Staying Out of Trouble in the WPT Championship
A few hours into day 1 of the World Poker Tour Championship, I found myself with only 29,000 out of my 50,000 starting stack. I resolved to remain calm and play my best. It is quite common to see players lose their minds when they lose half their stack. I still had 75 big blinds!
Eventually, I looked down and found Ts-Tc on the button and raised to 1,000 out of my 29,000 stack at 200/400-50. …
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Day 1 of the 2017 WSOP Main Event went about as well as possible for me. I correctly assessed most of my opponents’ tendencies and played a strategy designed to take advantage of their mistakes. I called down the overly aggressive players with a wide range and made big folds against the straightforward players when they decided to put a lot of money in the pot. I ended day 1 with four starting stacks, 211,300, which was good for fourth place in my portion of the field going into day 2a. …
The World Series of Poker Main Event is upon us, so today I wanted to share a key hand I played in the 2014 WSOP Main Event that propelled me into cashing for $22,678.
A while back I had the opportunity to play in the €5300 European Poker Tour Malta main event. Things were going reasonably well. I had built my 30,000 starting stack up to 80,000 when the following hand took place. My opponent in this hand is a world-class player who regularly takes creative betting lines. While he generally plays a tight, aggressive strategy, he is certainly capable of getting well out of line if he thinks the time is right. …
The following hand is from a $1,500 buy-in World Series of Poker event. Up until this point, I was extremely card dead. I actually only played three pots that went to the flop in the first three hours of play. When you happen to get relatively few playable hands, it is usually a good idea to attempt an intelligent, well-timed bluff, especially if your opponents realize that you have been tight and will give you more “respect” than usual. …
I recently played an interesting hand in a $1,500 buy-in live tournament. Everyone started with 15,000 chips at 50/100 with hour-long levels, meaning there was lots of time to hang out and wait for strong hands. I realized that everyone at my table was implementing that strategy so I quickly adjusted and decided to attempt to steal every pot once it was clear no one was interested in winning. This allowed me to double my starting stack within three hours with almost no risk, which is always an amazing result. You will find that when you are constantly pushing your opponents around, your observant opponents will eventually assume that you are overly wild and may adjust. …
I recently witnessed this hand in a $1,000 buy-in even that clearly illustrates a flaw in many amateur players’ poker strategies. With blinds of 200/400 with a 50 ante with 23,000 effective stacks, everyone folded around to the button, a reasonably tight player, who raised to 900. The player in the small blind, we will refer to him as Hero, called with 3c-3s, and the big blind, an unknown player, called as well. …
I recently traveled to Hollywood, Florida for the 2017 World Poker Tour Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open. The venue is amazing and I had a lot of fun. I started my trip off losing almost every pot in a $2,000 turbo. When that happens, do not become discouraged and instead realize that quite often, you will not get anything going in a poker tournament. After that, I built a large stack (eight starting stacks) early in the $3,500 WPT event but lost about 20 hands in a row to fall short of the money. Again, 