My Entry to WSOP Event 38

This is my 2007 World Series of Poker trip report. This was my first time playing in the WSOP, or for that matter in any large or high buy-in tournament.

My plan was to enter Event 38 ($1,500 No-Limit Hold' Em) and then Event 42 ($1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha 8-or-Better High-Low). If that was a bunch of gibberish to you, just skip down to the end -- heavy poker content follows.

My flight into Las Vegas arrived Saturday morning and I took a taxi straight to the Rio. The tournament began at noon, and we soon learned that there were 2,778 entrants for a prize pool of $3,791,970, with the top 277 players being paid. So my job was to outlast at least 2,501 other players.

Unfortunately, my table assignment indicated that this goal was not going to be easy. I was at Table 42, Seat 5, and at Seat 7 of the same table was J.C. Tran, who is currently ranked either 1st or 16th in the world depending on which measure you're using. Either way, he's not the kind of person you want two seats after you in your very first big tournament.

We all began with $3,000 in tournament chips. My first hand dealt was pocket eights, which I played from middle position with a standard raise. The big blind called and flopped trip sixes. He got a bit more excited than he should have, and I folded to his lead-out bet. He showed off the six in his hand.

The next hand I played was A9, which flopped top pair, top kicker (972). A late position caller raised my pot-sized bet. Remembering Phil Gordon's advice not to go broke with one pair, I gave him credit for a higher pocket pair or maybe a set, and folded.

Now I was down to 2,450 chips and starting to feel like a donkey. Things brightened up a bit when my AA held up against KQ on a JJK47 board. I was able to extract just about the maximum I could from my opponent, given that we were both scared of trips, and I was up to 3,825.

Round two, blinds up to 50/100. I correctly read a player for high pockets and declined to call his early-position raise with my AJ. For unknown reasons another player decided to take him on with K9. The early-position player's QQ held up (as it would have against my hand).

Where was J.C. in the middle of all this? Getting a chair massage at the table, actually, and chatting up all the players around him (as well as the occasional fan who jumped the guardrail for an autograph). But he was definitely paying attention. Not ten minutes after I'd finished stacking my winnings from the AA-KQ hand, he pulled off his headphones and pointed out to me that I'd left a $500 chip among the $25 chips -- unintentional, of course, but disallowed by tournament rules because it could allow a player to underrepresent the size of his chipstack. I'm sure J.C. was using the first rounds to scope out other players, in addition to disarming his opponents by making friends with them.

After the second round, we had our first 15-minute break. This is probably the only time on Earth that the men have had to wait in line for the bathroom while the women zip right in.

When we returned, the blinds were up to 100/200. I went the whole round without playing a hand, partly because J.C. woke up and started playing. Or more accurately, he began stealing some pots. His pattern was fairly simple: regardless of position, if nobody had entered the pot yet, he slightly overbet the pot (e.g., for 100/200 he'd raise to 325 or 350). Most of the time the rest of the table wilted like butter lettuce in the sun. Occasionally someone would reraise, and he'd either fold or call, then generally proceed to play the flop very aggressively. Interestingly, nobody ever called his raises; I don't think anyone wanted to try to outplay him after the flop.

One big hand made quite an impression on the rest of the table. It started off pretty standard: J.C. in early position is reraised by a late-position player (the same guy who played me on the AA-KQ hand), and he calls. Flop is AdJdx. J.C. leads out and LP reraises all-in. J.C. calls in a flash and shows..... Td4d, which elicited gasps from everyone. He made his flush on the river and doubled up (luckily for him, the LP had himself just won a big pot and was briefly the table chipleader).

By "quite an impression," I mean "holy crap, this guy is insane." There's just no way this was anything but reckless play. However, once J.C. emerged alive from the hand, the rest of the table knew that our folding equity against him wasn't worth much. And now that J.C. had a huge stack, we ruefully realized that his earlier stealing was just the start of the carnage. His raises got larger and even more frequent, seemingly regardless of earlier action in the hand. I was happy to survive to the 100/200/25 round with a measly 2,425 stack.

J.C. was smart enough to get the heck out of the way with my early position raise of QQ. A late-position player mysteriously called me (I say "mysteriously" because I was obviously one of the tightest players at the table, having played three hands in nearly four hours, so my early-position raise surely meant AA/KK/AK/QQ), and the flop came Q9x. I bet the pot and he came over the top all-in. Earlier in the hand I assumed he wasn't an idiot and must have been holding AA/KK/AK/QQ (which would have been the only explanation for the "mysterious" call), so I gladly called, expecting that I'd just cracked aces or kings. Nope, he was on a draw with JT. I doubled up to about 4,600.

A couple hands later, every NLHE player's dream: AA on the button all-in preflop against KK. Up to 9,500 and I was ecstatic to make it to the second break.

No hands played through 150/300/25, and by 200/400/50 I was blinded down to about 7,600. Meanwhile, J.C. was continuing to run over the table, amassing an impressive stack of ante chips.

Next a near rerun of an earlier hand: my AA holds up against KK preflop, and I'm up to about 11,000. Then I decided to try stealing with J9 against two blinds who were playing meekly. They both called, surprisingly (or maybe not; maybe they thought I'd be a pushover post-flop). I represented pairing the king on the flop with an overbet, and they folded. Aces twice more but raked just small pots from them. I was up to over 14,000 and well above average at that point in the tournament.

Of course, all this time J.C. is continuing his aggressive play, generally avoiding confrontations and rarely losing a showdown (though he did double-up a short stack who sucked out on him). So with the exception of my few big hands, I was steadily losing 1,300 every time the dealer button went around the table, and I needed to make a move soon, or else my above-average 14,000 would be wiped out quickly. The good news was I survived to the 300/600/75 round. The bad news was we were now at the 300/600/75 round.

The turning point of the tournament for me was just before the dinner break. J.C. opened as usual, though this time with a call (as he occasionally did). At that point this meant nothing, of course, but I was about to learn more, because I found AK suited in the big blind. I raised to 1,500, which I meant as an isolation raise to get out the big blind. That much worked; he folded. However, J.C. reraised to 4,500. Replaying the hand to that point, I judged his initial call (versus a stealing raise) to indicate a slowplayed low or middle pocket pair, and now he was trying to put me on a hand. There was also a possibility of AK/AQ/AJ but it seemed less likely because of my holding. Anyway, the pot odds were good at this point and I called, hoping to pair the flop...

... which came 999 -- freaky. It was obvious to both of us that neither of us had quads; T9 and A9 were outside possibilities but just not believable. So we were pretty much playing just our hole cards against each other.

Given my read on J.C., I knew he had the better hand. With seven outs (including the fourth 9, which would have given me the pot with the ace kicker), I was about 28% to improve by the river, and I was sure any improvement would have won the hand for me. With about 11,000 in the pot and about 8,500 in my stack, I seriously doubted I could bluff J.C. off his flopped full house.

From J.C.'s perspective, I had two moves (check or all-in), and neither would have helped him decide whether I was holding a made hand. Checking could be a slowplay or weakness, and all-in could be a value bet or a bluff.

Anyway, I showed my stripes and picked weakness. I checked.

To his credit, J.C. responded with a very, very nice bet of $6,500, which was very close to a fair price in pot-odds terms. (A neutral price would have been about $4,500.) He was basically saying to me "I think you have two overcards. Go ahead and draw, but it'll cost you more than it's worth. Moreover, given your now-wimpy stack size, I'm committing enough to the pot that you cannot possibly get me to fold now." In other words, classic no-limit betting.

I folded. Afterward, J.C. asked whether I had AK. I said yes, and he said he had a full house but if I'd hit, I'd have won. I'm satisfied believing this story because it's consistent with the betting, and since I was the second-largest stack at the table at that point, I can't imagine him wanting to tangle with me without a very strong hand. But hey, he's a pro and I'm not; maybe he had AJ or 72.

At the dinner break I called my railbirds on the phone and let them know things were looking bleak. With 6,525 chips I could last about four more rounds before going broke to the blinds and antes. About half an hour after we returned from dinner an EP opened with 5x BB, and I reraised all-in with TT. He called with Ad3d, and my hand was looking great until the A on the turn, and I was out, around 480th out of a field of 2,778 (top 17.2%) and about 200 spots from the money.

Short of cashing in the tournament, I think I got as much as I could out of this experience. I butted heads with one of the currently hottest pro players in the world, got AA five times in six tournament hours and raked a pot from each of them, and learned a lot about aggressive tournament style (which I've applied twice since then in single-table tourneys and cashed in both (Update: make that three)). I didn't make any glaring errors, at least none that a player at my level would realize. I made it as deep into the field as would be expected by my style (solid but slow in adjusting opening hand requirements to the increasing blinds), and am as a result working on specific improvements in my game. I also decided that the PLO8 event was negative EV and didn't enter it, which probably saved me another $1,500. As far as weekend vacations go, this one was on the expensive side, but well worth it.