Saturday, April 11, 2009 - C00LHandNuke
As we came back from lunch break for the Final Table on the Best Damn Poker Show 2, we were four handed. If either Patrick or I went broke next, Team Hellmuth would win. The blinds were 3000/6000 with a 1000 ante and the stacks were approximately this:
Jason (Seat 1) = 239k
Shawn (Seat 4) = 157k
Scotty (Seat 5) = 72k
Patrick (Seat 6) = 132k
But Scotty, facing a four-hand penalty, had walked off the show. With Scotty gone, I would have position on Jason for every hand except when he was the button. On the very first hand back, I looked down at two ten’s under the gun and made a standard raise. In the past four days, this was the biggest pocket pair that I had seen since having KK in the small blind on the fifth hand of my first match. These tens couldn’t have come at a better time! Jason went into the tank in the big blind and seemed to be considering a raise – if he did, all the chips were going in. Even though Jason eventually folded, this was perhaps the key hand, my stack jumped to 169K and Jason now had 232K, if he lost an all-in confrontation to me now, he would be shorter than Scotty. I pounded this fact home every chance I got.
The first time it was Jason’s button, he made a standard opening raise to about 20K. I looked down at K8 offsuit in the SB and moved all in! My move was partly based on my read and the knowledge that King high was actually way ahead of Jason’s range. But more than that, I had to send a very clear message that my chips were in play and that Jason wasn’t going to just steam roll me with his big stack. He folded and all was right with the world.
After that hand, the table settled into a nice little pattern . . . nice for me anyway. When Jason would raise and I had position, I would flat call him and take the pot away on the turn. When Jason would raise my small blind, I would come over the top with any above average hand and he would lay down. Meanwhile, Patrick was bleeding chips pretty badly. Three times in the first four orbits he opened the pot only to have Jason take it away with a reraise. As a result, I found myself folding my button whenever Jason folded under the gun just so Patrick could pick up the antes and Scotty’s small blind. Most of this play didn’t make it through the editing for the show, but if you watch the chip counts, you can definitely see the result.
The hands that did make it on air, have to be viewed in that light. One key hand where my play diverted from Annie’s suggested line from the coach’s booth came when Jason completed from the small blind and I saw the flop for free in the big blind with 97 offsuit. The flop came out 347. Jason bet and I just called. The turn was another 7 – gin! Jason checked and I considered checking but opted to put in a bet instead. My reasoning was this: I had floated Jason so many times at this point that I could tell he was getting frustrated. Eventually he was going to have to check-raise me, just to keep me honest. I was hoping that this would be the time. Sure enough, he check-raised me this time when I had the goods. But now I had another interesting decision – smooth call and try to bust him (assuming I was ahead), or reraise right here on the turn. Again, my decision was based more on psychology than anything. I decided to min-reraise him.
The min-reraise is, in my opinion, really the most annoying move in poker. Sometimes it is really strong. Sometimes it is a really weak made hand or draw that just wants to slow down the other player. But in any case, when facing a minimal raise, you have to ask yourself which of the three lines do you take: (1) do you want to look weak and fold (2) do you want to play weak and just bleed off chips with a call only to face a bet on a later street with no good information defining your opponent’s hand or (3) do you put in a fourth raise and say enough of this nonsense. The only problem with the third option is that so many times when I select it, my opponent snap calls my all-in with the nuts! So most of the time, I opt for the fold – and anytime a fold getting 5 to 1 or better on my money with more cards to come, I’m pretty annoyed! So I chose my line in this hand hoping Jason would feel the same way and either make a big mistake right now, or make one later.
What proved to be my last hand on the show came when I raised to 47k from the button with Ace ten offsuit when the blinds were 8/16k. Scotty was gone and Patrick had just doubled through Jason to take a small lead over me with about 230k. Jason had about 150k after posting the big blind. I started the hand with about 204k and made a standard raise when Patrick reraised all-in. Jason got out of the way and it was up to me. Annie and Phil disagreed about whether or not I should call here. Annie thought it was an easy call and Phil thought it was an easy lay down. Guess what? I think they are both right! In fact, on the show I announce that I’m doing both the right thing and the wrong thing by calling. You can see them debate the issue here:
http://www.pokergrades.com/flv/bdps/season2/UB2_ULTIMATE_HAND_SHOW_7.swf
From a team perspective, Annie was clearly correct. If I call, no matter what happens, Team Duke is playing heads up against Jason with a 3 to 1 chip lead (If I win, Patrick has about 2 big blinds). That means I, along with every other member of Team Duke, is about a 3 to 1 favorite to win an Aruba package valued at $8,500.
From a personal perspective, folding here probably gives me a slightly better chance of winning the tournament and collecting the 12k WSOP package in addition to the Aruba package. So Phil’s analysis which focuses on me trying to win is correct too. But I knew one piece of information that Phil didn’t that sealed the deal for me. During one of Annie’s coaching sessions with Patrick, she had told him not to call with weak aces from the blind. In Patrick’s hand that led to Annie playing the coach’s card, he held an Ace nine against Jason’s standard raise. Annie told him to reraise there if he sensed weakness. I knew this had had an impact on Patrick because he had mentioned it again when we were talking privately about thirty minutes before my last hand came up. When you include hands like A9, A8 and A7 in Patrick’s range for a reraise, I think calling with AT is the right play even from an individual perspective.
In any event, I lost the race against Patrick’s 88’s. But Patrick went on to win, so my 3 to 1 shot came through. At the “wrap” party (see how I worked the Hollywood lingo in there) I got to give some of my thoughts to the powers that be about improving the show. Hopefully, some of them will make it into the next season. For instance, I think the second WSOP package should go to the person that all four coaches feel played the best at the final table. I’m sure they can agree on that, right?!!! Okay, maybe, maybe not. On the whole, the show was a great experience for me. I’d like to again thank Annie, Phil, Shawn Rice and Poker H0, as well as everyone else at UB for including me in the event. Also, I’d like to thank all the contestants on the show, many of whom have become my friends since filming.
My plan is to keep blogging on occasion here at the UB site. I’ll cover my ups and downs in the poker world in both live and online tournaments. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed my ramblings enough to check in on me from time to time. In the meantime, if you see me at the tables, please say hi!
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Saturday, February 28, 2009 - C00LHandNuke
Whew! Two days of intense poker and I finally made it. I was going to play for Team Duke at the Championship Table of the Best Damn Poker Show 2. I couldn’t be happier. The line up looked like this:
Seat #1, Jason (Hellmuth) – Jason and I played at the same semifinal table and got down to three-handed together. He was tough and aggressive. But he had a lot of tells. Unfortunately, he overheard our Team Duke meeting where we were reviewing some of the tells that Annie and I had picked up on. Even with the tells, I figured him to be the toughest competition at the table.
Seat #2, Shaundle (Duke) – he had been playing solid and was a veteran of the show. I was glad to have him as my right-hand wing man. I would avoid confrontations with him.
Seat #3, Mike “Shipitmuppet” (Hellmuth) – This was my first table with Mike. But I knew he played tight in the early stages. My plan was to use position against him on the flop and turn and bluff more than usual.
Seat #4, Me (Duke)
Seat #5, Scotty (Hellmuth) – I really didn’t know much about Scotty but in the hours before play started we struck up a conversation. Actually, Scotty talked a lot and I just listened and egged him on. Turns out we had many things in common: lived in St. Louis, worked in construction for several years, warped senses of humor . . . I used the conversation to try and build a rapport with him. At the table I would try to keep him talking and let him give away clues, while at the same time be his “buddy.”
Seat #6, Patrick (Duke) – I’ve now played quite a bit with Patrick and still don’t have a good read on him. But from Annie and Shawn Rice’s comments he is playing solid, great poker. No reason to get involved with him out of position (but because he’s tight, I might “borrow” his blind from time to time . . . “stealing” blinds just sounds so nefarious).
I was pretty pleased with our line-up going into the final table. Annie let the six remaining players from her team have a vote in who would be on the table. After Shaundle and I were selected we had a very close vote for the third spot. It came down between Patrick and Jamie. Patrick had played solid, but Jamie had shown great instincts, even if she was a bit spewy at times. In the end we chose Patrick. But I could tell that Annie really felt like she needed that “dash of crazy, X factor” to really have a shot at winning the thing. She and I talked privately for a few minutes after the roster was set and I told her that I had a crazy gear, she just hadn’t seen it yet. So with that boast in mind, I felt like I really had to come through.
For the last two days, through nearly six hours of poker I had played pretty squeaky tight. I’ve only had four hands shown down. My tight image is a result of not only my strategy, but my cards. Because Phil and Poker H0 have seen my hole cards the entire time, I felt pretty confident that they will tell my competition that I’m tight – so this fits perfectly into my plan to play like a wild man!
For the first three hours of the show (the part that aired last Monday night) I never held a hand. I had one pocket pair, 6’s in the blind, and had to lay it down preflop when Jason raised and Shaundle reraised. I never held any big aces, or for that matter any small aces! Nevertheless, I was playing more than my fair share of hands and maintaining my stack by capitalizing on my tight image. Most of these hands didn’t make the tape, and it’s too bad. You shoulda seen the swill I was raising with.
Shaundle misread Jason and they got it all in preflop with Shaundle’s Q5 in bad shape against Jason’s QQ. David lost to Goliath this time and Shaundle was eliminated. It looked pretty crazy on TV, and it looked really crazy from my seat. Needless to say I was really bummed that Jason doubled up and that Team Duke got zero points. The next elimination was a result of Mike getting it all in preflop with AJ against Patrick’s AQ. I was really surprised to see Mike get it in so weak against probably the tightest player at the table. But Patrick had been flailing around a lot and losing chips by the handful. So I guess Mike was basically shoving as a bluff hoping that Patrick would fold.
The hand that would literally shape the final table came up when I raised on the button with J7 offsuit (I told you I was raising with swill!). Scotty called from the big blind. The flop came J23 with two hearts. Scotty checked and I made the mandatory cbet. I say mandatory because with the flush draw out there I don’t want to give a free card and with top pair, weak kicker, I would really like to just end the hand right now. Scotty called. Thought flash – CRAP!!!! This can go wrong in so many ways. The turn brought another Jack. With just over 55k in the pot, Scotty bet into me on the turn for 21k. I had just a shade more than 71k in my stack. To me, Scotty’s smallish bet looked like a defensive bet where he might be trying to see a cheap river card. I tried to confirm my read by talking to Scotty a bit. Based on all the clues so far, I approximated his range of hands like this: Flush draw (50%), Pocket pair (30%), Bigger Jack or a Full House (20%). Taking this range into account, I decided to ship my last 52k into the 100k+ pot. Scotty would be getting about 3 to 1 on the call. I figured that if Scotty had me beat, he would get all of my chips on the river anyway. But if he had a flush draw with an over or two, he might make a bad call as a bigger than 4 to 1 dog. Also, if he had a reasonable pair like tens or a slow-played over pair, he might make a really bad call as a 20 to 1 dog. I didn’t want to just call Scotty’s bet on the turn because if the heart came on the river, I might get bluffed out of a huge pot and leave myself short-stacked.
When Scotty didn’t snap call, it told me he didn’t have a bigger Jack or a full house. I was relieved. Scotty wasn’t feeling the same way. In the banter style we had developed before the table began and while the play was going on, Scotty called me a “mother fucker” when I raised him all in. I didn’t take it personally, but I knew that he had just crossed a line that will result in a penalty. Even though I now knew I was ahead, I was still paying attention to the clues about Scotty’s hand that he was giving me. Why? Because, it would determine if I wanted to try and induce a call from a pair (If he had the flush draw, I didn’t have real strong feelings one way or another – both a call and a fold would be good for me). As Scotty talked the hand out it was obvious he had a pocket pair and thought I did too. I tried to manipulate a call, but after a while, Scotty folded.
Even though Scotty had folded, the mental games in this hand still weren’t over. Figuring there was a strong chance Scotty held a pocket pair higher than sevens, I decided to flash him the seven from my hand as I mucked. I knew if he had folded eights or better, he would be on instant tilt. But two things went wrong with my plan. First, Scotty only had 66. So showing him the seven probably made him think I had 77 (momentarily) and confirmed his good laydown. Second, Jason, at the other end of the table, asked to see the exposed card and the dealer incorrectly showed BOTH of my hole cards. Now I was the one on tilt! By exposing both hole cards, not only did Scotty now KNOW he had made a good laydown, but my “tight” image just went bye-bye. Talk about a plan backfiring!
But in the words of Ron Popeil, “Wait, there’s more!” When the hand was over, tournament director Matt Savage told Scotty that he would be assessed a one-round penalty for calling me a mother fucker. Scotty lost it. He thought the penalty of sitting out four hands was unfair and stormed out. Savage also announced that we were on lunch break. When we returned from lunch the blinds would be 3000/6000 with a 1000 ante. The stacks were approximately this:
Jason = 239k
Shawn = 157k
Patrick = 132k
Scotty = 72k (59k after the penalty)
When we broke for lunch, the players weren’t allowed to talk to our coaches. Obviously getting unlimited coaching during the match with the benefit of knowing hole cards would be too much. So Patrick, Jason and I ate lunch together. Scotty was nowhere to be seen. As we sat there eating, we heard a rumor that he had left the casino, checked out of the hotel and was last seen headed to the airport. At the time, I couldn’t imagine someone walking away from a $20,000 free roll, but on the off chance that the rumor was true, I started to work on a new strategy for Jason.
The team situation was basically this: Because Shaundle went out first, Team Hellmuth would win the match if either Patrick or I went out in fourth place. With every member of the winning team getting a $8,500 Aruba package, this was real money in our pocket. So in effect, every member of Team Duke was on the money bubble. But the members of Team Hellmuth weren’t. Jason knew this. We talked about it over lunch. And based on his big stack play in a similar situation during the semifinals, I knew that he would abuse the bubble like Ike with Tina. Given Scotty’s stack, he would be blinded off in 23 hands. I simply couldn’t let Jason abuse the bubble for 23 hands. If I did, the stacks at the end would look something like this:
Jason = 455k
Shawn = 85k
Patrick = 60k
The solution was to remind Jason about the individual prize at stake. The highest finishing team member on EACH team would get a $12,000 WSOP Main Event package. All Jason had to do was not go bust in 23 hands and Scotty would in effect hand him $12,000 cash. I pointed this out to Jason and he was quick to note that he could still play a big pot because neither Patrick nor I could bust him. We were both playing the head games. “True,” I said, “but if I grab one extra round before you double me up, you’ll be shorter than Scotty and then you will have to risk ruin before Scotty goes broke or else Scotty will out last you!” At first Jason was skeptical, but we did the math together and he saw how it could happen. With that seed planted, I went for the kill. Knowing Jason was a highly-regarded on line player I asked him what the message boards would say if he lost first place prize money to a guy who was sitting out. Jason tried to play it off, but I thought I was getting to him. Picking up the blinds at least once was crucial to my strategy. And as we prepared to return to the table, I was psyching myself up to be the one abusing the bubble. Tune in to next week show on Fox Sports to see how it works out . . .
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Saturday, February 21, 2009 - C00LHandNuke
When the dust settled after the preliminary four tables, there were twenty-one contestants left on the show. Now it was up to Phil and Annie to draft nine players each for their team. Standing there for the draft in front of the cameras and bright lights was pretty intense. Plus, I was having flashbacks to last season when a number of contestants were called by name, jumped for joy, and then later found out that they were in the group being cut. Did it make good TV? Yes. Was it cruel? Maybe. Did it have me on edge? Definitely. So I stood there keen to spot any “Survivor” twists that might be coming.
Starting off the draft, one player was singled out as having played the best in the prelims. This player received all kinds of gushing comments, but neither Phil nor Annie said the player’s name for a while. I’m sure each of the contestants, myself included, was hoping deep inside that they would be that player. But because “being the best” wasn’t really my strategy for round one, I knew it wasn’t me. Finally, Annie Duke revealed the identity of this player with her first pick – Darryl.
Phil made his first pick next. I really wasn’t expecting Phil to pick me high in the draft for one reason. The day before the prelims started PokerH0 came to me with an odd proposition: basically he wanted me to be a sleeper agent for Team Hellmuth. He proposed that I play “mediocre” or even outright bad so that Annie wouldn’t draft me. Meanwhile, Phil could draft me lower and use his upper picks to take players from Annie’s top tier. Because he had played with me a lot before, H0 said that I would be a near lock to make Phil’s final three. Very sneaky. It also gives you an idea of just how bad these two coaching teams wanted to win. Annie and I had never played together live or online, but Shawn Rice and I had several hours together during a WPT event and knew each other a little from online. Because Rice knew me, I doubted whether the plan would work and I told H0 that I just couldn’t go out on national TV and intentionally make myself look like a donkey (looking like a donkey unintentionally was still a very viable option of course!). In any event, Phil chose “ShipItMuppet,” a long-time UB grinder as his top pick.
When Shaundle and Jason were the number two picks for Annie and Phil respectively, I can honestly say I was getting nervous. Unless I went to Phil’s team, I figured I needed a reasonably high draft pick to make the final table. For her third pick, Annie started off by saying she was going with a player who she thought was probably an “unrecognized talent” and that it was very close between this pick and Shaundle. To me, this sounded like the Darryl build up all over again. And I was mentally prepared not to hear my name. So, when she picked me third I was pretty friggin’ psyched. You can see my excitement on the show. It was such a relief to go in the top three because I now felt like the spot on the final table was mine to lose. But as the first semifinal match would show, I had no reason to feel so safe.
The structure for the semifinals was the same as the prelims – 10k in chips, one player from each team would be eliminated and the table winner had immunity. On top of that, we were playing for team points that would affect starting stacks at the final table. The final table starting stack was going to be 100k. But whichever team won the semis would get 10k off the losing teams stack (so the starting stacks would be 90k vs 110k). This was huge. And just to make it more cutthroat, each semifinal table winner would also get $1000 cash.
The first semi table was full of surprises. Annie’s team consisted of Darryl, Niago and Patrick. Darryl lost a race early to Muppet. Patrick played great poker but couldn’t outlast Niago, who won the table. So the first shocker of the show came when Annie was faced with the decision of whether to cut Darryl (who probably was the most experienced player at the table with the most lifetime winnings) or Patrick (who played a solid error-free table). I think in Annie’s mind, fairness ultimately won out and Darryl was cut. This was both good news and bad news for me. First, it effectively meant I moved up to the number two spot on Team Duke. Second, the Niago-Patrick one-two finish staked us to a healthy point lead. The bad part was that it showed me just how easy it would be to take a “bad beat” here and be off the show.
The second semi table was a disaster for Team Duke. My teammates were the first three busted. Now it was Team Duke that faced the huge point deficit going into the third and last semifinal table. Specifically, we needed to bust two of Phil’s players in 6th and 5th or else Team Hellmuth was guaranteed the chip lead on the final table. Even if we busted two of Phil’s players first, Team Hellmuth would still get the chip lead if his remaining player won the table. The table lineup was like this:
Seat 1 – Me (Team Duke)
Seat 2 – David (Team Hellmuth) – a very talented and successful on-line cash player. Perhaps his most impressive claim to fame is being a lifetime winner in heads up cash games against Tom “drrrrr” Dwan.
Seat 3 – SassyTexan (Team Duke) – Tight, aggressive and solid. Sassy was at my prelim table and when Annie gave me my choice for a table mate, Sassy was my first pick. I knew her solid play would keep the two of us from getting mixed up in any needless confrontations.
Seat 4 – Brad (Team Hellmuth) – my first impression was that he could be pretty wild.
Seat 5 – Jon (Team Duke) – probably the most inexperienced player in the field. Like Brad, I expected him to be unpredictable.
Seat 6 – Jason (Team Hellmuth) – another talented young on-line phenom. Jason is routinely ranked in the top 100 for on-line multi-table tournaments. He would be aggressive and the most dangerous. Fortunately, I would have position on him.
The first hand of the table really affected my strategy for the whole tournament. Brad raised from the button, Jon min raised from the blind and Brad put in a fourth bet that was just barely above a min raise. Jon called. The flop came down three baby cards with two diamonds. Jon check folded to a half-pot cbet from Brad. From the outside, it looked like Jon had a weak ace, maybe AJ to A8, that missed and Brad probably had a reasonable overpair or a big ace. As it turns out, Jon had the AQ of diamonds and Brad had tens. I probably wouldn’t have thought about the hand again, but I got called into the coach’s booth before the button orbited the table again.
The hand before I got summoned to the booth, I flopped bottom two pair in a multi-way pot between Jason, myself and Brad. Jason had top pair (queen) with a weak kicker and we went to war on the turn. Jason made three queens on the river and checked to me. Being counterfeited on the river, I knew the only way to win was to bet. Jason made the easy call and I tabled my “busted monster” and read the hand out loud as “queens and eights.” I congratulated Jason on his nice suckout and he got defensive, insisting that his queen on the flop was ahead of my eights. He missed the fact that I had flopped two pair. This started a lot of sarcasm and ball busting from me. I had just asked Jason if a pair of queens beats two pair in his home game when I was summoned to the coach’s booth.
In the coach’s booth Annie asked me to go back to the table and talk about a hand from the prelims where Jason got all in with two over cards and a flush draw versus a pair. She wasn’t allowed to tell me what cards other players had during the semi table. But as we had only played a few hands, only one of which had significant action. I was able to deduce that Jon had a hand like AK or AQ of diamonds on the first hand. This revelation was edited out of the show as aired. But knowing this fact changed my approach to the game. Jon had clearly made a huge error. Barring a brain fart by Sassy or myself, Jon would probably be Annie’s choice for elimination. Combine this with the elimination of Darryl in the first match and the performance of Team Duke’s players on the second table and I figured that my spot on the final table was nearly assured. This pushed my strategy back toward the style I employed during the preliminaries, but Annie also told me to take some more risks because Phil’s players were “playing scared.”
Throughout the semifinal table I never held a pair – not even deuces. Nevertheless, I cultivated a tight image, won a lot of pots with well timed bluffs and reraises and only had to show down two more hands during the whole match.
The first elimination of the match came when Jason raised from early position. I held KQ in the cutoff. Normally I would consider playing here, but David was on my left (on the button) and had checked his hole cards already. When he checked them, his posture changed ever so slightly. He leaned forward a bit, which I interpreted as he had a hand. I didn’t want to get caught between two of Phil’s players in a situation where I might be dominated so I bowed out. As it turns out, David’s suited Ace-Ten caught top pair, but got busted by Jason’s top two pair.
The big hand that made the show for me was when Jon opened in early position with KK five-handed and I had AK in the blind. I had a stack size of about 15 big blinds. This is a good size stack to reraise with. With that in mind, had this been a regular online SNG, I would have moved all in 100% of the time. And after sitting there for over an hour without a pair, AK looked like the nuts to me. But two things made me go with a different line. The first was my read on Jon. As soon as he checked his hole cards his demeanor changed. On the show that aired you can see his head rolling around on his shoulders like a Stevie Wonder bobble head doll. He was suddenly very relaxed and excited, but trying to hide it. Everything pointed to him having a HUGE hand. Based on my read, he had QQ at a minimum. The second thing that made a reraise my less favored move was that, this being team play, I didn’t want to bust Jon at this point, or worse, get busted by him. I couldn’t be sure that he would fold 99 in this spot.
Taking all that into account, I almost folded preflop. And based solely on my read, had Phil and Annie NOT been watching my hole cards, I probably would have folded. Ultimately I decided that the problem with folding was that if my read was wrong, I would have played AK like a total rube and Annie might cut me based solely on this play. Also, I felt like there was little chance of Jon bluffing me on the flop if he had a hand like AJ or AQ and if an ace hit, I could just open-shove – thereby letting him know that I’ve got a real hand. As it turned out, I blanked the flop and checked folded to Jon’s all-in bet.
But this hand also highlights two of my strategies for any poker game, particularly hold ‘em. The first is when to look at your hole cards. There are a lot of theories out there. Some very good players like Chris Ferguson suggest waiting until it is your turn to act. I used to do this, but think it is probably not the best plan. By waiting until the action is on you to look at your cards, you not only slow down the game, but you also ensure that almost everyone is looking at you when you do check your cards. That’s bad. Most players give up tells (1) when they first look at their cards (2) when they make a bet and (3) when they face action from an opponent. You can’t avoid all eyes being on you when you bet. And if you are heads up, your opponent, if she’s good, will certainly be watching you in the third scenario. So why draw attention to yourself in the one scenario you control: when you look at your hole cards for the first time?
Therefore, one of the things I like to do is look at my hole cards when no one is looking at me. Even when I’m under the gun I usually look at my first card before my second even arrives because players are usually watching the dealer pitch cards to them instead. Just knowing the rank of my first card under the gun vastly narrows my probable plays. Preferably, I look at my cards while the action is at the opposite end of the table. If timed right, I only miss one player checking his cards while I check mine. All things being equal, I’ll try to time my peek with the tightest player at the table. If he raises, I don’t need any tells. I know he has a hand. Besides hiding inadvertent tells from opponents, this has the added benefit of allowing me to prepare myself for how I want to act when the action is on me.
I will often recheck my hole cards when the action comes to me. But I will never show genuine surprise or excitement when I look down at AA or KK. The reason is I checked my cards earlier and I’ve been preparing myself for several seconds for how I want to look when I check the second time. So now I can try to give a false tell if I want to.
Case in point, on the show when I had the AK, the action was on me but I was staring at Jason for some time while I thought about what line to take. Once I knew I was going to call, I pretended to ask the dealer if the action was on me. Then I acted sheepish, like I just realized the table had been waiting on me, checked my hole cards (for a second time) and nonchalantly called Jon’s raise. If you watch the show closely, you can pick up on it.
The second strategy this hand highlights is that you have to constantly reevaluate your options. When I first saw I had AK, no one had acted yet. Like I said, given my drought of hands and my stack size, I was hoping someone would raise just so I could autoshove. When Jon raised, I had to reevaluate based on my read. And even after that, I had to reevaluate the whole scenario based on the team aspect of the game. After each evaluation, my plan changed. I went from shove, to fold, to call.
Ultimately, Brad went out 5th. Jason would later lose a heads up battle with Jon when Jon’s AQ sucked out on Jason’s AK all in preflop. The end result was a final table where each player would start with 100k in chips. Without giving too much away, the final table was crazy. There was some great poker. Some amusing hi jinks. And some bold bluffs that really blew up. So be sure to tune in!
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