Day 3

Although I had the third largest stack at my starting table, the two larger stacks were
both on my left. There were no fewer than four Americans with a good deal of online tournament
success, plus one older American with a fair bit of live experience who nevertheless proved
to be one of the weaker players at the table. The Irish professional on my right also seemed
to play mostly live but proved very capable.

The most amateurish players at our table were a Russian businessman and an Australian who
took second in a local satellite but ended up inheriting the WSOP seat when the winner was
unable to attend. There was an article in his hometown newspaper about how he was traveling
to the US for the world’s biggest poker tournament. I assumed he would be a weaker player,
overly fearful of elimination, like the ones I encountered on my first day.

He lasted just two hands before running Queens into my Aces. Honestly, he probably could
have gotten away from the hand as it went down. He raised from middle position, I three-bet
him, a player in the small blind cold-called, and he overcalled with his Queens. The cold
caller led out on a Ten-high, rainbow flop, the Australian called, I shoved, the small blind
folded, and he called off the rest of his chips. Although he had an overpair, my line is
awfully strong, and Queens might be foldable (though I didn’t expect him to get away, which
is why I shoved).

I suppose this is also the time to apologize for the spotty nature of these hand details.
At the end of Day 3, I lost the notebook in which I’d been writing down things like stack
sizes, bet sizes, and suits. While I remember the broad outlines of what happened, I unfortunately
do not have access to as many details as I’d like until we get to Day 4 hands, when I had
a new notebook that I managed not to lose.

So anyway, my day got off to a very good start. The other stroke of good luck I enjoyed was
that Fabrizio Gonzalez, the tough player assigned to my immediate left who plays online as
SixthSenSe19, was nearly an hour late to the table. I managed to accumulate quite a few chips
before he came, which was good because that came to a screeching halt with him sitting behind
me.

There are people who are good at poker, and then there are people who are downright intimidating,
players who are ready to fight for literally every pot that they believe they can win. A
player like that is not someone you want on your left when you have a lot of chips. I tightened
up my game pre-emptively, folding hands I otherwise would have raised because I knew that
Gonzalez was waiting to attack me and I needed better than average cards to stand up to him.
I watched him give hell to a lot of others at the table.

Fortunately for me, he experienced far more than his share of bad luck and ended up getting
eliminated. The moment he left, it was like we were all coming up for air again. People started
playing more hands, a trend that I tried to take advantage of by attacking in the way that
Gonzalez had been. People just weren’t going for it the way they had for him, though, and
I lost a few chips this way. In one particularly frustrating hand, I three-bet a late position
raise from the Irishman on my right with AQs only to face a small four-bet. I called and
folded a K64 flop that gave me not so much as a backdoor flush draw.

Our table broke soon after Gonzalez left, which was welcome even with him gone. I moved
to a new table where I played exactly one interesting hand. There was a small raise from
early position raise and three calls in front of me, so I called with QT
in the big blind.

The flop came J 6 4, and everyone checked it. This told me a couple
of things, most significantly that no one was likely to have a hand stronger than one pair.
More tentatively, I also felt it was somewhat unlikely that anyone had the A. Many
players, particularly those in late position, would have stabbed at the pot with such a good
draw.

When the K came on the turn, I felt that I had a very strong draw. There was a good
chance a spade would give me the best hand, plus I now had outs to a straight that would
almost certainly be good if I hit it. I don’t often bluff into four people, but here I felt
I could both show a ton of strength and have a good number of outs if called. I was even
considering bluffing blank rivers depending on who called me and how. I bet 20K into a 30K
pot. The first three players folded, and the last guy stared at me for a long time before
folding a King face-up. That’ll work.

Frustration

Despite that hand, I actually lost chips overall at this table, mostly on failed steals
or calling raises and folding flops, before getting bounced to yet another table, where I
remained for the rest of the day. Going into the second break, I sent a tweet to effect of “Hard
to stay ahead of these blinds.” My girlfriend later said that she was worried, upon
seeing that, that I was getting antsy and about to do something dumb.

Sure enough, I found myself four-betting A2s against a pretty tight player who three-bet
me out of the SB. It might seem like a tight player would be a good target for a light four-bet,
but really what it means is that he’s not three-betting without a good hand. Sure enough,
he shoved, and that cost me 33,000 chips and made me feel pretty silly. Thankfully, we only
had about 30 more minutes to play until the dinner break, at which point I had two hours
to calm down and regroup. I sent another tweet describing what I’d done and adding “May
it be my last mistake of the day.” I believe it was, at least the last big one.

It can get frustrating, when you are watching other players accumulate chips left and right,
to just fold fold fold. In reality, there are a lot of reasons why an aggressive strategy
that works for some people may not work for you. Perhaps they have more chips, a more intimidating
table presence, or are just overall better than you and inspire more fear in their opponents
than you do and consequently get away with more bluffs. Or perhaps they are just picking
up a lot of good cards, or perhaps you are getting unlucky to run into good cards when you
attempt a steal.

The important thing is to keep playing your best and not get too concerned about how many
chips other people I have. I used the dinner break to get into this mindset and maintained
it well for the last three hours of the night. I had 170K going into the break and would
be returning to blinds of 1,500/3,000/500, so really I was in fine shape.

One thing that helped enormously was a really cool guy who sat on my left at my third and
final table. He was forty years old but looked younger, with a shaved head with a lightning
bolt tattooed on the back of it. He described himself as a former deadhead and current entrepreneur.
He’d been around poker for a while and also had pretty interesting taste in literature. It
was definitely the most high-brow conversation I ever had at a poker table.

The first time that the action folded to me in the small blind, he told me that he, in the
big blind, hadn’t yet looked at his cards. “These are Schrödinger’s cards. They exist
only as indeterminate energy waves.”

I smiled and folded a pretty junky hand. He turned over a slightly better junky hand. “Sure,” I
said. “But what would they have been if I’d raised?”

There was another pot where I raised in first position with a pair of Tens, the best hand
I’d seen since those Aces I’d had the second hand of the day. My pair shriveled, however,
when the Deadhead re-raised me. I was pretty sure I was beat but gave him the stare down
just in case. He quickly put on his sunglasses, saying, “I don’t want you to see into
my soul.”

“I have a feeling I’d see some pretty disturbing things.”

“You got that right, man” he told me as I folded.

I noticed that he had some hand sanitizer and asked for a squirt, which he permitted. “There
aren’t a lot of things in this world filthier than casino chips,” I noted.

He shot back with, “Yeah, but I’ve met a few of them. Boy I did some stupid things
back in the day.”

I’m sure this was true, but I don’t mean to give the impression that he was any sort of
dirtbag. He’s a father now and seems to have grown out of a lot of his younger ways. We had
a long conversation about ethics in poker, and he seemed very earnest about wanting to live
an upstanding life. He was actually one of the nicest and most interesting people I’ve met
in my six years at the WSOP, and I’m hoping that we’ll stay in touch.

So that was it. I really didn’t play any more significant pots and had very few truly good
hands all day. I stabbed at a few pots, some of which succeeded and some didn’t, and finished
the day with 147K, not too far ahead of where I started. Still, I’d made it down to the final
15% or so, and the money was in sight. I’ve made several deep runs in this tournament, and
in every one there was at least one day where I started with substantially less than the
average. By now I know better than to let it get me down.

Day 4

I’m not going to bother describing my Day 4 starting table, because it only lasted an hour
or so before it broke up. That was enough time for me to double my chips, though, in a blind
battle with the player on my left.

I was relatively short, and I open limped with 22 hoping to limp-raise all-in rather than
bet and possibly face an all-in re-raise from him. He foiled that plan by checking, and we
saw a 955 flop. I checked expecting him to bet a really wide range. He bet 5,500 and I called.

I intended to check-call again on the turn, except that it was a 2, giving me a full house.
I checked, he bet 8,000, and I raised to 28,000, which he called. I bet 60,000 on a Ten river,
and he shoved for about 100,000 total. I actually took a second to think about this, because
I really didn’t expect him to raise the river with bare trips, and I had the worst possible
full house. I had a bad feeling, but I couldn’t seriously consider folding getting 7:1, so
I called off the last of my chips and he showed J5 for trips.

Machismo

That put me above 300K, and I ran that up to nearly 400K before moving to my next table,
which was where I spent most of the day. It was a great table, with a lot of scared-looking
small stacks. Neither of the guys with big stacks seemed particularly good. The first pot
I witnessed was a medium-sized confrontation where one of them showed down A7o in a three-bet
pot to beat the other’s KK. I was glad to see both that the one was willing to call a three-bet
out of position with A7o and that the other was clearly tilted to lose the pot to him.

The A7o guy proved especially bad. Unfortunately, he was sitting two spots to my left, which
is a tough spot to have a guy who wants to play 70% of the hands he’s dealt. He was from
Queens and absolutely exuded machismo: big sunglasses, big muscles, tattoos, designer
clothes. He seemed to take every bet or raise as an affront to his manhood, always barking
out, “How much is dat?” before defiantly tossing his chips into the pot. With over
a million of them, I suppose he could afford to be defiant.

It’s a common misunderstanding that you should never bluff a calling station. In fact, I
make a lot of money bluffing loose players. A guy who plays 70% of his hands pre-flop is
rarely going to flop a strong hand. If he’ll only call a flop bet with a pair or a draw,
then raising and betting the flop is going to be profitable no matter what you have.

On this philosophy, I took a couple stabs at pots against this guy. Unfortunately, he kept
catching a piece of the board, and I kept missing. So I bled off about half of my chips to
him, though I don’t regret how I played any of those hands. It was just unlucky that he kept
getting a piece of the flop.

Actually he did bluff me in one of those confrontations, though it still took some luck
for him to have that opportunity. I raised his BB with JTo and continuation bet a 965 flop,
which he called. We both checked an Ace on the turn- I didn’t think he’d fold any pair if
I bet, though it might have been a reasonable spot to plan two more barrels- and I folded
to a bet on a 2 river. He showed 74o for the busted straight draw, but I just smiled at him.

Having invested more than half my chips in speculative plays that didn’t pan out and tarnished
my image in the process, I resolved to tighten up and have the goods the next time I got
involved in a substantial pot. We were also nearing the bubble, so it made sense to put the
risky stuff on hold before locking up a $20K payday.

It took an orbit or two, but I finally picked up my first big pair, JJ. I opened to 12K
UTG, Macho Man called, and then a new big stack re-raised to 48K. I had less than 200K in
my stack, so my only options were to shove or fold. It was a good squeeze spot, and against
most people at the table, I’d have been willing to go with it. This guy was new to the table,
though, and didn’t know much about either of us. He also seemed to be an amateur, which made
it less likely that he was up to something as sophisticated as a squeeze play against an
UTG raiser. After much deliberation I folded my Jacks. Macho Man, surprisingly, folded as
well, so I never did learn what the re-raiser had.

We approached the bubble with surprisingly little fanfare. As usual, play slowed to a crawl
when we were just three eliminations away from the money, which for 693rd place was about
$19,000. My stack was small, so I had no opportunities to bully any of the other short stacks.
I just folded my junk hands and after an hour or so we were in the money and people started
playing much more quickly again.

It was frustrating not having more chips at this great table, but I bided my time. Eventually
I managed to double through the guy on my right. I raised UTG with AJ, he called out of his
big blind, and we got a wonderful AJ4 flop. He checked, I bet 22K, and he raised to 44K.
There were no draws to speak of, so I figured either he was bluffing or I could get his stack
on any turn anyway, so I just called, hoping to give him more rope if he was bluffing.

The turn was a 5, and he checked. This leaned me towards putting him on a bluff, so I checked
behind. The river was a K, and he quickly moved all in. I called, and he showed J5 for a
turned two pair. It was an oddly played hand but a welcome double-up for me.

I finally had chips again, but for a while I wasn’t getting anything remotely playable to
invest them on. Finally, on the last hand before dinner break, I got a pair of Queens. Blinds
were 3,000/6,000/1,000, and I raised to 15,000. Macho Man in the small blind re-raised to
40,000. I kept my cool, but in my head, I was thinking, “Finally, this is it!”

As much as he hated to fold, I was still afraid that an all-in bet might spook him. I was
sure he wouldn’t fold to a smaller re-raise, though, even though any remotely competent player
would have recognized how strong my hand had to be to make such a play. I re-raised to 110,000,
leaving 120,000 behind. To my surprise, he actually looked at my stack, but then he decided
to move all-in anyway. Of course I called, and he showed A9o. I was a big favorite, but there
was still about a 28% chance that he could hit an Ace or something and eliminate me.

I steeled myself for that eventuality. The dealer revealed the flop, and fortune favored
me: my opponent got no help. “Ace! Come on Ace!” he shouted as the dealer dealt
the turn, which was also no help to him. I remained stoic. “Gimme an Ace!” But
it was not to be. The river was a 3, and I won the pot. I did my best to show no emotion
as all as I collected the chips.

Finishing Strong

I went to dinner with 550K, a solidly above-average stack. It was a great feeling going
to dinner knowing that I’d at least won something and that I finally had a comfortable stack
again. To cap it all off, I was meeting a good friend at Gaylord’s, my favorite restaurant
at the Rio (the only good one, to be honest) and the place that taught me to love Indian
food. Dinner was delicious and thoroughly enjoyable, and I came back refreshed and feeling
great for the last three hours.

I didn’t get another chance to make anything happen at this table, but I did meet an interesting
guy who was sitting on my right. He was a retired veteran of the both the Marines and the
Army and had served in both Gulf Wars. He now lived in Alaska and had won his seat in the
tournament by coming in first in the year-long standings of a weekly poker league on an Army
base in Anchorage. “I’m as amateur as they come,” he told me, “and I’m just
thrilled to be in the money.”

Much to my regret, that great table broke up, and I was moved to a new one. It wasn’t bad,
but there was at least one good player with a big stack on my left, so that cramped my style
considerably. I really only played one hand, but it was a good one.

Blinds were 4,000/8,000/1,000. I raised to 20K with a pair of Kings in first position, and
a nondescript guy in his 30′s called from late position. Being new to the table, I had no
idea what to make of him. We got a Q77 flop, and I bet 33K, about half the pot. He called.
The turn was an 8, and I bet 70K, which he called. The river was a 5, and while it wasn’t
entirely out of the question for him to have trips or a full house, I figured I was probably
ahead something like 80% of the time, which was plenty good enough for a value bet. I pushed
out 120K, and he quickly called with AQ, enabling me to rake a 300K pot.

After that I went back into my shell and finished the day with 755,400, nearly five times
what I started with and significantly more than the average of 545K. Only 378 players remained
in the tournament. We were all guaranteed $30,000, and I was well positioned to make a run
at a much larger prize. According to ESPN’s Andrew Feldman, I’m the only player to cash in
this tournament five of the last six years, which was pretty cool to know no matter what
else happened.

The other cool thing was that Manoj, the big stack who’d raised me off of Jacks near the
bubble, finished the day as the tournament chipleader. He and I had gotten friendly in the
last few hours of the day, and he seemed like a genuinely very nice guy, so it was good to
see him doing so well.

Day 5

Sexism

In a
blog post about the WSOP Ladies’ Event, I wrote that, “a female poker player is
virtually guaranteed to get comments at the table. These range from relatively innocuous
banter (“That’s a big raise for a little lady”) to outright sexual harassment.
Casinos may be empowered to stop the worst of it, though they generally don’t, but on the
whole there seems to be no avoiding the fact that a female poker player must deal with
comments and attention directed at her because of her gender.”

My Day 5 experience provided more than a few examples of this behavior. I was sitting to
the left of Ericka Moulinho, one of three women still in the event. In what may already be
an illustration of sexism in poker, Ericka was generally described as “the girlfriend
of David Sands”, a well-known poker pro who was also still in the tournament. She was
in her late 20′s, slender and pretty, heavily made up but not dressed in particularly provocative
fashion.

The oldest player in the table, a retired business executive who’d had a hand in the poker
world for quite some time before becoming a serious player and who was roughly twice Ericka’s
age, started in on her before the cards were even in the air. “I am not going to mind
staring at you all day.” She just smiled. “Really, you are very nice looking. Good
luck to you.”

“Thank you,” she said simply. It was hard for me to tell whether or not she was
bothered by this, since the dealer was sitting between the two of us.

We lost one player at our table early, and in his place we got a guy who looked straight
off the cast of The Sopranos: he was a swarthy with a deep tan, several gold chains nestled
in the ample chest hair bursting forth from the open buttons at the top of his shirt, and
black hair slicked all the way back. He spoke with a perfect New York accent, and almost
immediately he was speaking to Ericka, who was seated directly across the table from him. “Oh,
best seat in the house!” he exclaimed. “What a good lookin’ girl you are.”

“Two flirtatious comments directed at Ericka in twenty minutes,” I tweeted, but
they were soon followed by a third.

Out of nowhere, the Businessman said to her, “I’m sorry, it’s just hard not to look
at you. You’re very pretty. Really.”

“Thank you,” I heard her say to him again.

He and the New Yorker soon got involved in a hand where the New Yorker ended up folding
Ace-Jack face-up to a re-raise. The older gentleman showed a Queen. “Show me the othah
whoah,” the New Yorker demanded, then looked over at Ericka. “Oops, sorry, honey.”

“That’s OK,” she said. The other man did indeed turn over a second Queen.

Given his persona it almost seemed natural and necessary for him to act the way that he
did. I’m really not a fan of the “men can’t help themselves” argument, but it did
seem to be about as true in this guy’s case as it ever could be.

Not to mention that at times he was genuinely funny and entertaining even when being offensive.
He proved overall to be a pretty likeable guy, as long as you took him with a grain of salt.
He certainly didn’t take himself too seriously and was a lot more entertaining than your
average poker player. Upon his elimination, I told him, “Sorry to see you go, sir. You
were a lot of fun to play with.”

He turned to look back at me. “Hey thanks guy. I appreciate that. Really.”

Psy-Ops

The really significant thing about my table, poker-wise, was Christian Harder, Two Plus
Two’s charder30, who was sitting to my immediate left. He and I met once before, when we
were both still in last year’s Main Event on Day 6. Christian is from Annapolis, near my
childhood home in Baltimore County, so we swapped Maryland stories for a bit as we played.

I’d known coming into the day that Christian would be on my left. He started the day short-stacked,
so even though he was a nice guy I was hoping he’d bust just so I’d get a softer spot in
that seat. Great player that he is, though, he quickly rallied and soon had over 500K.

The first level was good to me as well, as I flopped a set against a pair of Kings to bust
a player and catapult me over the million chip mark. Going into the break, Christian was
clearly thrilled to have 500K, even though that was still a below average stack. In stark
contrast, I ran into Manoj, my friend from the previous day, who sounded downright despondent
to have “only” 1.5 million simply because he’d had three times that at the start
of the day.

I tried giving him a little pep talk during the break, reminding him of how many players
would love to be in his shoes and how much of the tournament was left to be played, but it
was no help. He ended up losing the rest of his chips in some unnecessary spots. He did,
however, find my blog and send me a very nice e-mail a few days later thanking me for the
effort, which confirmed my read that he was a nice and genuine guy.

Back at the table, I had a very specific plan for dealing with Christian. I wanted to do
everything I could to keep him on his toes against me, such that he never felt too confident
about what I had or how I was playing and thus would have more difficulty using his position
to take advantage of me.

For example, in one of the first pots we played together, blinds were 10K/20K with a 3K
ante. He raised to 43K, and the action folded to me in the big blind, where I’d been dealt
AQo. I called, and we saw a 6 2 9 flop. I checked, and Christian checked behind me.

The turn was an 8. I checked, and Christian bet 20K, less than a quarter of the pot. Glad
to be playing smallball, I called.

The river paired my Queen. Unless Christian was up to something very strange, I was a lock
to have the best hand. Remember, though, that my goal was to play as tricky as possible and
keep him on his toes. I checked again, and now Christian bet 45K. I raised to 120K. After
long thought and much staring, he folded. “Guess you have Ace-Queen,” he remarked.

Of course his guess was correct, but I gave no indication of that. Had I just bet 45K on
the river, he probably would have called. I would have won the same amount of money, but
he would have seen my hand. Now, even though he’d actually deduced my holding correctly,
he couldn’t be sure of that. There would always be that lingering doubt that I’d bluffed
him or played an even stronger hand very slowly, and that would make him less confident in
his future dealings with me. That was my hope anyway.

My psychological warfare with Christian extended beyond the table. I’d followed his Twitter
feed, @realcharder30, for some time. I didn’t know for sure whether he followed mine, but
I thought there was a chance.

We played a big pot where I called a raise from a third player with AJo on button, and Christian
called out of the small blind. They checked an AJ4 flop, I bet, Christian called, and third
player folded. He checked and called a turn bet as well but check-folded when I bet the river.
I tweeted a quick update of my chip count: “1.4m. Triple barreled charder in weird spot.”

Technically this wasn’t a lie, though I was aware that using “triple barrel” in
this context would imply that I was bluffing. I also deliberately didn’t identify Christian’s
Twitter name in my tweet, because then he’d know that I meant for him to see it. I was hoping
that he would come across the tweet, assume that I was being honest, and therefore conclude
that he’d been bluffed.

Sure enough, he soon wrote back: “Sigh??? RT @thinkingpoker: Triple barreled charder
in weird spot.”

Then he showed me the tweet on his phone. “Does this mean you were bluffing?” In
answer I gave him just an awkward little smile, trying to suggest that I was surprised or
embarrassed that he’d come across my message.

This whole exchange actually got some press coverage because this phenomenon of players
following each other on Twitter is an interesting one. I did an
interview with Cardplayer magazine where they asked me about it. I still had four more
hours to play with Christian at the time I did the interview, so I didn’t want to tip my
hand about what exactly I was up to on Twitter, but you can see that at the end I do drop
a little hint about “Twitter psy-ops”.

Remains of the Day

I played pretty snug for the rest of the day, though I did attempt one substantial bluff
against Ericka. I three-bet her late position open with AJo, and she quickly called. The
KT4 flop gave me nothing but a gutshot. Her stack was short enough that she could easily
check-raise all-in, so my initial plan was to take a free card and hope to turn an A or Q.

However, before checking, Ericka made a show of counting out chips for a bet. She knew I
was watching her, and I remembered the old Mike Caro adage that “Strong means weak.” It
seemed like she didn’t want me to bet, so my new plan was to bet the flop and move all-in
on the turn if she called. It’s possible that she duped me, though, because she did check-raise
all-in, and I had to fold my draw.

Towards the end of the day, Christian did finally manage to get the best of me in a big
pot. I’d mostly been keeping my head down in late position since he’d three-bet me more than
once, so I was glad to pick up AKo in the CO. He just called my raise on his button, which
I suppose was better than folding, though I really wanted him to re-raise.

The flop came AT6 rainbow, and he called a bet. The turn was an 8, and for whatever reason,
I decided against trying for three streets of value, so I checked planning to value bet the
river.

To my surprise, Christian made a big bet, nearly the size of the pot, on the turn. This
was odd because I expected him to have a hand like a weak Ace, medium pair, or pair of T’s
that wouldn’t want to play such a large pot. Even he was bluffing, he wouldn’t be trying
to get me off of a big hand and presumably wouldn’t feel the need to bet so much.

I called and checked a 4 river, and he bet huge again. The size of his bets really set off
alarm bells in my head. Folding a hand as good as top pair, top kicker in this spot is really
much too exploitable against a great player like Christian, but I couldn’t shake the feeling
that I was beat. For better or worse, I ended up folding.

I finished Day 5 with just over 1.5 million chips, which was very slightly more than average.
Only 143 players remained in the tournament, so I was closing in on my third top 100 finish
in three of the largest fields the Main Event has ever seen. I never did find out what Christian
had in that last hand, but ESPN recorded both of our cards, so maybe I’ll get chance to look
like either an idiot or a genius on TV.