WSOP 2010 Report 5
I had been hoping to day two the $1500 NL event last week not because I knew that would mean cashing, but so I could avoid having to play in the $5000 six max event. Although I was quite confident I was a +EV player in the field I'd much rather avoid the thing and the nasty line up of players that inhabit it. Despite spending the four months leading up to the series playing and writing about poker heavily, I'm just not as confident in my game compared to the fields as I was say, two years ago. Granted I feel I made some quality progress during that time, hanging out with a household of such phenomenal players makes me acutely aware of what I know and what I don't know, and when talking poker with them the don't know becomes quickly apparent. I think after another year of hard work and high volume play and study my game will be back at a place where I feel ready to fuck shit up in the majority of fields.
I arrived at the table a few minutes late and found Shaun Buchanon waiting for me on my immediate left and Antonio Esfandiari on his immediate left. I had only met Antonio briefly before, but I was aware that we had highly similiar social interests and it wasn't but a couple minutes in that we were talking about going out to clubs and chasing girls. Antonio proposed a game of "Lodden Thinks" at $200 a question and after assigning the French kid in seat one to be our brain we were off and running. Questions varied from the simple "How many push ups could Barrack Obama do?" to the speculative "How many women has Mike Matusow slept with?" to the appealing yet unfortunately imaginary "How much would Tony pay to have Scarlet Johansson do anything he wanted all day every day for a straight week?" After talking to him for a while it's definitely no mystery why he does well with women; he's a confident, friendly, and real chill guy. We also played some poker together:
Effective stacks: ~15,000
Blinds 50/75. I hold Qs Qc UTG. 5 handed.
Preflop: I raise to 200, CO folds, Antonio calls on the button, SB calls, BB folds.
Flop: Th 5s 3h
SB checks, I bet 500, Antonio calls, SB calls.
Turn: 3c
SB checks, I bet 1300 (I think this should be a bit larger), Antonio calls, SB folds.
River: Ah
I check, Antonio bets 3100, I fold.
Between action a large rail gathered to overhear and semi participate in our often amusing and occasionally vulgar game of "Lodden Thinks". People were suggesting questions and offering various side bets, all while Antonio absolutely smashed me at the game. Even if he let me choose the question or it was on a topic I felt pretty informed about he always seemed to have a better grasp of what the third person was thinking and anticipating. "We're gonna get along just fine kid" he told me. "Yea, I take losing pretty well, I have a lot of practice at it" I returned. When we weren't chatting about the question at hand Shawn Buchanon was making my life absolute hell on my immediate left, mixing in a barrage of 3-bets and flats in position which were often followed by flop calls or raises and then multiple barrels of betting. The end result was usually my folding, but I finally found a hand to go into station mode with:
My stack: ~10,000, Shawn: ~30,000.
Blinds: 75/150, I hold Ah 9s on the CO.
Preflop: Folds to me on the CO, I raise to 400, Shawn calls on the button, both blinds fold.
Flop: 9d 5s 2h
I bet 600, Shawn calls.
Turn: 3d
Although this a spot where I'd often double barrel for value, because the dynamic with Shawn had almost been with my betting flop and checking turn I thought I got more value that way. I checked, Shawn bet 900, and I called.
River: 2d
I checked, Shawn bet 2200, I called, and Shawn tabled KdTd for a flush.
Fortunately, it wasn't long until I found an opportunity to get some chips back from him:
My stack: ~7,500, Shawn: ~33,000.
Blinds: 75/150, I hold Ks Kc on the button.
Preflop: Folds to me on the button, I riase to 400, Shawn reraises to 1150 in the SB, BB folds, I shove for about 7500, Shawn calls and tables 99.
Board: T 8 3 7 2
A few orbits later a player with 4900 chips on the button raised the 100/200 blinds to 500 and I shoved on him in the BB with 66. He thought it over and made the call with 77, but I slammed a 6 out on the flop to add even more chips to my stack. Only a couple orbits later I was involved with Antonio in a large pot that continued my rollercoaster ride straight up:
My stack: ~24,000, Antonio: ~33,000
Blinds: 100/200, I hold As8s on the HJ
Preflop: UTG calls for 200, I raise to 800, Shawn calls on the CO, Antonio calls on the button, SB calls, BB folds, UTG calls.
Flop: Ts 4s 2h
BB checks, UTG checks, I bet 2600, Shawn folds, Antonio calls, SB folds, UTG folds.
Turn: 9d
I bet 5600, Antonio thinks for a bit and calls.
River: 3s
I bet 8800, Antonio shoves, and I naturally call very fast. Antonio tables Ks9s for the second nuts and a massive cooler in my favor and taking the opportunity for him to play deep stacked poker against me in position.
Even though he was crippled we continued our games of "Lodden Thinks". The French guy in seat 1 had busted so we assigned the new guy in the seat to be our brain. We did some of the same questions and wound up asking him how many push ups Barrack Obama could do. After we got his answer, which was in the 40's, we started discussing the potential of our push up prop bet. I said I'd do it at the break and Antonio said he'd do it in two days since he did a chest work out the other day. I figured we'd have a simple bet and said I'd wager $200 on it, which lead to Andy Black in seat six instantly announcing in his quaint Irish accent "I'll bet ten thousand on Antonio." My mind went racing; Antonio is a lean guy and has likely done plenty of push up bets, but I'm the guy who spends his life in the fucking gym. People rarely have a sense of my size in my suits because they're cut so thin, yet hidden behind them is roughly 190 pounds on my 6'1" frame. Still, I feel like whenever someone extremely confidently throws out an offer for 50 times the original wager you need to stop and reflect about what they might know that you don't. As Damon Runyon said ""Son, one of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider." I declined Andy's bet, and he instantly offered again at $5,000. I said I was just looking for a friendly bet, and Antonio and I wound up booking it for $500 in two days time. A few hands after booking it Antonio walked over and pushed his hand into my chest in a examining fashion. "Ah shit" he blurted. Still, he said he could do about 70 in a row, and considering I don't train for endurance very often I wasn't sure what I was actually capable of.
Antonio wound up busting a little after the second break, having taken something like $1500 from me in Lodden thinks. We discussed the push up bet and decided it'd be inconvienent for both of us, so he bought out for $100 and we made plans to settle up in the next couple days. The table become quieter and I focused intensely on the action. I soon found myself engaged in a large pot with the guy who had been our second brain in our betting, a young and friendly guy in seat 1:
My stack: ~52,000, HJ: ~26,000.
Blinds 100/200 with a 25 ante, I hold AsTd on the button.
Preflop: UTG folds, HJ raises to 500, CO folds, I call, SB folds, BB calls.
Flop: Qd 9d Jh
BB checks, HJ bets 1300, I call, BB folds.
Turn: 5d
HJ thinks for a while and bets 2400, I raise to 7000. I think this is a decent spot to bluff raise because my hand isn't quite good enough that I like a call, particularly since my implied are weak on the straight. Additionally, his bet sizing indicates that he's either trying to incite action (likely with a flush, which makes my outs dead most of the time) or blocking with a speculative hand, plus I hadn't gotten out of line post flop much and thought I'd get a lot of credibility. Unfortunately, the HJ thought things over for a while then popped me back to 13,000. I thought things over briefly then released my hand.
For a long time nothing major happened. Our table was eventually broken and I found myself at a new one with less familiar faces. I slowly and steadily lost chips over a long duration without any major hands, even though the structure was deep and play was complex. Mostly I was just card dead. At the 400/800 level my stack had plummeted down to around 21,000, though I made a couple hands when I took flops out of the BB with suited connectors in multi way pots and after making a light 3 bet and taking the blinds a few times I was back to 40,000. I got moved yet again and a few orbits into my table I got involved in a large pot again:
My stack: ~40,000, BB: ~60,000
Blinds 500/1000 with a 100 ante. I hold KsJc in the SB.
Preflop: Folds to me in the SB, I raise to 3000, BB calls.
Flop: Qd 6h 4d
I bet 4000, BB calls.
Turn: Kc
I bet 9000, BB calls.
River: 3h
I shove for 26,100, the BB tanks for quite some time and hesitantly makes the call. I table my top pair and he mucks his hand.
Only a couple orbits later I then got involved of was likely the largest pot of the tournament up to that point against fellow online player and friendly guy 'Dankstacks'. Time was running out for the day, and the SB mentioned out loud that he really hoped he either doubled up or busted since he didn't want to come back to a short stack the next day:
My stack: ~92,000, Dank: ~80,000, SB: ~20,000.
Blinds 500/1000 with 100 ante. I hold AsAc on the button.
Preflop: Folds to me on the button, I raise to 2500, the SB shoves for 20k, the BB thinks over his options and calls, I ask him how much he's playing, glance at them both, then shove. Dank double checks his stack, then says "Yea, I gotta call" and tables AQo. The SB shows KTo and I was in position to win a massive pot.
Flop: 6c 9c Ah
They were near dead on the flop.
Turn: 9
River: 3
I collected a massive pot, and when things ended for the day I was going into day two with 180,500 chips and the title of second place right behind friend and fellow Savvy instructor Christian Harder.