I played the World Series of Poker for the first time in 2011. Having been consistently winning at the biggest stakes available in San Francisco (which are a lot lower than the biggest stakes in Vegas), I wondered if I might have a shot at showing well in the tournament.
The World Series of Poker is actually around fifty different tournaments, covering most major varieties of poker games and playing structures. The main event is the $10,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’Em tournament. I play Limit Hold’Em, so I entered the $1500 Limit tournament. Doing well in this tournament is nowhere near as prestigious as doing well in the main event, but it’s still a tough test of poker skills, and a pretty big deal.
The top 10-15% of players get “in the money”, which means that they win something. Seventieth place might get $2500 back, while first gets almost $200,000. In 2011 I was most likely one hand away from making it into the money.
As I got better at poker, I’d wanted to play again, but competing trips or priorities kept me away until this year. I mentioned to a friend that I was going to play, and he offered to stake me, making it an even easier decision.
Unfortunately, I was coming off a long flight from Stockholm and hadn’t gotten as much practice in as I had hoped. I thought about not playing, and finally decided that if I felt tired the morning of the tournament, I wouldn’t play.
I woke up feeling really good, though, and I played a thousand hands in a simulator and felt fresh, so I decided to play. My friend Christophe and I drove over to the Rio to enter the tournament and play.
Our event had 660 players, the top 72 of whom would be paid. My only goal was to make it to the top 72. For someone who doesn’t play every day, and who has only ever played one other tournament, that would be a pretty big accomplishment. Plus, I just wanted to make sure that my staking friend made a profit investing in me.
The atmosphere at first is really light and fun. Half of the players at the table are terrible, and everyone is joking around. The stakes start out small, which played to my advantage because it gave me time to reacclimatize to poker without a lot of pressure. An hour in I was feeling very good. The competition seemed much easier than the previous time I’d played, and I felt as though I was one of the best at the table.
Players began to get knocked out, and the tables consolidated. Every time I was moved to another table, I noticed the competition was better. The worst players were getting weeded out very quickly.
The tournament is split over three days, and I remembered it ending around midnight each night from my previous experience. But this time it went to four in the morning. I was exhausted by the end and resolved to fold as much as possible, not wanting to take risks while tired. But I had a good run of cards near the end and was forced to play a lot of hands. Luckily I did well and ended up going into day two with the third largest amount of chips out of the remaining 220 people.
Things felt a lot more tense on day two. On the first day stakes were raised every two hours, but day two had them raising every hour. That meant that people were dropping like flies, and very soon every hand was a serious hand. If you lost one big one, you might not make it to the money.
Soon we had one hundred people left, bringing us very close to making it into the money. When this happens, everyone slows down, hoping that people at other tables will bust, thus advancing themselves automatically. I counted my chips and figured that if I just folded everything, even good hands, I’d coast to the money. I would have almost nothing left, but I could take 72nd place or so and be able to say that I cashed in a World Series event.
Sticking to my strategy, I folded otherwise good hands like King-Queen suited, even when I was in late position. But one or two really good hands came along, so I made the decision to run them. One lost a small pot, putting me in jeopardy, but the next got me a big win, making it certain that I’d make it to the money.
Once in the money, I reverted back to just playing solid poker. I told myself that just making it to the money was amazing, and that I had no real shot at the final table or winning, so I should just play hard and advance the rankings if possible. Every ten spots or so increased my payout, and I felt like I could probably push up to the $4000 level.
As the field dwindled to 50 players or so, there were no longer easy marks at the table. Everyone was good enough that they had to be taken seriously. Part of the fun of the World Series is that you get to play against some of the best of the world, but have only a limited downside.
So even though they were tough, I really enjoyed playing back against serious pros, getting to test myself a little bit. I definitely didn’t feel like I was better than these guys, but I did feel like I was at least in the same league. I was good enough that they couldn’t steamroll me, and I was probably going to get their money if I had better cards or better position on them.
Unfortunately, I made one really big mistake on day two. There was a situation where I should have reraised someone in order to make it untenable for the player after me to stay in. I was intimidated by the player who raised, so I chickened out and just called. I only lost a little bit, but I would have won a huge pot if I had made the move. I knew it was the right move, but played it too safe.
The day ended with only twenty-eight of us left, with me ranked 15th in chips. It was still anyone’s game, though. Even though I was middle of the pack, the leader had less than three times what I had, which is a crossable moat. For the first time, I started thinking that maybe I could make it to the final table. If not by skill, just a few lucky hands and some solid playing could put me there.
I was very nervous going into day three. I had looked at the player’s bios the night before, and nearly everyone was an accomplished professional. Several of them had won World Series events, and nearly all of them had cashed before. I was definitely swimming with sharks.
With nine people to a full table, and twenty-eight of us left, we were all playing short-handed, meaning that there were only seven at each table. Proper play requires adjustments for smaller tables, and one of my weaknesses as a player is making those adjustments, so I was worried. Luckily I hung in there, and soon we were three tables of nine. Once we hit that level, every player would win at least $6000.
Nineteenth through twenty-seventh paid the same amount, so I figured it was time to make a run for it. It’s better to take a small chance at hitting eighteen and lose than play conservatively and have no chance at moving to the next tier. I got average cards here, but did some of my best playing of the tournament, and ended up in a pretty good position.
As we ascended the tiers, I’d start them out playing aggressively, but then dial it back once there was one person left, hoping to coast to the next one. This worked well, but I ran into one big losing hand that decimated my stack. I was in the 13th-15th tier, paying $9400, and I was on life support.
Once you have very few chips, any hand you play figures to be your last. There’s no point in saving just a few chips, so when you decide to play, you keep raising to get all of your money in. That way, if you win, you get to fully double or triple what you have left.
Everyone else had hundreds of thousands of chips, and I was barely hanging on with 12,000. I picked my hand, Jack-Eight, and went all in. I won, and bumped up to 32,000. That was still too little, so I went all in again on King-Seven. My opponent flipped over King-Four. This put me at a huge advantage, but he hit his pair of fours and knocked me out.
I ended up in twelfth place, which paid $12,000. Unfortunately my backer gets 70% and I traded 15% of my equity with my friend who was playing, and lost, so I’ll only get $1800.
Playing in the World Series, especially near the end, is a truly bizarre experience. I was so amped up when I finished that I didn’t even go collect my money. All I could think about doing was going home and sitting on my couch.
I was equal parts elated to have done so incredibly well, and devastated that I didn’t make it to the final table. Sometimes we’d go a full hour with no one being knocked out, but in the fifteen minutes it took me to drive home, two more people had been eliminated. I’d played for twenty-five hours, but if I had hung in for just twenty more minutes, I would have made the final table.
It’s easy to second-guess decisions and wish that different cards had come, but I know that the most accurate view is this: I did way better than I expected to, and fulfilled a long-time goal of cashing in the World Series. I had an amazing experience playing serious poker with some of the best in the world, and I’m sure I’ll be back again next year for more.
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Thanks to my friend for staking me, and to all of the other players who treated me really well. I enjoyed playing with all of them and made a bunch of buddies along the way.
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