Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP dream

DogFace, thanks for the analytical look at how I played this. I concur with everything you wrote.

I was close to pulling the trigger on the 9-7. Given that the blinds just went through me, the question I asked myself at the time was, do I think I will find better than 9-7 between now and the next time the blinds come back to me. I felt it was more likely something better would come around (as in, anything with paint or an ace). I actually took some time on that decision at the table. It was not an insta muck on my part.

And as for preferring to be first in the pot as opposed to going all-in over an initial bet, that is certainly the case. That said there are a lot more combinations of unpaired over cards than there are pairs. As short as I was, I wasn't looking to get it in as a massive favorite (although that would have been nice). I was looking to get it in on a coin flip. As played I knew I was getting called, which is what I wanted. What I didn't want was to be facing a better pair.

I felt there comes a time when you have to gamble. I had enough chips where if I did double up, while I wouldn't be flush with chips, I would have some brief breathing room. I didn't want to fold my way down to the point where even if I double up it's for so few chips that I am still dead man walking.

Neither 9-7 in an unopened pot or 3-3 in an opened pot feels good to go all-in with. I just felt like I needed to get it in pretty quickly while a double up would still mean something.

I am very receptive to people's opinions on how I played this and what they would have done.

I'm not someone who has memorized all the charts, so I don't speak as an authority. Just offering an opinion. These seem like close spots to me and it's likely that the difference in EV between the various options is minimal. Mostly you're just hoping to get lucky in these spots, either in terms of everyone folding or in terms of holding at showdown.

A big variable that I think we have to consider is how many players are left behind us. In a full ring, a hand like 97 on the BTN may perform better as a shove than a hand like A5 UTG. The more people behind you, the more likely it is that somebody will wake up with a real hand. That's an argument against waiting for a better spot.

Looking at these charts from Jonathan Little's site, the range on 8BB is vastly wider in the SB-BTN than UTG or MP.

https://pokercoaching.com/blog/push-fold...

However, he does NOT have 97o as a shove on even 8BB from the BTN, so you were probably right to lay it down. The hand is just a little too dusty.

Even just the marginally better 97s would've been a shove according to those charts. That's how thin the margins were.

As for the 33, I think pros probably lay it down under the logic that it's better to open jam a random hand and perhaps win uncontested than it is to knowingly take the flip and have to hold, but it's not some crazy misplay. Jamming there with 33 is probably still a +chipEV play. As you said, there are a lot more not-pairs than pairs that Chess is going to have there. You were unlucky to be up against a bigger pair and yet you're still supposed to win 18% of the time, which is not nothing.

My memory says I was UTG or UTG+1 on the 9-7 fold. But given that I was just in the blinds, it seems more logical to think I was in late position in which case I maybe should have jammed into the unopened pot. So I'm not sure if I should trust my memory (which probably wants to have the benefit of the doubt as to the fold) or logic (which says I must have been in late position in which case perhaps I should have jammed).

As I think this through now, I don't trust my memory, in which case I perhaps should have happily jammed it all-in to an unopened pot. It's still close. Much closer than I thought at the time when I still did consider it.

This is why I wish I had poker friends at the WSOP. What seems like a possible mistake on my part thanks to DogFace talking it through with me here on 2+2, did not get discussed in the immediate aftermath of my bust out in real time, because I was a solo road warrior on this journey.

I just edited my last post like four different times in the course of 10 minutes as I kept trying to work my way through the problem.

I think it is a tough decision. I remain curious what other people think now that I believe I was in late position in an unopened pot with nine big blinds and holding 9-7 unsuited.

Yeah, I have a love/hate relationship with them myself. On one hand, it takes away some of the skill edge of the pros and throws in some extra variance with the fast structure and in this case the freezeout element, so you've got a decent shot especially if you feel good about your push-fold game. Not to mention the shorter time commitment . Of course it doesn't mean the variance is going to work out in your favor either; you have to make hands at some point and you're pretty much a lost coin flip/suckout/cooler away from being SOL.

I played a few of the 8pm deepstacks which were essentially the same structure as this and yeah, the variance thing didn't work out.

Great writeup as always - I think you played it fine at the end.

They set it up so you don't lose any time barring mistakes.

The horseshoe clock starts first and is ahead and it accounts for the 5-7minutes it takes to get there. Usually paris is anywhere 5-10minutes behind. So sometimes you actually gain time but it's usually neutral.

97o is a fold. 9 BBs is a lot in a turbo to shove it that light.

Yeah I think 97o is a fold with 9 bb. If I had 3-5 bb and I was first in from late position, I’d be shoving almost any 2 just because a late position shove is worth so much to you if it gets through.

With 9bb, though, you can fold rags, and at least start with reasonable cards.

Thanks everyone for the 9-7 feedback

2024 WSOP: June 4, Event 14 Super Turbo Bounty NLHE (Part 9 of 9)
Mike Matusow almost runs me over with his scooter … Hellmuth and Negreanu seated next to one another in Dealer’s Choice 10K and their table talk is not what I expected

I have just busted.

As I walk out of the Paris ballroom, Mike Matusow comes flying toward me on his scooter. I jump out of the way. He slightly clips the door that I just exited and is now driving Mach 10 with his beard on fire. People are scattering to get out of his way. He comes to a stop at the late reg line. Obviously, I am not the only one who has just busted. I am curious, so I walk back to where Matusow is in line, and he is complaining to the person next to him how pro heavy a table of his was either just now or maybe at some other time. Probably just now given how animated he tells the story.

I now walk out of the Paris one more time, and in the hallway I hear two guys speaking very enthusiastically in a foreign language. One of them says something like this, “foreign language, foreign language, foreign language, foreign language, donk bet.”

I find this to be funny. I just got knocked out, but I still have my sense of humor.

I walk over to the Horseshoe poker main room with the Final Table TV set up to see if anything interesting is going on there. As I get near the entrance to the main room, Daniel Negreanu is walking out talking and looking into his phone for what sounds like it is for his daily WSOP video. Fans of his (a half-dozen) trail behind, racing to keep up. Negreanu is talking nonstop and very fast. We pass each other. He goes his way, I go mine. I look up WSOP.com and see that he has 192,500 chips in the 10K Dealers Choice 6-handed. There are still 66 players left (only 22 will cash), so it’s a long way until the money. I also check on Erick Lindgren who I just played with in a tournament at the same table, and he has 217,000 chips.

In the same room, there are two Final Tables going on. What is weird about them, as well as the other Final Tables I have briefly observed this trip, is the rails are virtually empty. There are like 5-10 people on the rails or in the stands. For many of these players, this is the crowning achievement of their poker life, and no one is watching. It makes for a very mundane, unexciting backdrop. Poker has a long way to go before it is a mainstream sport.

Eventually, the 10K Dealers Choice tournament returns from break. I go over to take a look. Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth are seated next to each other at one end of their six-handed table. This should be interesting. Only it’s not. Hellmuth rushes back to the table holding a plastic to-go type container of food. He is devouring his food like he hasn’t eaten in a few days, while he is also playing hands live at the table, handling chips and watching a video/Internet surfing on his cell phone. Eventually the multitasking gets to be too much, and his container of food starts to fall off his lap. Somehow, he grabs it out of the air, but maybe 15% of his food spills onto the ground. Now Phil is on clean-up detail between hands. He scoops up the fallen food when he is out of a hand and races to a garbage container to dispose of it. He runs back to the table so as not to miss a hand. Then, when he is out of a hand, he takes a napkin to clean up the remaining spill on the carpet. He puts the napkin in his pocket. The next time he is out of a hand, he races to the garbage container and tosses the dirty napkin. Then he races back to the table, to avoid missing a hand.

Surprisingly, Negreanu has not given Hellmuth any grief over this. From what I have seen of the two of them in poker videos/programming in the past, this seems like the sort of thing Negreanu would kid Hellmuth about. In fact, Negreanu and Hellmuth are stone silent. Absolutely no conversation between the two of them. And Negreanu is not playing to the crowd of fans on the rail like I saw him do the other day. The other side of the table is nonstop chatty amongst themselves. But Negreanu and Hellmuth are not saying a word.

After watching them not talk for 10 minutes, I have seen enough because I have not heard enough.

97o is a fold for 8bbs -- charts say it's a fold for 4bbs on the button, too.

I also think the 33 is a fold vs an open, but given how short you are + the bb ante coming and the structure, it's also probably fine to just jam.

Looking forward to MORE ... I think there's at least one more tournament on the horizon, right?

More than one tourney remaining

DNegs is stealing my thunder

On post #90 on page 4 of this thread, I eloquently and passionately quoted Teddy Roosevelt's famous Man in the Arena speech as my motivation for my 2024 WSOP.

Just now I watched Daniel Negreanu's Day 17 WSOP VLOG and he references the same speech. Roughly one month after I laid claim to it in a poker context. I was there first.

I mean, come on! Negreanu has 264 WSOP cashes. rppoker has 1 WSOP cash. Negreanu has 6 WSOP bracelets. rppoker has none.

He can't at least let me have the Man in the Arena speech all to my own?

At the Orleans today, I saw a dog that was well prepared. He had a dog bed next to the table, with fake bacon strips that I guess they like to chew on, and a couple doggie toys too.

During the Gladiator last week they moved a bunch of us from Paris to Horseshoe. I was near the back of the Paris room and moved to the back of the Horseshoe room, as long a trip as you could get. My back was especially bad and it took me 20-25 painful minutes. A floor walked with me the whole way. Right when we got there he said "If I knew it was going to take this long I could've just left you there". WTF?!?! How was I supposed to know that? Why the hell didn't you mention that 20 minutes ago?

SMH

Matusow has been driving a scooter like that for about three years. I don't know if he really needs it or uses it because it's the easy way to get around. If I had any brains I would rent one every year.

A trend I have seen in your TR, and in other TRs as well this summer, is that people get waaaaaaay too stressed as soon as they are approaching 10 big blinds. I think both the examples above are glaring mistakes, and you are not as short as you think you are with 9 big blinds.

1) Let us do 97o first. If you were in third position or similar for your 9 bb, this is nowhere near a push as per SnapShove. Even 97s would have been a fold (98s is however a push). That said, in a bounty tournament where you are bound to get some light calls you should probably drop the worst part of the push ranges shown there.

2) Going all-in with 33 from EP1 (?) after UTG have raised is also a clear mistake. You have no fold-eq, and the absolute best you can hope for is a flip. And when you are crushed, you are indeed very crushed.

Personally I don't think it's anything even close to a disaster if you go through the blinds again. Go down to 5 big blinds if you have to. The most important thing is that you can go all-in first, instead of having to push after someone already have raised. To do the latter you need good cards, but to do the first one you just need a decent position and people folding to you.

I have made this mistakes myself countless of times, including once many years ago at a fairly big Final Table (for me) where I pushed 33 from EP1 after UTG had opened. He obviously had something better (QQ I believe) and I busted in 9th instead of finding a better spot in late position the next round. Just one of many concepts I didn't understand at all earlier in my 'poker career'.

I still get way too impatient at times, but the tournaments where I play the best is where I am super patient as a short stack and just wait for spots to get it first in myself. The spots come around more often that you would think, and if other players are short as well they can't as easily call since your push represents a decent portion of their stack as well.

That said, I am not going to claim to be an expert on this subject. For example, I saw a Ryan DePaulo video a few days ago where he pushed KQs from EP1 for 12 bb over an UTG-raise, and afterwards he showed the viewers some kind of solver output saying that the push was correct. I am sure there are ways to play a short stack that is much more aggressive than what I advocate.

But don't panic as soon as you get below 15 bb, that is my advise. And download SnapShove on your phone - the free version of this app gives you preflop push ranges for all types of stack sizes and adjusted for how many players there are at the table.

BigWhale,

1) Thank you for taking the time to provide your in-depth analysis.

2) I am guilty as charged. When I have gotten inside of 15 big blinds, I have pushed hard to look for a double up. Have I overdone it at times? Quite possibly.

3) You wrote, "Personally I don't think it's anything even close to a disaster if you go through the blinds again. Go down to 5 big blinds if you have to. The most important thing is that you can go all-in first, instead of having to push after someone already have raised." I think you are probably correct that going all-in with 3-3 after someone had made an opening preflop bet may have been a mistake on my part. Although, if villain has A-K rather than 7-7 then I am happy to get it in. So I am conflicted. As for being OK with getting down to 5 bb, the problem I have with doing that is I have to double up twice to get back to comfortable. And when I do get a premium hand there is no guarantee I will get action. What this means is I need to get a rush of really good cards over a short period of time to make this work. My thinking on getting aggressive in the 10-15 bb range is I'm still not very close to the money. In order to make the money (and beyond) I need to start accumulating a bunch of chips. Thus, my willingness to gamble a bit more than I would do if I were deeper. The other thing is, at the end of late reg, the increases in the blinds get really punitive over the final few levels before the money.

4) Around late reg conclusion I saw over and over and over poker pros come to my tables with 15-20 big blinds and get very, very aggressive in their willingness to get all or most of their chips into the middle in a go big or go home approach. What I take from this is that they are saying through their actions is that this stack size needs a double up quickly to have a chance at being relevant/make a worthwhile run. Once in the money then I am OK with getting down to 5 big blinds waiting for a quality hand. But I think several levels prior to the money is a tough spot to get down to 5 big blinds. I am going to have to give a bunch more thought into your advice that it is OK to get down to 5 big blinds. I'm not saying I should go for it all with rags at 10 big blinds, but I do think I need to open up my range somewhat at that stage of a tournament. But. you've given me a lot to think about. Again, thanks.

5) You are going to absolutely hate the way I get eliminated in my next tournament.

2024 WSOP: June 5, Event 17 $800 NLHE Deep Stack (Part 1 of 8)
The starting lineup

I am wearing my blood red, TigerWoods final-round-of-a-tournament-he-was-leading-back-in-the-day shirt. I jokingly brought it with to wear if I (delusion alert) made a Final Table. Since this is my last bracelet event, I decide the time is now to unleash its powers.

Today’s initial combatants:

Seat 1: A familiar face from an earlier tournament, who I don’t recognize at first. I’ll refrain from wrecking the surprise, and I won’t give a nickname here.

Seat 2: Me.

Seat 3: A player who hums a lot. I notice that he hums more when he doesn’t like his hand and stops when he has a big hand. We’ll call him Hummingbird.

Seat 4: A player who later in the tournament says his last name is Schultz, so we’ll call him SergeantSchultz of Hogan’s Heroes TV fame (1965-1971).

Seat 5: This player arrives midway through Level 2, so we’ll call him LateToTheParty. He arrives with his hair a mess and wearing a ratty orange hoodie.

Seat 6: This player wears a hoodie that has an organization that I later look up and learn is a private club for couples in open relationships. We’ll call him Swinger.

Seat 7: This guy looks like the roofer I use for the office buildings I own/manage. His name becomes Roofer.

Seat 8: He is wearing a Texas Longhorns hat, so he is Tex.

Seat 9: He initially goes to the wrong seat at our table. Upon realizing his mistake, he says, “I’m sorry, I’m still not wide awake.” We’ll call him Sleepy.

Sleepy, who it quickly becomes apparent is a nonstop chatterbox, says “Good luck everyone. I’m here to knock you out.”

2024 WSOP: June 5, Event 17 $800 NLHE Deep Stack (Part 2 of 8)
Tex misclicks … Flopping a straight … 3-3 works for everyone but me … Betting 2c-8c as though it’s a premium hand

Level 1 (40,000 chips)

100/100/100

Tex wins the first hand when his bet gets through. Roofer says, “Chip leader.”

In the next hand I am in the small blind. It folds to me, and I just call with 3c-5c. The big blind checks. I flop a straight draw when it comes 2-4-K. I bet and the big blind folds.

A few hands later sees Tex, who is already actively in most pots, raise pre-flop to 5,100 chips. This is a massive over bet. Everyone folds, and Tex says he misread the 5,000 chip for the 500 chip.

I am in the big blind with Qd-Jd and I call a bet from Tex. The flop is Q-10-9 rainbow with one diamond. I bet, Tex calls. The turn is a harmless 3. I check. Tex bets 1,600 and I call. The river is a blank and it goes check-check. I drag the pot.

It has become apparent that Tex is playing a ton of hands. Before this hand he has been running very well. For example, in the previous hand he had K-3 suited and made the nut flush on the river.

I have 10-J unsuited in the small blind the very next hand. Texas bets, I call and Hummingbird calls from the big blind. The flop comes 7-8-9. I have flopped the nuts. I check. Hummingbird checks. Texas bets and is called by Hummingbird and me. The turn pairs the board with a 7. I bet and get two calls. The river is a blank. I bet and get two calls, and I win the hand.

End of level 1: 49,800 chips.

Level 2

100/200/200

LateToTheParty finally arrives. He sits down, is dealt K-K on his first hand, flops a set and wins a huge pot versus Sleepy. Apparently LateToTheParty has arrived JustInTime.

I limp with 3-3 from early position. Keep in mind that 3-3 has repeatedly flopped a set and made quads for other people in my tournaments. It has been obvious that 3-3 is the nuts. Except for me. There are four people in the hand. The flop is 6-9-6. All four of us check. The turn is a 9. Someone bets and I fold. The all powerful 3-3 continues to fizzle out for me.

In another hand, someone bets 1,100. Another player tosses in two chips of 1,000. The dealer seems confused. This isn’t big enough to be a legal raise. It isn’t a raise, of course. It’s a call that requires change. The dealer seems frozen, unsure what to do. Finally, I tell her that there needs to be 900 in change given. I’m a veteran presence now helping out a dealer?

When I have the button, it folds to me. I have 2c-8c. I raise to 600. SergeantSchultz is in the big blind and calls. The flop comes K-Q-4. I bet and take it down. SergeantSchultz says to me, “Well that flop didn’t scare you.” If you only knew, Sarge, if you only knew.

Roofer flops a set of fives in which there are two spades on the board. The turn brings a third spade. Tex is in the hand, and a fourth spade comes on the river. Tex bets and Roofer unhappily folds, showing his 5-5.

End of level 2: 48,500 chips.

2024 WSOP: June 5, Event 17 $800 NLHE Deep Stack (Part 3 of 8)
30+ minutes of verbal tilt one table over … Fire alarm goes off and no one leaves the tables … I flop a full house … The return of DoubleVodka

Level 3

200/300/300

Tex continues to be hyper aggressive and put his chips in very light. In one hand he calls bets on all three streets by Hummingbird, who is humming, meaning he does not love his hand. Hummingbird shows a four for only fourth-best pair. Tex can’t beat it and mucks. Tex says, “Not the best hand I’ve ever played.”

A four-way hand unfolds that I am not involved in. By the river there are four clubs on the board. It checks all around, and no one has a club (which seems statistically improbable). Sleepy’s Q-J has a pair and wins the hand. Sleepy, who is nonstop chatter, says, “I think this is my tournament to win.”

Sleepy says my side of the table is way too quiet. The player to my right who I previously said I am holding back on a nickname simply says, “Sleepy.”

The player I have dubbed Sleepy responds, “I was sleepy, but now I have had two coffees, and I’m not sleepy anymore.” Maybe not, but I’m sticking with the nickname

I am dealt Q-Q. Swinger bets 1,100. I pop it to 3,300. Swinger calls. The flop comes 2-8-K. Not the flop I hoped for with an over card to my queens. Swinger checks, so I continue to tell the story of strength and I bet 5,000. Swinger folds. I now have 52,500 chips.

At this point I mark my notes that this table seems comprised entirely of recreational players. Maybe Tex could be a pro the way he is trying to push everyone around, but I don’t think so. He seems all gas, no breaks. He doesn’t seem to know when to slow down at times.

The dealer fails to give SergeantSchultz change on a call. I point it out. I’m a veteran presence now helping out a dealer, Take Two!

At the table next to us, there has been a player that has been on verbal tilt for the past 30-40 minutes. Finally, a floor comes over and tells him to cool it. Tilted continues to carry on, and the floor more firmly tells him to knock it off. This finally shuts up Tilted.

When I am in the big blind, Roofer bets from early position. There are three callers. I look down at Kh-9h. I suppose I could have considered a healthy raise, but given that Roofer raised from UTG, I choose to just call. The fold is 3-7-6 no hearts and I fold to Roofer’s bet.

End of level 3: 51,300 chips.

Level 4

200/400/400

Tex, who has been massively over betting and calling extremely light, now has a hand. Two aces. He gets three streets of value from Hummingbird, who was humming throughout, meaning he was unsure of his hand. The tell continues to hold up.

The fire alarm now goes off. It is noisy. Not a single person gets up and leaves. A loud announcement is made: “The alarm signal is being investigated. You will be notified when the source of the alarm is identified.”

Cards keep getting dealt, No one is leaving.

This reminds me of a story from my sports writing days. My publication was on deadline when the fire alarm went off. For the last couple of days that fire alarm had been getting repeatedly triggered when there had been no fire. Something was wrong with the system. They haven’t fixed it yet. So there we are, cranking away to make deadline and the alarm is blaring. We keep working. Eventually a fireman comes to where we are working and freaks out. “What are you guys doing here?! The fire alarm is going off!! You have to leave!!!” We respond that the system has some sort of problem that has been ongoing, we have a deadline to meet, and we aren’t going anywhere. The fireman is beside himself. He tells us to leave. We say no and ask, is there a fire? “Not that we are aware of,” says the fireman. OK, we say, notify us if there actually is a fire. And back to work we went.

Back to the WSOP, dealers are dealing, players are betting and no one seems to care that the fire alarm continues to scream bloody murder. Maybe five minutes later there is a new loud announcement that there is no emergency.

Meanwhile, I am dealt 6-6 from earlyish position. I just limp. Hummingbird raises, Tex calls from the big blind, as do I. The flop is J-6-J. Come to Daddy! A full house. Tex bets 1,000 (of course he does) and both Hummingbird and I call. The trap is being set. The turn is an 8. Tex bets again, and Hummingbird and I call. Hummingbird is humming in a way which I have figured out means he is not totally confident about his hand. The river is a blank, and to my surprise Tex just checks. I decide to make a polarized bet that looks like I am trying to buy the pot. I bet pot. Hummingbird folds as I expected. Tex, the king of calling light, folds. I have 60,400 chips.

It is at this time that the mystery player to my right whose nickname I have not provided becomes a part of the story. He has been completely silent the entire time. I’m not sure if he’s even played a hand. I have barely noticed him. He now is asked by another player for change. He cuts out five chips and passes them to the other player, who does not give the larger single chip back. The player to my right has to ask for the chip. I say, “He must have thought you were an ATM machine.” The player to my right explodes in laughter. He thinks I am hilarious. I recognize this laugh. I take a closer look at him, and I say, “Didn’t we play at the same table earlier in this WSOP.” He says, “Yes, we did.”

I dig deep into the memory bank to see what I remember about him, and then it hits me.

“You’re DoubleVodka!” I exclaim.

“Yep,” he laughs, “that’s me.”

DoubleVodka asks me how I did in the tournament where we shared a table (Event #3 $500 freezeout). I say I min cashed. I ask how his WSOP has been going. He says today is the ninth bullet he’s fired, and he hasn’t cashed yet.

I say to him that he’s been so quiet and no drinking. He says, “It’s morning. Too soon to drink.”

It won’t be morning for much longer.

End of level 4: 59,400 chips.

We go on break. I use the bathroom, and now it’s time for another $10 WSOP hot dog. I willingly pay for the overpriced hot dog, but I don't have to get an overpriced drink because I have come prepared. I wash it down with a Dr Pepper I have in my backpack (chilled in a thermal bag with frozen ice packs from the refrigerator/freezer in my hotel room).

A small strategic nitpick is that I would recommend raising almost 100% of the time when you are the first person to enter the pot, as opposed to limping medium strength hands like 6-6 and 8-8. You've mentioned limping small-medium PPs in this TR several times, which is why I bring it up. We are going to face a lot of uncomfortable flops with these hands, but the most common scenario will be playing HU in position vs. the BB, where we can probably check back either the flop or turn if we want to slow down.

One of the problems with limping medium strength hands is that savvy players are going to pick it up on it, which allows them to attack the capped range while also allowing them to fold when we raise (because they know we only raise the top of our range). The other problem is that you give free cards to a lot of dusty hands in the BB like weak Kx, Qx, Jx when we actually want to tax them to draw at their overcards.

The instinct to keep the pot small until we flop a set is understandable, but probably doing more harm than good. The raw pair value of these hands is significant and we also have the possibility to represent other holdings. Bear in mind that they don't KNOW you have 6-6, so if you raise and the flop comes something like AK3, you now have the range advantage to put extreme pressure on stuff like KJ and KT. If you limp then it's a lot easier for them to know you don't have something like AK, AA, KK, and to react accordingly.

Think of it like a pitcher in baseball. You want your fastball, change up, and curve to all look the exact same coming out of your hand. When you separate your opens into a limping range and a raising range, you are telegraphing the strength of your hand to the rest of the table and making yourself easier to play against.

Good observations, DogFace. Another tool to add to my toolbox.

2024 WSOP: June 5, Event 17 $800 NLHE Deep Stack (Part 4 of 8)
It’s afternoon and time for DoubleVodka to start drinking … and the more he drinks, the more chips he wins … I win a couple pots holding nothing but air

Level 5

300/500/500

It’s 12:30 p.m. Morning is over. DoubleVodka has tip money out. Which leads to him calling out to a nearby server, “Cocktails!”

DoubleVodka and I are chatting. Hey, we’re old-time buddies. I ask him what he does for a living. He says he does some accounting work for a friend, and he also sells gold doubloons. I say that selling gold doubloons makes him sound like a pirate. DoubleVodka very much likes the idea of him being a pirate.

Around this time Hummingbird (who isn’t humming so he likes his hand) busts Roofer.

Then DoubleVodka busts Tex. DoubleVodka has A-A. Tex has A-K. They get it all in preflop, and DoubleVodka’s aces hold. Another player comments that going bust when this deep in chips with just A-K seemed unnecessary.

I defend my big blind with Q-5 suited, whiff the flop and fold to a bet.

DoubleVodka is ready for another cocktail. The drinking is constant, and it is relentless. And the more he drinks, the more chips he seems to win.

I am UTG and have J-Q suited. I get frisky and bet 1,500. It folds to DoubleVodka in the big blind who raises to 5,000. That’s a big response to an UTG bet. I’m not feeling frisky anymore. I fold.

End of level 5: 53,200 chips.

Level 6

300/600/600

At one point Sleepy’s endless chatter is so much that even DoubleVodka whispers something to me about it. I say, “Wow, someone who can outtalk you.” DoubleVodka says that may change as more drinking occurs.

Sleepy busts out of the tournament when his opponent’s flush draw gets there on the river to overtake Sleepy’s top pair.

Meanwhile, I have become aware of the fact that I have been card dead for a while and haven’t been able to play many hands.

End of level 6: 50,200 chips.

Level 7

400/800/800

I am dealt As-Js UTG, and I raise to 2,000. I get two calls. The flop is K-Q-2, no spades. As the preflop aggressor I make a continuation bet of 2,200 and get two folds.

I find myself in a limped three-way pot with J-9. The flop is 10-7-6. Three checks. The turn is a 10. Three checks. The river is a J. I bet 4,000 and get two folds. I have 56,700 chips.

End of level 7: 54,700 chips