Still A Long Way To Go - Q & A with Jeremiah Smith

Former Card Player tournament reporter Jeremiah Smith just finished day 2A of the main event third in the chip counts, putting him in an all too familiar position. In his past World Series of Poker encounters, Smith took the rough end of two bad beats that left him wondering what could have been.

In the 2006 short-handed no-limit hold'em event, Smith went from one of the chip leaders to busted after his pocket aces were cracked by Harry Demetriou's A-K, sending him to the rail in a disappointing 19th place. Later that year in the main event, Smith was cruising on day 1 before getting most of his stack all in with top set against an opponent's middle set. The river gave his opponent the one-outer he needed to effectively end Smith's tournament.

CardPlayer caught up with Smith at the end of the day to talk about using a big stack against a big field.

Ryan Cadrette: You're in third place for your day going into day three. This isn't the first time you've held a strong chip lead going into the later days of the main event. But now you're getting extra attention: you're doing interviews with ESPN and magazines. Is that strange at all?

Jeremiah Smith: It would probably be weird if I hadn't been in your spot working on the media end of things. It's really cool, though, because I know all the media. I know the people who are doing the interviews, and so its really more just like I'm talking to a friend. The thing is, yeah, I have a lot of chips, but they don't pay you for making day three. You don't make any money for having a lot of chips. You don't make any money for winning a pot. The money probably isn't going to come in until after dinner on day three. So I've still got a long road ahead. I've been really fortunate today in two spots. In one, this guy definitely folded a better hand because I was putting the pressure on him. I actually made a bad read, but it worked out because I was playing aggressively. In another hand, the guy told me he had jacks, and the board was Q-10-9-9, but I don't think he did, based on the way he played the hand. And so I moved all in on the turn with pocket sevens, and he folded pretty quickly. It was a big pot, he had a lot of chips, and when the board paired on the turn, there was no way he had the hand he was representing.

RC: Now that you've had a chip lead for a little while, and given a field where you have a lot of players willing to play really large pots, how do you balance playing an aggressive, big-stack style of play with controlling the size of the pot?

JS: Earlier today, I literally ran my table. They were so tired of me by the end, by the time we broke, and those were all small, small pots. I busted a player early on when I flopped a set against his overpair, and that was like a 40,000 pot, and that gave me a cushion. Everyone at that table had like 30 or 40 thousand, so I was able to control the pot sizes, unless I have a big hand, in which case that pot is getting bloated really quickly.

But then when I moved tables, it was like a complete switch had been turned. Every pot was huge, and all this crazy stuff was happening. Finally, after I made the big move with the sevens, which I still think was a value bet, I was like ok, its time to settle down now. There was just so much weird stuff happening at the table – terrible bets, terrible bluffs. Then this hand came up where I had 5-7 of clubs. I'm in the cutoff, and I raise. The button calls, the small blind calls, and the big blind re-raises. He re raises about the size of the pot. But this is a guy who has been on super monkey tilt for the past two hours, especially against me. So I was thinking, if I get the right kind of flop here, I can take his stack. And I was trying to think what the perfect flop for 5-7 of clubs would be, if it was something like a pair and a flush draw or what. And then the flop comes 9-8-6, so I flopped the straight. He bets 20,000, and I just move all in. He called immediately with kings, which in my opinion is something that maybe you call after some thinking, if you think I'm on a move, or have jacks or tens or something. Howard Lederer says that there is always someone at the table who is looking to go broke. And so today I felt like I was doing a really good job of keying in on those players.

After that hand, things were pretty quiet. There was one guy that it took me a few hands to realize he was a really good player. So I just stayed out of his way.

RC: You were sitting with Barry Greenstein for a while. Were you mostly trying to avoid him too?

JS: No, he only really had like 15,000 chips. So Barry had pretty clear cut decisions. I know he's not moving all-in too light. Barry has been the only real celebrity player that I've sat with so far, and I guess that's fortunate too, because I'm sure a lot of the top people would see through my soul and crush me like the insect that I am.

RC: Do you feel like you gained any sort of advantage from working on the media end of the World Series?

JS: Oh you have no idea. I had a knack for accumulating chips, that I've picked up from watching people along the way, but I kept running into a brick wall when I needed to slow down, or needed to stop doing things and start paying attention to my stack size in relation to other people's stack sizes. And that was a key thing that I learned. I also learned that sometimes even when you're getting the correct pot odds to call in a certain spot, if you're in a bad situation, those chips are worth more if you lose them than they are if you win them.

A few of those things, along with spending time listening to Allen Cunningham talk, and having countless dinners with Greg "FBT" Mueller, those two guys in particular, even though they're totally different players, and trying to soak up what they have to say, that's been really fortunate for me. Getting really good table draws has helped, too. But there's still a long way to go.