Saturday brought my first event of the series, the $1500 Event #18. I geared up in TPE swag and headed over to the Rio with the team. I was super excited to play because I feel like my game has grown so much in the past year since the last WSOP since I’ve been talking even more poker with the bigdog, wein and the team and learning about table dynamics and how to exploit them.
I feel that while I’ve had success in the past and a lot of it was due to being aggressive against weaker players and getting my chips in for big pots that carried me deep, I needed to understand how to adapt to going to 4 and 5 bet pots because so many players are good enough to 3 bet these days that it’s not as easy to range them for further action as it used to be.
From talking to these guys, and watching the videos we produce, I think I am becoming a much better hand reader in these spots. Even more important, I think I’m getting better at reading the game flow and exploiting players appropriately, as well as using reads to avoid mistakes.
I’m very comfortable playing against almost anyone now and when you put me at a table of recreational players I should do very well. That’s exactly what happened for most of day 1 of the $1500. We started with 4.5k chips and without any real gambles I was at 9k by first break. We were playing one hour levels, with a break every 2 levels. The blinds started at 25/25, then 25/50, 50/100, 75/150, 100/200, and then antes finally kicked in at 100/200 25. So even though 4.5k chips doesn’t sound like a lot it was actually a lot deeper stacked that you would think. You do need to double up at some point but you have some room before antes kick in.
I would sum up my style for pre-ante Live play as – Position, C-bet, Pot Control, Get Value on the River. I think these concepts are super important for the pre-ante period of live play. When you don’t have a ton of chips you do not want to get into big pots out of position that you may have to give up on later in the hand. It just devastates your stack. I’m sure you can feel that happening to you when you open QJo from MP and get flatted by the button, hit a KJ4 flop and either c-bet or call a bet then have to play the rest of the hand for probably 1 more barrel without knowing where you stand. These hands kill your stack. When we are playing early, I just avoid these spots.
If I am in position, I’ll play more. I’ll open more hands up from the HJ/CO/Button and almost always c-bet but I tend to pot control most hands on the turn and by then I have a pretty good idea of where I stand by the river and if I’m calling a river bet (usually because I have induced a bluff at that point) or getting value.
Here’s an example of how I played a hand with this strategy. I held QQ in the SB. Obviously QQ is a super strong hand and I’m going to be playing it for chips in most instances. However, this was about the end of the first level and the pot was opened in MP by a super tight oldish guy who had opened maybe 1 other hand so far all day and showed down strongly. He opened to 100 from 25/25 and got flatted by 2 others. In this spot, I think the correct thing to do is just flat as well. Even though QQ is very strong, OOP it’s going to be hard to play against this guy. You’re ahead of his range but not by much and when you put the positional disadvantage against 3 others in the mix it’s unprofitable to bloat the pot. So I flatted and the BB came along for the ride as well making us 5 handed to the flop.
The flop is Q84. Bingo. Of course, I am not always going to hit a set there. Many times I’ll whiff and the action will dictate that I have to give up the hand. I’m ok with that at 25/25 and 4.5k stacks. Here I checked because our OR’s hand range is strong enough that he almost always c-bets, which he did. I was able to call and go to the turn 3 handed. I don’t remember the turn and the river but they were both blanks and I was able to bet both the turn and the river for value and got paid well by the older guy who had JJ.
The rest of the first few levels was just playing position, c-betting, pot controlling and getting value on the river. The thing about the players in these events is that you can really get value from them. They never fold TP or overpairs. They often call 2nd pair. So if you open, hit a flop and c-bet. You can almost always get value from 2nd pair. If you hit the flop strongly with a set or overpair you can get A LOT of chips from the guys who have TP. You can also shut down or minimize your damages if you are behind. People just make it easy to read what they have when you pot control. Since the pots are smaller, bigger bets are more believable and it’s easier to get away with weaker holdings. I was able to build in everything I played in this way.
We got to the antes stage in the 1.5k and I had about 12k in chips which was good for one of the bigger stacks at my table. The most interesting hand that developed here was against an aggressive young player who was moved to my table a few orbits earlier at 100 200 25. He had a very big stack when he got there, probably around 18k and was punishing the table. He would almost always 3 bet and then if someone had like 4k in chips on the flop he would just take a huge stack of 500 chips and push them in and they would always fold. He was definitely playing fast and building chips.
His stack was about 24k when this hand came up.
RFB ~12k, Villian ~24k, blinds 100/200 with 25 ante
Preflop: QTo on button, Villian in BB
Like I said, he was 3 betting everyone, so when I opened QTo on the button to 475 I was not surprised that he made it 1275. There’s no way I’m folding here though. Given how wide his range is and that I can play this pot in position against him I think it’s a great spot so I just call.
(pot ~2.5k) Flop: 679 rags
He thinks for about 2 seconds and put in a stack of chips and says 2500. Basically a pot sized bet. This does not scare me for several reasons. His bet sizing is way to big against me if he has a hand. We have not been involved since he got there, he does not know me, sure I am wearing a TPE shirt but my play has not indicated that I will overvalue hands. He is purely trying to scare me from what I have seen of his play thus far. I think his 3 bet range is any two cards here, and I think his c-bet range is the same. I do not want to call here and give him a chance to bluff me off the turn or actually hit a card and value me, so I think the best move here is to just shove my remaining 11k in the middle and get him to fold most of the time since he usually has nothing or a mediocre hand. Sure sometimes he’ll have a good hand but I’m willing to take that risk in this spot because I think it’s way less than 20% of the time and there’s just so many chips to pick up. Plus I have two overcards and a gutshot outs if he has me beat.
What he does though, shocks me. He tanks for about 30 seconds and mumbles to himself “do you have a 10”. Then he says “whatever, you need chips to win. I call” and tables Q8 for a straight draw! For 9k in chips! My QT is actually ahead! I hold and now I have 24k. No one will mess with me at this table at this point. The best quote of the day is from this guy who has just been blinding down to 8bbs and says “this table is a goldmine”. Yeah thanks buddy, we’ll pay off your 5bb shove when you get AA – no problem.
I wish I could report that I rode this huge stack to a day 2 but it didn’t happen. So much has to go right to make day 2. Usually only 15-20% make day 2. My stack vacillated between 22k – 28k for the next level or so without getting any starting hands and only really getting chips on steals. Since my image was toast at this point I couldn’t really pull too much off here and had to play a little more straightforward.
We came back from dinner and I had about 22k at 150/300 25 and I lost a bunch against button who was being super aggro when arriving at the table with 10bb and shoving 3 times in a row then 3 betting his way to ~20bb. He shoved those 20bbs on the button into my SB and I looked down at 99. I isolated him by reshoving and got heads up against his T8o. Unfortunately he hit a T and took the chips and I was dinged down to about 16k and with the blinds going up one more time I was about 40bb deep when I moved to a new table.
I just couldn’t get any hands and it’s tough when you’re card dead at a new table with some big stacks on your right and left. I tried a few 3 bets here and there. Some worked, some didn’t but I really didn’t have enough information to make any multi-street bluffs and since I couldn’t hit anything I found myself never really getting above 25k as the blinds increased.
I don’t think there’s much I did wrong and usually do not blind down, and I don’t think I did willingly here. It’s actually the opposite usually (as you’ll see in write-ups for other events) where I pick what I think is a good spot and they have the high end of their range.
The only hand I regret is one I didn’t play. Two to my right was a very tight player, who was dressed in full Tampa Bay Devil Ray gear. I mean, if you told me their 3rd base coach walked off the field and came right to the WSOP I would believe you. In my experience, guys who are decked out in sports gear usually are not great at poker and easy to read. I know there are exceptions, McMatto for example, the guy who took the crushing beat at the WSOP ME final 2 tables last year, wears seattle sportswear all the time and is a beast. But generally this is true. This guy’s play led me to no other conclusion. He was super tight and super easy to read.
We were 25bb deep when he opened in the HJ and I looked down at KTs on the button. I folded because of his perceived range there and how that 25bb stack is kinda strangling as you don’t want to give up anything there and put yourself in reshove mode willingly, but I regretted it immediately. Against a good player I think a fold is ok, but against a very easy to read player I think that’s a great spot in position. I think I’m slightly behind his range but KTs has decent equity and being in position is the key here. Since he plays straightforward, I can easily fold a whiffed flop. And since he doesn’t c-bet with the right frequency, I can bluff anytime he checks to me because he rarely check/calls or check/bluffs. Sure sometimes I bet and he raises back with some monster but I can easily just fold there. The times I come out of that hand with more chips is just too much and that was the biggest mistake I made at the end of day 1.
Unfortunately I soon busted as blinds were up to 400/800 and I was down to 14k. I had opened a few and either gotten shoved on or couldn’t find a way to bluff post when I never connected. I looked down at 99 from UTG+2 and thought to myself, this is probably just a jam. The hesitancy came from the fact that there were two spots at the table that I could have open/folded too. The Devil Ray, and another older guy who had not played a hand in an hour. I hate opening here and having to fold either pre or post flop and just decimate my stack with no chance at realizing the equity of 99 but the presence of these two players made me think about it.
However, I don’t think they are enough of a reason to just open here. I have to get it in against everyone else and if I get flatted OOP it’s a disaster on almost all flops. So I jammed and unfortunately one of the two spots I could have folded to rejammed – and he obviously had AA and I was out.
I was a bit dismayed because I went from that huge stack at 100/200 to really just plodding along the rest of the day but sometimes the cards and the situations never present themselves. So I went back to the TPE house and hung out with the guys for a little while and then headed to bed to rest up for the 1k. That will be the subject of the next blog.