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Is the future here?
In the last few months, I’ve had a couple of live poker experiences that have gotten me excited about live poker again. There is nothing like the live experience of being able to interact with your opponents and look into their eyes during critical decisions. The social interaction simply makes poker more fun. However, online poker spoils you. When you are dealt 60 hands an hour and can play multiple tables at once online, live poker can seem excruciatingly slow at times.
Ever since I started playing online poker, I have not found much enjoyment in playing live cash games. They are just so slow! Poker is a game of patience, and it isn’t fun waiting hours for the right time to exploit your opponents. On the other hand, I still love the excitement of live tournaments compared to online tournaments. There is nothing like the experience of playing for big money in a live setting. Online final tables lack that same excitement, and you lose the ability to see how your opponents are handling the pressure.
Preparing Darus Suharto
I had the pleasure of hosting an event to help Darus Suharto prepare for the World Series of Poker main event. Darus finished in sixth place and took home more than $2.4 million. The main event has come a long way the last few years, as Darus took home close to the same amount that Chris Moneymaker won in his classic 2003 victory.
Eric "Rizen" Lynch was coaching Darus to help him prepare for the main event. Eric and I had talked earlier in the summer about various ways that one might prepare given the four-month layoff. Once Eric started actually coaching Darus, he called me about one of the ideas we had.
A disappointing tournament
The 2008 World Series of Poker was extremely disappointing for me. I played 15 events and was able to manage only one small cash. This is particularly disappointing because I prepared harder this year than I ever have. There is no question in my mind that I was ready to take my game to another level. In most endeavors in life, if you work hard, you generally start to see good results. But in poker, you can work harder than you have on anything ever before, but there is no guarantee that you'll see great results, at least in the short term.
So, how do I evaluate my performance? Did I play well or not? Did I prepare correctly - mentally, emotionally, and physically? What can I do to try to achieve better results next year?
A hand from the World Series of Poker
Event No. 3 of the World Series of Poker was $1,500 pot-limit hold'em. There was one particular hand I played that had a lot of interesting twists and turns.
The blinds were 50-100. I had about 7,800 in chips remaining. Everyone folded around to the button, who limped for 200. He had 4,650 remaining. This was not the first time he had limped, and he previously had folded to a pot-size raise after limping from the button. Dewey Tomko folded from the small blind, and I checked my A-8 from the big blind.
The flop was A-Q-5 rainbow. I checked, and my opponent made a small bet of 200. At this point, I was very confident that I had the best hand. It was unlikely that he would limp with A-X. Most players would raise with A-A in pot-limit hold'em to start building the pot size; 5-5 was a possibility, but was only one part of a very wide range here.
This article was written by Matthew for Cardplayer.com during the Fall 2007 and originally published here
Take advantage of them
I've been fortunate enough to cash in three of the last four main events at the World Series of Poker. Looking back, I've learned a lot about playing in the main event, and I think I probably haven't exploited bubble situations as much as I should have. This column will share some of those lessons.
Before discussing the WSOP bubble, we need to first define what a bubble is. Typically, players refer to the cash bubble and the final-table bubble. These are the two most distinct "bubbles" in a tournament. Most players want to cash, especially when getting close to the money.
A Hand on the Final-Table Bubble at the World Series of Poker
Many players struggle to distinguish between the situations in which they should attempt to knock out an opponent and those in which they should merely try to accumulate more chips. I found myself in the middle of a scenario during event No. 44 at theWorld Series of Poker – $1,500 no-limit hold'em – in which several of my opponents thought I had completely lost it.
This article was written soon after the birth of my first son, Joshua, back in January of 2004. I guess my estimate of the WSOP reaching 5000 entrants was off by about 20 years!
21-year old Joshua “the Chief” Hilger outplayed 5,000 of the top poker players in the world to take home the $40 million prize and the 2025 World Series of Poker championship. This year’s event again was limited to 5,000 entrants, but every entrant paid a record $25,000 each setting a new record with a total prize pool of $125 million and a whopping $40 million going to the winner.
Many players assume that strategy for online and live games is the same. After all, you still receive two down cards, five community cards, and play against nine opponents. However, there are several characteristics unique to Internet play that require subtle adjustments to your play including short playing sessions, the virtual environment, and Internet distractions. Let’s discuss these unique characteristics in a little more detail and the impact they may have on your strategy.
One of the great things I love about the World Series of Poker main event is the big stacks you get to play in relation to the blinds. When starting out with $10,000 in chips, you can find spots to make plays that would be difficult to make in other types of events in which you start out with a small amount of chips.
In this column, I am going to discuss a couple of key hands from my play in this year’s WSOP main event. And we’ll look at a couple of other hands next time. The hands are from different days of play. This year I finished 331st out of a field of 5,619, making the money for the second year in a row. It was a great tournament and a lot of fun, but at the same time, I was looking to improve on my 33rd-place finish in 2004, so I fell a little short.
My last column looked at a couple of bluffs that I made during the World Series of Poker main event. One of them was successful and one of them cost me some chips. We will look at two more bluffs in this column. One of them took place at the end of day two and is a good example of bubble play. The other involves two players going at each other in a small blind versus big blind situation.
On the very last hand of day two, there were 569 players left in the tournament, and 560 would be paid. Most of the players at my table were doing everything they could not to be knocked out this close to the bubble. Many of them were already thinking about going home and being able to tell their family and friends that they cashed in the “big one.” This tournament, more than any other, has lots of players playing with the goal of simply cashing.
