Straight Talk

I was playing in the second 1k rebuy event, sitting with approximately $6,000 in chips, and my opponent had about $5,000 in chips. The rebuy period was over, so the madness had died down a bit. I looked down and saw pocket fours in the small blind. The UTG player raised to $300, and my opponent in late position said, “I raise,” and threw in $325. He hadn’t realized that there was an initial raiser, and was therefore forced to re-raise to $600. So I felt that I had a bit of extra information, since I didn’t think he wanted to re-raise. Normally, I wouldn’t call with fours in this spot, but I thought that the re-raise was not genuine and, therefore, that the player wasn’t very strong. The flop came down K-9-7, rainbow, and I checked.

The UTG raiser checked, and my opponent in late position bet $1,000. There was over $1,800 in the pot and I felt that his bet in this spot was a weak bet. I didn’t put him on A-K and felt at this point that I could outplay him and steal the pot with my fours. I smooth-called him. The UTG raiser, whom I was most worried about, folded, and now I was heads-up.

The turn card was a rag that brought a flush draw to the board. I wanted to represent that I had smooth-called his initial bet with an A-K, or maybe a set of nines, and I was concerned with the flush draw, so, rather than wait and see what he was going to do, I bet out – $1,800 or so into the pot.

My opponent thought for quite a while. He had somewhere around $3,400 and decided to just call my $1,800. When he called, I knew that the guy was just looking for an opportunity to fold. He wanted to make a big laydown here, but I was also thinking that I knew that I was beat. Maybe he did have A-K, or maybe K-Q. I was absolutely convinced, however, that he didn’t want to risk his tournament on the hand. The flush card hit the river, and I went into deep thought and then asked him how much he had left. When he answered, I made sure to put enough into the pot to force him all in. He eventually folded, showing me A-K. I flipped over my pocket fours and you should have seen the look on the poor guy’s face. He, like many men that I show bluffs to, was out of the tournament soon after. He showed so much weakness throughout the hand and I have to make sure I punish someone when they do that. Remember, when you see a player looking to lay a hand down, you have to give him every chance to make that laydown.

Like listening to your favorite song 100 times in three days, or eating pizza every day for a month, even the things you love can start to seem boring or repetitive. I love poker; I wake up everyday and look forward to playing, but I have been at it for so long, that I find that I come close to burnout every once in a while. Take the WSOP this year, for example. It has been a long, grueling month-and-a-half, and I feel completely wiped out, having played in a tournament almost every day. So I’ve been playing more cash games, and games that I do not play as often, to give my mind a different focus. Another thing I like to do, is to use burnout time to go and do some non-poker-related activities that help me to get my inner balance back – playing basketball, working out, enjoying beach time, attending a concert or sporting event or hanging out with friends and family. Not everyone will have the same list, but everyone should be ready for dealing with burnout.

When you are burned out, your play will suffer significantly, and it’s wise to train yourself to recognize when this is happening. You may become more predictable to your opponents or start to make poor reads; also, you will find that you’re more likely to go on tilt.

Last year I put a lot of pressure on myself – like I always do. But this year I’m taking things a little easier. I’ll do the best I can, but I can’t really worry about doing everything right. It’s a really long, grueling month. If I get knocked out early, so be it; I’m not gonna sweat it. It seems that putting less pressure on myself just helps me flow a little better, relax, and play the cards. This year so far, I’ve also been getting a little luckier than last year.

Also, without question, golf has helped my poker game immensely. I caught a lot of flack on the forums with people saying, “Why isn’t he preparing for the WSOP? Why is he playing so much golf?” What people don’t realize is that I was preparing for the WSOP by not playing a lot of poker. I was on the course every day, trying to be healthy and active, totally taking my mind off of poker, because for six weeks now, all we’ve done is play poker. The last thing I want to do before the World Series is burn myself out. I came in fresh, and ready, and I think that has made a difference.

I spent some time away from poker before the World Series, because every time I do that, I seem to do very well. I was doing a lot of thinking about my poker game, and in Houston I considered game theory, and how it applies to poker tournaments. I took those ideas into the 6-handed event. Game theory is much easier to implement in a 6-handed tournament than at a 10-handed table.

The idea of game theory in poker tournaments is trying to try to maximize expectation for everyone at your table. That is how I played this event. It was pretty interesting to see how well it worked, and how many people who were at the same table made the final table with me. It is not any sort of collusion; we don’t signal, or talk about making the final table together; but basically the strategy is to look for the three people who are the weakest links; making sure the two or three strongest links stay away from each other; and one by one, bust the other people, to get more and more of the chips at the table.

I just picked out the people I wouldn’t take coin flips with, players I wouldn’t get involved with without premium hands, and the ones whose blinds I wouldn’t pick on; and the same strategies were used by them. That’s what game theory is all about. The proper strategy in game theory is to mimic what the other player did in a similar situation the last time, or last hand you played with him. So if you are in the big blind and someone steals your big blind, the next time around, you steal his big blind. If he leaves your big blind alone, you leave his alone. If he calls you with Q-10o when you raise preflop, then when he raises preflop, you have to be more willing to gamble and play a hand like Q-10o with him.

That is basically what it all came down to in the tournament.