My WSOP Main Event: A Valuable Lesson
For the first time since at least 2019, I decided to play the WSOP Main Event this year. I got off to a flying start, and finished day one as one of the bigger stacks. On day two, I had over 200 BBs, and began to entertain thoughts about a deep run – only to bust before the day’s end.
My fate was partially sealed in two big pots, both against the same player. In each hand, a case could be made for a different line on almost every street. I don’t hate either of my plays, but I don’t love them, either, and I believe there’s a valuable lesson in them.
Background
We are about halfway through day two. I get moved to a new table, and need to start building my reads from scratch. Over my first few orbits against this new set of opponents, I open a lot of hands, and the player to my left seems to start pushing back against me. He seems competent, and using his position and stack depth to his advantage is what a competent player would do against someone who opens as light as I’m opening. He ends up winning a few hands against me, including one where he 3-bets my EP open with J♦️T♦️ from middle position and makes a couple of small value bets with top pair, but nothing particularly noteworthy happens until our first major confrontation.
Hand #1
The blinds are 500/1000. I raise to 2,200 with 2♥️2♠️ on the button. The aforementioned opponent 3-bets to 8,500 out of the small blind, the big blind folds, and I make the call. We are over 200,000 chips deep.
Flop: Q♥️5♥️4♥️
He checks, and I bet 4,500 into a pot of 19,000. My bet is mainly a protection bet: I’m happy to take down the pot against a hand like J♦️9♦️ or K♣️J♣️ that he’s just giving up with. If he calls, I’m usually far from drawing dead – I can still make a flush against a hand like K♣️K♦️, or I can hit a set and win a big pot.
My opponent calls.
Turn: 9♣️ (28,000)
My opponent checks. I bet 21,000 into 28,000 – a bet on the larger side, aiming to get a hand like J♣️J♠️ to fold. Against this sizing, overpairs without a heart should start getting nervous as well – I assume people view me as someone who’s capable of firing multiple barrels, and I’m optimistic about getting most hands without a heart to fold. It’s also noteworthy that while my bet is a bluff, it has some merge properties – while my opponent will have many hands that beat me, he might still have something like A♥️K♣️ in his check-calling range that I’m actually ahead of.
Unfortunately, my opponent calls again.
River: K♦️ (70,000)
The off-suit king is not a good card for me. My opponent could very plausibly have either kings or KQ, both of which almost surely talk themselves into a call. He could, however, have hands like JJ or TT with a heart, or perhaps a hand like Q♦️J♦️.
My opponent checks, and I make a read that he doesn’t have a big hand – not much more than a vibe I’m sensing, but I decide to go with my gut. I bet the pot (70,000), and he goes deep into the tank.
Eventually, he calls with A♥️A♦️, and about half my stack is gone in a blink.
Hand #2
In our next confrontation, I’m down to around 110,000 chips. The level is 1000/1500, I open to 3,500 from early-middle position with 9♣️8♣️. The same opponent 3-bets to 8,500 from the HJ. It’s folded around to me, and I make the call.
Flop: 9♦️7♠️3♥️ (21,000)
I check, and my opponent bets 5,000. I read this sizing to be on the weaker side – if he was aiming to get all the chips in, I think he’d bet a little bit bigger at this stack depth.
I decide to check-raise to 13,000, for both protection and value. He might call hands like A♦️K♥️, A♦️T♦️, Q♠️T♠️, J♥️T♥️, etc, which I’m ahead of, but he also might fold similar hands, which is a great outcome for me. Compared to calling for 5,000 and making the pot 31,000, I’m putting in only an extra 8,000 to see if I can deny equity to overcards. And if I’m beat by a hand like an overpair, I’m also hoping he might be weirded out by my line and check back the turn a fair bit, saving me money.
He calls.
Turn: 6♠️ (47,000)
I consider just overbet jamming for 75,000 here, but I fear that my aggressive image might get me called by all of his overpairs at this point.
I decide to bet 15,000. I’m happy to take it down against a hand like AK, and if he has something like AA, KK or QQ, my equity is still reasonably good. Betting bigger would be turning my hand into a bluff, since I would only get called by better hands. Similarly, if I were to check-call, he’d only put in money when I’m in bad shape.
He calls again.
River: 7♥️ (77,000)
I have about 60,000 behind. There’s no value in betting at this point, so I check. My opponent bets 30,000…
This isn’t a great spot, obviously. While this type of bet is often going to be for value, it’s worth considering my line, which should be perceived as weird. What does he think that I have?
There’s no counterfeited two pair that I could realistically have based on pre-flop, so it doesn’t look like I got counterfeited (whereas if the river was the 3♦️ instead, I could have 97s that just became a bluffcatcher). It looks like I’m giving up on a bluff, unless I’m trapping or have a hand like mine or T♥️T♠️.
The million-dollar question is: Would he bluff with a hand like K♠️T♠️, or just show it down (trusting that he beats my bluffs)? And if he had something like Q♠️Q♣️, would he be weirded out by my line and check back, worried about a potential trap and not finding many hands to get value from?
I rewind the hand all the way to the flop in my head – how I felt that he would’ve sized his bet bigger with a value hand. Hands like J♠️T♠️, Q♠️T♠️, K♠️T♠️, and A♠️T♠️ could definitely have played like this, not to mention some weaker 3-bet bluffs like J♠️8♠️ and some more ambitious 3-bets and flop floats like K♠️5♠️.
I feel I’m probably beat, but in the end, I decide to call given the excellent pot odds. He shows K♦️K♠️, and I’m suddenly hanging on for dear life. I fail to make a comeback, and bust out a couple hours after.
The Big Picture
Over the next two hours, I watch the same player show down more winning hands. As I start to rewind all of the showdowns I’ve seen, I realize that I haven’t seen him bluff the river once, and I haven’t seen a light 3-bet other than the J♦️T♦️ one against me earlier, which is hardly light and very standard.
I also noticed one pot in particular where he instantly checked back the river and lost to a very weak hand, meaning that he didn’t consider bluffing.
Is this player capable of bluffing? I expect he is, sure.
But is he overbluffing, and doing so against me? I highly, highly doubt it.
Maybe his turn calling range is so strong in hand 1 that I should never bluff the river. Maybe his 3-bet range, his flop betting range, and his range to call my flop raise are so strong in hand 2, and his likelihood of bluffing missed draws so low, that my call was only going to work 1% of the time, and I torched chips.
I think that’s entirely possible and, after watching more hands, even very likely.
The Lesson
The story in my head that he was playing aggressively and fighting back against me was just that: A story.
In poker, you have to make guesses with incomplete information, so coming up with these stories is valuable, but it’s important to be focused on showdowns much more than frequencies.
I’d never seen this player show down a hand that corroborated the story I was telling, and while I couldn’t have known much during my 2♥️2♠️ hand, I think I had the opportunity to make a very valuable fold on the river with 9♣️8♣️ had I not gotten as caught up in the story as I had.
This happens a lot in live poker, where the pace of play is slower: You feel like you’re being pushed around or targeted when in reality, it’s very easy for someone to simply run hot against you for a few orbits.
Poker is a game of incomplete information, and you are meant to start interpreting every bit of information as soon as it arrives, however small it may be. But putting too much emphasis on unsupported assumptions can be dangerous.
