. Could I come back again? It seemed unlikely, especially at the now-higher limits. Could I lay down three jacks without seeing three queens?

Given the pot size and the horrible chip position in which I'd have been left had I folded, I think I would have had trouble throwing trip jacks away if staring at something like 10 J Q K; remember, though, this was heads up, and a bold, creative player could make it four bets with that board with two red sevens in the hole. In a multiway-action ring game, I can release three jacks when staring into an open-end straight-flush draw, but this wasn't multiway, it wasn't a ring game, and it wasn't an open-end straight-flush draw.

The sixth-street call was painful but easy. The river call was painful but necessary. There had to be a chance that Wylie was either overplaying his own hand or thinking I'd done the same.

Almost as basic as the "beware the paired doorcard" rule is the old "if you play through fifth street, you play to the river unless your opponent catches so strong on sixth that you can see (as opposed to suspect) you're drawing close to dead (or are dead)" rule.

Paradoxically, it was the fact that I momentarily considered throwing my hand away that convinced me I absolutely had to call! If I could consider doing it, believing as strongly as I do about not throwing away moderately strong hands on the river, Wylie had to be capable of thinking I could throw it away.

I delicately placed the $12,000 into the pot, and Wylie turned over the pocket sixes he'd started with and which had turned into trips on fourth street. I was so stunned at the win that I leapt from my chair and pumped my fist into the air with an emphatic "Yes!" even though the tournament wasn't over.

I give Wylie a lot of credit here, not just because it was a long and "give no quarter, ask no quarter" heads-up duel (he made lots of great plays, and it isn't really fair that I'm detailing only one he might have overplayed), but because he reacted much better to that leaping display of enthusiasm than I might have. I think I'll be more forgiving the next time someone gets excited when he makes a hand against me.

I started (J-10) 9-8 on the next hand, the last of Wylie's $17,000 went in, and I immediately caught a 7 to end things (pokernetwork.com called this "outdrawing" Wylie's (A-9) Q-4 start; it's interesting to be on the other side of a tournament reporter's analysis).

Did I play well? I think so, but I wasn't perfect. I know I played tenaciously, the fist pump was proof of that, and I know I was focused, because I didn't even realize TV cameras had been shooting the thing until I watched the video later.

I didn't make too many mistakes (although I remember one beauty early at the final table, and I thought I might have handed Peter Costa yet another win; that's the nice thing about having the chip lead, you can make one mistake or take one beat and still be there unless you let it put you on tilt), and I caught cards when I needed to. I dare the honest tournament winner to try to claim he won without making at least one hand when he really needed to.

In the final analysis, it wasn't brilliant play by either of us that decided things. Wylie didn't show quite enough respect for a paired doorcard – by slowing down, he could have moved on to the next hand with about $41,000, and maybe as much as $53,000 – and I took the pot because I wasn't going to let it go without more proof that I was beat.

As much as many of us like to think of ourselves as poker geniuses when we go on a money-game winning streak or take a tournament or two, our wins more often come home through opponents' mistakes or well-timed cards. It's easier to be wrong by a wide margin than it is to be right by a wide margin.

I've certainly watched great players extract extra bets with subtle genius, and steal more pots than their cards entitle them to with third- and fourth-level thinking, but mostly, they put themselves in position to win by not making mistakes and by maintaining awareness of little things that make them seem luckier than they really are. I'm not claiming poker is mostly luck, but that as much of the skill lies in not doing things wrong as it does in doing things right.

As for me, greatness is a goal, but I'd rather achieve it first as a human being, a friend, a writer, a teacher, a speaker, and/or an analyst. If I can get there in any of those categories, I'll consider 2004 a great year, and as for the poker playing part of it, my plan is to just continue improving, and let the cards fall where they may.

As for you, you're the only one who can decide what you want your priorities to be, but on the poker side, if you don't assume you already know everything and keep trying to improve, you may be surprised how far you can go. Come to think of it, when you put it that way, it doesn't sound like a half-bad philosophy for a lot more things than poker.

Andrew N.S. Glazer, "The Poker Pundit," is Card Player's tournament editor, and he writes a weekly gambling column for The Detroit Free Press. He is the author of Casino Gambling the Smart Way (Career Press, 1999), The Complete Idiot's Guide to Poker (Alpha Books, fall of 2004), and Tournament Poker With the Champions (Huntington Press, spring of 2005). He also is a consultant to www.PartyPoker.com, and welcomes your questions.