Month: July 2016

WSOP Main Event

Finally got to sit down and put together a write up of my very first WSOP Main Event.

This year they increased the starting stack to 50,000 chips from 30,000 during previous years and levels to 2 hours from 1 hour 50 minutes. I really like it as I tend to play better with a deep stack – there are more opportunities to actually play poker with a deep stack. You can both sit and wait for the hand, or you can try a few maneuvers, none of which, if unsuccessful, will be a death blow, with plenty of time to recover.

Towards the dinner break on Day 1 I built up my stack to about 55k, all without any kind of premium hand, just picking up small pots here and there. As I was relatively card dead the entire time, I expanded my range to play ace-rag. One of such hands cost me dearly. I got A4 offsuit in position and called a small raise preflop from an aggressive guy. The flop came 234. It wasn’t a bad flop for me so I decided to float the guy. He bets on the flop, I call. Turn is a 7 – a rather innocuous card. He bets again, I call. River is a K. Here he makes a large bet that could be interpreted as just going for the pot. I think that while it’s possible for him to have K (he raised preflop), his raising range is much wider than AK, KK, besides if he did have AK or any K, he would’ve probably checked the turn. So I thought my A4 was good. I call and he turns over K4 for two pair. So I was right about my A4 being good, just until the river. My stack was down to low 30s after that hand. I bagged 29,000 at the end of Day 1.

On Day 2, at a new table, I was the shortest stack. Again card dead I decided to try a few raises in position, but it’s hard to scare anybody with a short stack. After raising and missing the flop a few times my stack got down to about 15K, when they broke our table and moved us to different tables.

With blinds going up I was under pressure to do something fast, but also to balance my shoving range. Although many books will recommend shoving with any two face cards I decided to wait for some really premium hand; thus KQ twice went into the muck and so did pocket 22. Finally, when down to 11k, I peek into my cards and see KK. A raise in front of me makes my decision easy. I shove, the guy snap calls and turns over QQ. My kings stand and I double up to high 20s.

Then the fateful hand. I’m in the big blind with J8 of hearts. Now, looking back at it I missed a huge warning sign – no raises preflop. Now, at this kind of game, there are almost no unraised pots preflop. I’m pretty sure that during my entire 2-day run this was the very first pot that went unraised. So the action went very suspiciously, but I failed to give it too much thought. So I’m in a big blind and there are 3 other limpers. So I get to see the flop for free. The flop comes 567 two hearts – an excellent flop for me with a straight and a flush draws. I’m first to act, I bet about a third, utg min-raises, probably just to see where he stands, mid-position calls, button folds and I call. The turn is a 10 of hearts, I got my flush. I bet again, the utg folds and the mid-position calls. River is a black A. At this point I go all in and the mid-position snap calls and turns over AK of hearts for a bigger flush. It took me a few moments to realize I was dead and out.

So that was my run. I can’t say I got super unlucky. I’ve heard so many stories of set over set and some sick suck outs on the river that to lose with a made flush doesn’t seem like a reason to complain.

But still, poker is a cruel, sick game.

Cruz’s Chutzpah And Trump’s Inadequacy

Between Christie and Cruz I always thought it was Christie who had the balls, Cruz being more of a Machiavellian calculating weasel. It’s amazing what a few days of GOP convention can do to my perceptions. I was totally wrong. Christie proved to have neither the balls nor the winning vision, selling his soul to Trump but getting nothing for it. Cruz, in addition to playing a smart, long game has also demonstrated an impressive chutzpah yesterday at the convention, in front of increasingly hostile crowd, when he refused to endorse Trump. He clearly positions himself for 2020 and I can’t say that he won’t have an advantage during the inevitable finger-pointing after Trump’s spectacular crash and burn.

Let me dwell a bit longer on the topic. Over the course of the last decades, that perhaps started with Bush II theatrical landing on an aircraft carrier in 2003, the displays of power, mostly on the right, have devolved into displays of unearned and misplaced masculinity. The less time a person has spent in or near the military or a physically dangerous situation, the more he will want to prove to a given audience his macho credentials. Thus modern day American understanding of toughness has two key elements, neither of which has anything to do with actual courage: it’s belligerence rooted in insecurity. To even further degrade the actual meaning of courage, that belligerence is not directed at someone who can respond in kind, but to a mere female political opponent, delivered to an already agreeable, and frenzy-whipped crowd. “Guilty or not guilty?” chanted Christie from RNC stage, in a mock (but in reality, real) witch trial of Hillary. “Guilty!” the crowd roared back, stroking Christie’s fantasy of being a righteous, brave warrior.

Indeed, even Trump, whose life quest seem to be about squashing people’s doubts about his fortune, victories – business or personal, his virility and his toughness, generally avoids situations, whether strategically or out of fear, where he can face an unfriendly audience. He wants to be friends with all the tough guys around the world and he veils it in the rhetoric of ‘making deals.’ The business world, and specifically the dog eat dog New York commercial real estate world, where Trump claims to have domineered, is a metaphorical war zone, littered with corpses of developers and builders. Trump has been killed there a long time ago and the only franchise that has kept his name in lights is, well, his name that he lent to new construction – a nice racket that, due to recent events, might soon come to an end. Trump is neither courageous, nor good at making deals, unless filing for a strategic bankruptcy or stiffing his contractors counts, in his world, as a ‘good deal.’ I imagine him negotiating the status of the Baltic States with Putin – itself an unimaginable scenario just a few months ago, before the American politics has been so distorted by his candidacy. The fact that, in his mind, this is even up to a negotiation, speaks of his inability to perceive of a situation that has no ground for deal-making, like, for example, when your daughter is harassed by a bully. In that scenario, that is becoming less and less hypothetical, the poor Baltic States will be a mere token for Trump’s thoughtless personal brand posturing. Trump’s tactic has never been to put himself on the spot, to risk his own money; it is Trump’s partners, the others, that traditionally have the exposure. Should he, God forbid, become President, his bag of tricks that worked so well for him in reality TV – a squint in the eye, a catch phrase, a limited roster of over-recycled adjectives (Amazing! Unbelievable! Tremendous!) – will fail to impress the more serious, less gullible counterparties. And the way out of the mess will be paid, like always, by someone else, a third party.