This hand I was told about from a $500 buy-in tournament clearly illustrates an important concept you must master if you want to succeed at poker.

With blinds at 800/1600-200 with a 45,000 effective stack, the button, an unknown player who seems to be a bit too aggressive and splashy, called. Our Hero raised to 4,000 with Ah-6s from the small blind. The big blind folded and the button called.

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Checking for ValueRead More »

The fact that the players who made the WSOP final table used to have four months to prepare created an interesting dynamic that diligent players could exploit. If you happened to make the final table with a short stack, you had four months to study exactly which hands you should be willing to go all-in with when the action folds to you. This high-risk all-in or fold situation just so happened to occur on the second hand of the 2015 WSOP final table.

Without going into too much detail, there were two short stacks at the table, Chan and Butteroni, both with 15 big blinds. The next shortest stack had 30 big blinds. This typically implies that Chan and Butteroni should try to outlast each other. However, the WSOP Main Event has a bizarre payout structure: …

Interesting Hand from the WSOP Main Event Final TableRead More »