<OBJECT id=flash1 codeBase=http://active.macromedia.com/flash2/cabs/swflash.cab#version=4,0,0,0 height=47 width=570 classid=clsid
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<EMBED SRC=http://static.espn.go.com/swf/page2/story_headline.swf?subhead=Aggression%20goes%20a%20long%20way swLiveConnect=FALSE WIDTH=570 HEIGHT=47 QUALITY=best SCALE=exactfit wmode=opaque ID=flash1 NAME=flash1 MENU=false DEVICEFONT=false FlashVars=null BGCOLOR=#FFBB00 TYPE=application/x-shockwave-flash PLUGINSPAGE=http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash></EMBED></OBJECT>By Jay Lovinger
Page 2
<!-- hasAccess this is not a premium story -->Forget Phil Ivey. I am the real "Tiger Woods of Poker." </P>
Despite an unexpectedly successful start to my professional career -- up more than $30,000 for the first six months -- I decided to take a few weeks off to completely retool my game, just as Tiger did a few years back. Why? As the wolf said to Little Red Riding Hood, "The better to eat you with, my dear."
Thanks to a few well-chosen words of wisdom from Matt Matros, the 27-year-old third-place finisher at this year's World Poker Tour championship (for which he pulled down a cool $700,000), and Matros' mentor Russell Rosenblum, I realized that my survival-oriented game, which served me so well in events like Foxwoods' Act IIIs (where all "winners" get the same amount of money at the end, regardless of chip count), would not fly in traditional tournaments (where most of the money goes to the top two or three finishers). In other words, it was time to get more aggressive.
Last week, I decided to test out my new, improved game in a couple of tournaments at Foxwoods, part of a series of $500-2,000 buy-in events which leads up to the $10,000 WPT tournament starting on November 13.
Here's how it went:
Thursday, Oct. 28, 4:40 a.m. -- I leave my home in the Bronx in what I hope will be plenty of time to get registered for the $500 buy-in no-limit seniors tournament, which is supposed to start at 10 a.m. I'm probably over-thinking the whole thing, but Foxwoods had been capping entries in no-limit tournaments for months, and I don't want to drive three hours to Ledyard, only to get shut out. As it turns out, there would be no limit on entries -- in fact, less than 300 certified elderly players (you had to be able to prove you were 50 or older to get in) showed up. I listen to a few different radio stations on the way there, and the only thing that seems to have happened the previous day was the Red Sox winning the World Series for the first time in 86 years, not a propitious omen for a lifelong Yankee fan such as myself ...
10 a.m. -- ... which probably accounts for why I am so cranky when the tournament finally kicks off a few hours later. Oklahoma Johnny Hale, an eightysomething player who was pretty dangerous back in the day but now gets his poker fix by "hosting" these seniors events all over the country, kicks off the festivities by asking everybody to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Next, a moment of silence for "our boys and gals fighting terrorism overseas, or anybody you want to remember."
<!---------------------INLINE TABLE (BEGIN)---------------------><TABLE id=inlinetable cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TH style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"><CENTER>Ask Jackpot Jay!</CENTER></TH><TR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ececec" vAlign=top><TD width=284>Got a poker problem or want more details about Jay's poker adventure? Send in your questions and comments. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!---------------------INLINE TABLE (END)--------------------->"What next, bible reading?" I ask the guy standing next to me.
(Am I the only one who is embarrassed by these displays of forced patriotism at degenerate gambling venues? At Yonkers Raceway, a harness racing track near New York City, at precisely 7 p.m. every racing day, a scratchy version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" is played over a loudspeaker system that hasn't been upgraded since the Eisenhower administration. As requested, pretty much all of the 300 or so punters that still attend each night stand up ... but only to better watch the first race from Northfield on the TV monitors, screaming for Greg Grismore to "whip the @#$%&@#!! four horse, you @#$%&@#!! @#$%&@#!!!" I'm sure, could they only be magically transported to Yonkers for a few precious moments, that "our boys and gals" in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere would not be touched by this phony show of appreciation for their sacrifices.)
10:10 a.m. -- Hale asks Perry Green, a member of an old-timers Hall of Fame group that Hale is fronting for, to come up and say a few words. Green, a former fur trader from Alaska who finished second to Stuey Ungar in the 1981 World Series of Poker, was once memorably described by A. Alvarez (in his "The Biggest Game in Town," the best poker book ever written) as "a tiny bearded dumpling of a man, who looks like a miniature Henry VIII." Nearly a quarter of a century later, he's not much the worse for the wear, and unlike Hale, he understands that brevity is the soul of wit. In a rousing but tightly edited speech, he exhorts us not to act "like the kids on TV, who jump around whenever they win a hand." A burst of applause ensues, partially because there's nobody we old-timers hate more than those "kids on TV," and partially because, finally, we are actually going to get to play some poker ...
10:15 a.m. -- ... except that, a few hands into the tournament, like the proud father at a wedding, Hale shows up at our table. This time, he's selling -- or, as he puts it, "asking for donations for" -- chips emblazoned with a picture of John Bonetti to raise money for his old-timers Hall of Fame organization.
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</TD></TR><TR><TD width=350>[font=verdana, arial, geneva][/font]</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Which would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that Bonetti is ... how can I put this in a nice way? ... one of the least pleasant people you will ever meet outside a maximum security prison. A man who hit the poker bigtime at an advanced age, Bonetti, now 70ish, has been booted out of half the casinos in America at one time or another for various poker crimes and misdemeanors, including throwing cards at dealers and other players, projectile cursing and generally acting like a jerk to one and all.
(I played with him once in Las Vegas -- in a one-table Omaha/8 satellite event. We had an international cast of characters -- me, Bonetti, Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott, a handful of fellow British Empire types and a couple of Frenchmen, one of whom Bonetti chose as his special target. Bonetti kept saying things like, "How do you say, '(Bleep) you,' in French?" Maybe it was my imagination, but even the Devilfish, no pussycat himself, seemed embarrassed by this display of Ugly Americanism.)
When one of the players at our table offers to make a donation for a Bonetti chip, a guy in a cowboy hat says, "I wouldn't do that if I was you, pardner. It's bad luck to pay money for something with that (bleep's) picture on it. You'll be out of the tournament in 10 minutes, max."
10:25 a.m. -- Well, 10 minutes into the tournament, I get a chance to try out my new, super-aggressive self. In middle position, I am dealt A-Q unsuited. I make a modest raise of $125 -- we started with $1,500 in tournament chips, $25-25 blinds, 50-minute levels -- and a guy who limped in in front of me is the only caller. The flop comes queen of clubs and two small hearts. The limper, who has about $1,200 in chips left, bets $300. I figure him for a flush draw. The old me, not wanting to risk my tournament existence so early, even as a roughly 2-1 favorite (assuming I am right, of course, which is far from a sure thing), would have been overly cautious here, probably just calling to see what the turn would bring. But now I decide I want to make him pay for drawing, so I go all-in (I have him covered by about $100), forcing him to decide whether he wants to risk his whole tournament on a draw. He quickly calls, turning over the queen of hearts and another small heart. Luckily for me, the turn and the river bring a couple of blanks, neither of which matches his small heart, so I find myself with nearly $3,000 in chips before we had even settled in. At this point, I rather like this new Jackpot Jay.
11:20 a.m. -- Playing with old guys has its advantages -- there's an ease, a lack of tension, a feeling of fellowship us aging types don't feel when a bunch of Internet barracudas are in the field. And the humor -- the John Bonettis of the world notwithstanding -- is easier to take.
After one guy raises out of turn, he offers this deadpan "apology": "I'm sorry. I get so excited when I get a big hand."
Everybody laughs, and the only other guy in the pot smiles and quickly folds.
Somebody asks him, "You think that's a tell?"
More laughter.
1 p.m. -- After almost three hours of garbage hole cards, I am getting a little antsy. Part of my new action philosophy is not to let myself get down to such a small number of chips that I don't have enough of a stack to make aggressive plays, to move people off hands ... or, at least, to make them think long and hard before calling. My problem is, whenever I am ready to make a play to steal some blinds, someone beats me to the punch with a large enough bet that I would be unable to push them off the pot even with an all-in raise.
<!---------------------INLINE TABLE (BEGIN)---------------------><TABLE id=inlinetable cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TH style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"><CENTER>Poker Central</CENTER></TH><TR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ececec" vAlign=top><TD width=284>Have you become obsessed with poker too? Well, no worries -- Page 2 has launched its very own poker section. Check it out. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!---------------------INLINE TABLE (END)--------------------->Finally, with the blinds at $50-100 and a stack of about $2,000 in chips (the average stack size at that point per remaining player is about $4,000), a hand is checked to me on the button. With K-3 unsuited, I raise to $400. After thinking about it for a few minutes, the small blind goes all-in, a raise of $500. I'm not sure what the guy has -- given how long it took him to make up his mind, I don't know if there's any hand he could have that would call for an all-in bet, especially given my tight table image -- but I finally decide he can't have a premium hand (A-A, K-K or A-K), and that he wouldn't have raised with something like a K-Q, though he has shown a tendency to overvalue hands with two picture cards. Therefore, I think, he must have something like A-J, A-10, A-x or a small-to-medium pair, which means that I am no worse than a 70-30 underdog, and I'm getting almost 3-1 on a call.
Sure enough, he has an A-10, which is less than a 2-1 favorite. When I flip over my K-3, the other players look at me like I've suddenly gone mad. And when the A-10 holds up, leaving me with a crippled stack of little more than $1,000, I can almost feel them clucking with pity.
Soon enough, in about 100th place -- well south of cashing -- I am eliminated. As I make the long drive back to New York City, accompanied by more galling commentary about the Red Sox World Series triumph, I contemplate the ugly monster I have created out of the old teddy bear, Jackpot Jay. I know how Victor Frankenstein must have felt.
Sunday, Oct. 31, 11:30 a.m. -- We are nearly two full levels into a $500 buy-in no-limit tournament with a field of more than 850 -- the largest poker event, in terms of participants, in the history of Foxwoods -- and once again I find myself with a slowly hemorrhaging chip stack. We started with $1,500 in tournament chips, and I have been folding as steadily as an electronic accordion.
But I have vowed not to go gently into the good night this time, no matter what, and, with my stack down to $950, I decide the time has come. The blinds are $25-50, and I am on the button when I look at my hole cards and find ... 4-2 offsuit. Everybody folds to the guy on my right, who makes a modest raise to $100. I call, thinking I'm going to make a play for the pot after the flop if a bunch of high cards don't come up (kind of a bastardized version of Greg Raymer's "stop-and-go" maneuver). The small blind and the big blind both call, and the flop comes 5-5-3, giving me an open-ended straight draw and, more important, likely not to be much help to any of the other three still in the pot. Sure enough, it's checked around to me ... and I decide to get greedy. Instead of just winning the pot right there, I want to draw for the straight and double or triple up.
The turn is a 4. The small blind bets $300, the next two guys fold, and I go into a huddle with myself. Since the 4 didn't match the suit of any of the flop cards, I know we're not looking at a flush draw, so I'm finding it hard to imagine how that card helped the small blind. Did he throw in $75, out of position, on a 7-6? A 4-3? Seems like a remote possibility. He could be slow-playing a big pair -- but twice, pre-flop and post-flop? I don't think so. I can only conclude that he figures the 4 didn't help anybody, and this might be a good time to go for the steal. So I raise him all-in with my remaining $850, and when he says, "You got me," I am off on a roll, and feeling righteous.
<!---------------------INLINE TABLE (BEGIN)---------------------><TABLE id=inlinetable cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TH style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"><CENTER>Jackpot Jay's Poker Glossary</CENTER></TH><TR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ececec" vAlign=top><TD width=284>Confused by some of the terms Jay uses in his poker columns? Get their definitions right here. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!---------------------INLINE TABLE (END)--------------------->5:30 p.m. -- We are on the last hand before dinner break. I've been playing well -- or so I believe -- but haven't been getting great cards, so I only have about $6,600 at a time when the average stack is about $10,000. Once again, I am on the button. Everybody folds to me, and I look down and find Q-10 unsuited, a hand I normally throw away without thinking about. Plus, the old me would not want to go broke right before the dinner break.
But the new me ... now that's a different story. The new me doesn't want to spend 75 minutes eating from the Foxwoods buffet while worrying about being short-stacked. So, even though I am only 46 from cashing -- there are 126 of us left, and they are paying the top 80 -- I decide to go for it. I limp in for $300, the small blind and the big blind call, and we watch the flop bring Qh-5c-4c. The small blind checks, the big blind -- my man Spiro, a dangerous but generous player who loves the game with a pure passion that can only be admired -- checks, and I bet $800.
The small blind folds, and, much to my amazement, Spiro raises $2,000. My immediate reaction is an inner screaming: "FOLD! FOLD! FOLD!" I've played with Spiro quite often, and he knows that I know that he knows I'm a solid player who usually has something when I bet. In other words, he knows that the worst hand I could have -- unless I'm on an out-and-out steal -- is the hand I do, in fact, have. And he has raised that hand $2,000. But even as my fingers are reaching, involuntarily, to muck my hole cards, I'm thinking, "Wait a minute. What could he possibly have?"
Now, since Spiro is the big blind, and got to see the flop without putting any more money in the pot, he could have, literally, anything. However, the one thing he could not have, in my opinion, is good hole cards, because, if he had, he would have raised a couple of limpers before the flop. And by good hand, I mean, any pair, including 5-5 or 4-4, which means that he could not have a set of either. I also eliminate A-Q and K-Q from the possibilities, which tells me he can only have one hand that beats me at this point -- Q-J -- and I kind of doubt he would raise $2,000 with Q-J in that position, or Q-anything. So I'm pretty sure he is totally bluffing or, more likely, on some kind of semi-bluff -- most likely a flush draw or, less likely, a straight draw.
In which case, I am ahead of him -- and at least a 2-1 favorite to win the pot. Now I could just call and see what the turn brings. If it's a third club and Spiro goes all-in, I could then fold and save my last $3,500. But the new me is more worried about missing an advantageous opportunity than playing it safe, and I'm afraid that if the turn card does not help Spiro, which is likely, and I then go all-in, he will fold, because the pot odds vs. the odds of his making his flush (or straight) on the river would not quite justify a call. So I go all-in right after the flop, knowing Spiro has to either fold (if he's on a pure steal) or call (if he is, as I believe, on a semi-bluff).
Spiro calls, and turns over Qc-8c, which gives him three more outs than I thought (the three remaining 8s). But I'm pretty happy when a couple of blanks come on the turn and river, leaving me with almost $14,000 in chips to think about while I chow down at the buffet.
9 p.m. -- There is no such thing as a smooth tournament. After my big hand against Spiro, I spend a few hours nursing my stack into the money. With about 55 people left, and the blinds at $600-1,200 (plus $200 antes), I'm sitting with $17,000 in chips (a bit under average at that point), when I am dealt Ad-Kd in the big blind. The guy in first position raises to $3,500, and the guy right behind him -- the guy who was seen on ESPN's coverage of the WSOP telling David Williams that, if he could outlast one more player, he would win an additional $100,000 -- goes all-in for $14,000.
The way I figure it, there's about $21,000 in the pot, and it will cost me another $12,800 to call, which means I'm getting better than 3-2 on my money (I'm assuming the original raiser is going to fold), and unless David Williams' friend has A-A or K-K -- which I think is unlikely, since with either of those hands I believe he would have made a more modest raise, hoping to induce a single caller -- I'm only, at worst, the slightest of underdogs to win the pot. (If he has A-K, I'm a favorite, unless his A-K is suited, too. And if he has something like A-Q suited, I'm a big favorite.) The question is: Do I want to put my tournament life on the line in a coin flip situation?
And the answer is: Yes, because, as Matt Matros has made crystal clear to me, when you have a real statistical advantage in poker, you must take advantage of it -- at least, if your goal is winning the tournament as opposed to just cashing. (Plus, I had already moved into the money, so what the heck.)
The good news: An ace came on the turn. The bad news: A six came on the flop, giving David Williams' friend an unbeatable set. Which wouldn't have been so horrible, except that he decides that merely winning the hand is not enough -- he also decides to "Arieh" me. "Calling me with A-K!" he sputters. "He called me, all-in, with an A-K!" As Steve Martin might have said, "Well, parrrr-doan me."
(The derivation of the verb "to Arieh": During a WSOP telecast, Josh Arieh berated Harry Demetriou for putting Arieh all-in -- AFTER ARIEH GOT LUCKY AND OUTDREW DEMETRIOU ON THE RIVER! Arieh seemed offended that Demetriou would dare to go all in against the great Josh Arieh, just as David Williams' friend was outraged that I had had the temerity to call his all-in bet with a mere A-K suited, which, by the way, was a lot better than Demetriou's A-J unsuited.)
Midnight -- The final lesson of an otherwise rewarding day: Sometimes you can be too aggressive.
Somehow, despite having my stack reduced to a little more than $4,000 by David Williams' friend, I nursed my way into 22nd place. (Okay, so I got lucky a couple of times. Well, more than a couple.) At that point, I had about $8,000 in chips (the average stack of the remaining players was more than $60,000), and I had to make a move soon, because otherwise I would be blinded and ante-ed off in just a few hands.
I was in the small blind, and I decided, without looking at my cards, that if it was folded around to me, I was going all-in. Not to belabor the obvious, but I figured it was about 3-1 that a random hand would fold in the big blind to an all-in bet -- even for only $8,000 -- and that even if I was called, I'd be, at worst, a 70-30 underdog, as long as the big blind didn't have an overpair and both my cards were live.
Which was almost exactly what happened. Everybody folded, I went all-in .. and the big blind called before I could push my chips toward the pot. Then he turned over 8-8, and I flipped over my hole cards ... 8-2 unsuited.
Oops.
So I finished 22nd, taking home a little over $2,200 for my 14 hours of work. Not much to the bottom line, but pretty satisfying to outlast all but 21 of 860 players. Plus, I played the way I had planned -- the new, aggressive me -- and pretty comfortably, at that.
Look out, Phil Ivey.
ATTENTION, IRS: HOW JAY IS DOING IN HIS NEW CAREER
Last week: won $860
Career-to-date: plus $32,594
Jay Lovinger, a former managing editor of Life and a founding editor of Page 2, is writing on his poker adventures for ESPN.com and also writing a book for HarperCollins.
27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000><EMBED SRC=http://static.espn.go.com/swf/page2/story_headline.swf?subhead=Aggression%20goes%20a%20long%20way swLiveConnect=FALSE WIDTH=570 HEIGHT=47 QUALITY=best SCALE=exactfit wmode=opaque ID=flash1 NAME=flash1 MENU=false DEVICEFONT=false FlashVars=null BGCOLOR=#FFBB00 TYPE=application/x-shockwave-flash PLUGINSPAGE=http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash></EMBED></OBJECT>By Jay Lovinger
Page 2
<!-- hasAccess this is not a premium story -->Forget Phil Ivey. I am the real "Tiger Woods of Poker." </P>
Despite an unexpectedly successful start to my professional career -- up more than $30,000 for the first six months -- I decided to take a few weeks off to completely retool my game, just as Tiger did a few years back. Why? As the wolf said to Little Red Riding Hood, "The better to eat you with, my dear."
Last week, I decided to test out my new, improved game in a couple of tournaments at Foxwoods, part of a series of $500-2,000 buy-in events which leads up to the $10,000 WPT tournament starting on November 13.
Here's how it went:
Thursday, Oct. 28, 4:40 a.m. -- I leave my home in the Bronx in what I hope will be plenty of time to get registered for the $500 buy-in no-limit seniors tournament, which is supposed to start at 10 a.m. I'm probably over-thinking the whole thing, but Foxwoods had been capping entries in no-limit tournaments for months, and I don't want to drive three hours to Ledyard, only to get shut out. As it turns out, there would be no limit on entries -- in fact, less than 300 certified elderly players (you had to be able to prove you were 50 or older to get in) showed up. I listen to a few different radio stations on the way there, and the only thing that seems to have happened the previous day was the Red Sox winning the World Series for the first time in 86 years, not a propitious omen for a lifelong Yankee fan such as myself ...
10 a.m. -- ... which probably accounts for why I am so cranky when the tournament finally kicks off a few hours later. Oklahoma Johnny Hale, an eightysomething player who was pretty dangerous back in the day but now gets his poker fix by "hosting" these seniors events all over the country, kicks off the festivities by asking everybody to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Next, a moment of silence for "our boys and gals fighting terrorism overseas, or anybody you want to remember."
<!---------------------INLINE TABLE (BEGIN)---------------------><TABLE id=inlinetable cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TH style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"><CENTER>Ask Jackpot Jay!</CENTER></TH><TR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ececec" vAlign=top><TD width=284>Got a poker problem or want more details about Jay's poker adventure? Send in your questions and comments. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!---------------------INLINE TABLE (END)--------------------->"What next, bible reading?" I ask the guy standing next to me.
(Am I the only one who is embarrassed by these displays of forced patriotism at degenerate gambling venues? At Yonkers Raceway, a harness racing track near New York City, at precisely 7 p.m. every racing day, a scratchy version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" is played over a loudspeaker system that hasn't been upgraded since the Eisenhower administration. As requested, pretty much all of the 300 or so punters that still attend each night stand up ... but only to better watch the first race from Northfield on the TV monitors, screaming for Greg Grismore to "whip the @#$%&@#!! four horse, you @#$%&@#!! @#$%&@#!!!" I'm sure, could they only be magically transported to Yonkers for a few precious moments, that "our boys and gals" in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere would not be touched by this phony show of appreciation for their sacrifices.)
10:10 a.m. -- Hale asks Perry Green, a member of an old-timers Hall of Fame group that Hale is fronting for, to come up and say a few words. Green, a former fur trader from Alaska who finished second to Stuey Ungar in the 1981 World Series of Poker, was once memorably described by A. Alvarez (in his "The Biggest Game in Town," the best poker book ever written) as "a tiny bearded dumpling of a man, who looks like a miniature Henry VIII." Nearly a quarter of a century later, he's not much the worse for the wear, and unlike Hale, he understands that brevity is the soul of wit. In a rousing but tightly edited speech, he exhorts us not to act "like the kids on TV, who jump around whenever they win a hand." A burst of applause ensues, partially because there's nobody we old-timers hate more than those "kids on TV," and partially because, finally, we are actually going to get to play some poker ...
10:15 a.m. -- ... except that, a few hands into the tournament, like the proud father at a wedding, Hale shows up at our table. This time, he's selling -- or, as he puts it, "asking for donations for" -- chips emblazoned with a picture of John Bonetti to raise money for his old-timers Hall of Fame organization.
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(I played with him once in Las Vegas -- in a one-table Omaha/8 satellite event. We had an international cast of characters -- me, Bonetti, Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott, a handful of fellow British Empire types and a couple of Frenchmen, one of whom Bonetti chose as his special target. Bonetti kept saying things like, "How do you say, '(Bleep) you,' in French?" Maybe it was my imagination, but even the Devilfish, no pussycat himself, seemed embarrassed by this display of Ugly Americanism.)
When one of the players at our table offers to make a donation for a Bonetti chip, a guy in a cowboy hat says, "I wouldn't do that if I was you, pardner. It's bad luck to pay money for something with that (bleep's) picture on it. You'll be out of the tournament in 10 minutes, max."
10:25 a.m. -- Well, 10 minutes into the tournament, I get a chance to try out my new, super-aggressive self. In middle position, I am dealt A-Q unsuited. I make a modest raise of $125 -- we started with $1,500 in tournament chips, $25-25 blinds, 50-minute levels -- and a guy who limped in in front of me is the only caller. The flop comes queen of clubs and two small hearts. The limper, who has about $1,200 in chips left, bets $300. I figure him for a flush draw. The old me, not wanting to risk my tournament existence so early, even as a roughly 2-1 favorite (assuming I am right, of course, which is far from a sure thing), would have been overly cautious here, probably just calling to see what the turn would bring. But now I decide I want to make him pay for drawing, so I go all-in (I have him covered by about $100), forcing him to decide whether he wants to risk his whole tournament on a draw. He quickly calls, turning over the queen of hearts and another small heart. Luckily for me, the turn and the river bring a couple of blanks, neither of which matches his small heart, so I find myself with nearly $3,000 in chips before we had even settled in. At this point, I rather like this new Jackpot Jay.
11:20 a.m. -- Playing with old guys has its advantages -- there's an ease, a lack of tension, a feeling of fellowship us aging types don't feel when a bunch of Internet barracudas are in the field. And the humor -- the John Bonettis of the world notwithstanding -- is easier to take.
After one guy raises out of turn, he offers this deadpan "apology": "I'm sorry. I get so excited when I get a big hand."
Everybody laughs, and the only other guy in the pot smiles and quickly folds.
Somebody asks him, "You think that's a tell?"
More laughter.
1 p.m. -- After almost three hours of garbage hole cards, I am getting a little antsy. Part of my new action philosophy is not to let myself get down to such a small number of chips that I don't have enough of a stack to make aggressive plays, to move people off hands ... or, at least, to make them think long and hard before calling. My problem is, whenever I am ready to make a play to steal some blinds, someone beats me to the punch with a large enough bet that I would be unable to push them off the pot even with an all-in raise.
<!---------------------INLINE TABLE (BEGIN)---------------------><TABLE id=inlinetable cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TH style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"><CENTER>Poker Central</CENTER></TH><TR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ececec" vAlign=top><TD width=284>Have you become obsessed with poker too? Well, no worries -- Page 2 has launched its very own poker section. Check it out. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!---------------------INLINE TABLE (END)--------------------->Finally, with the blinds at $50-100 and a stack of about $2,000 in chips (the average stack size at that point per remaining player is about $4,000), a hand is checked to me on the button. With K-3 unsuited, I raise to $400. After thinking about it for a few minutes, the small blind goes all-in, a raise of $500. I'm not sure what the guy has -- given how long it took him to make up his mind, I don't know if there's any hand he could have that would call for an all-in bet, especially given my tight table image -- but I finally decide he can't have a premium hand (A-A, K-K or A-K), and that he wouldn't have raised with something like a K-Q, though he has shown a tendency to overvalue hands with two picture cards. Therefore, I think, he must have something like A-J, A-10, A-x or a small-to-medium pair, which means that I am no worse than a 70-30 underdog, and I'm getting almost 3-1 on a call.
Sure enough, he has an A-10, which is less than a 2-1 favorite. When I flip over my K-3, the other players look at me like I've suddenly gone mad. And when the A-10 holds up, leaving me with a crippled stack of little more than $1,000, I can almost feel them clucking with pity.
Soon enough, in about 100th place -- well south of cashing -- I am eliminated. As I make the long drive back to New York City, accompanied by more galling commentary about the Red Sox World Series triumph, I contemplate the ugly monster I have created out of the old teddy bear, Jackpot Jay. I know how Victor Frankenstein must have felt.
Sunday, Oct. 31, 11:30 a.m. -- We are nearly two full levels into a $500 buy-in no-limit tournament with a field of more than 850 -- the largest poker event, in terms of participants, in the history of Foxwoods -- and once again I find myself with a slowly hemorrhaging chip stack. We started with $1,500 in tournament chips, and I have been folding as steadily as an electronic accordion.
But I have vowed not to go gently into the good night this time, no matter what, and, with my stack down to $950, I decide the time has come. The blinds are $25-50, and I am on the button when I look at my hole cards and find ... 4-2 offsuit. Everybody folds to the guy on my right, who makes a modest raise to $100. I call, thinking I'm going to make a play for the pot after the flop if a bunch of high cards don't come up (kind of a bastardized version of Greg Raymer's "stop-and-go" maneuver). The small blind and the big blind both call, and the flop comes 5-5-3, giving me an open-ended straight draw and, more important, likely not to be much help to any of the other three still in the pot. Sure enough, it's checked around to me ... and I decide to get greedy. Instead of just winning the pot right there, I want to draw for the straight and double or triple up.
The turn is a 4. The small blind bets $300, the next two guys fold, and I go into a huddle with myself. Since the 4 didn't match the suit of any of the flop cards, I know we're not looking at a flush draw, so I'm finding it hard to imagine how that card helped the small blind. Did he throw in $75, out of position, on a 7-6? A 4-3? Seems like a remote possibility. He could be slow-playing a big pair -- but twice, pre-flop and post-flop? I don't think so. I can only conclude that he figures the 4 didn't help anybody, and this might be a good time to go for the steal. So I raise him all-in with my remaining $850, and when he says, "You got me," I am off on a roll, and feeling righteous.
<!---------------------INLINE TABLE (BEGIN)---------------------><TABLE id=inlinetable cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TH style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"><CENTER>Jackpot Jay's Poker Glossary</CENTER></TH><TR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ececec" vAlign=top><TD width=284>Confused by some of the terms Jay uses in his poker columns? Get their definitions right here. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!---------------------INLINE TABLE (END)--------------------->5:30 p.m. -- We are on the last hand before dinner break. I've been playing well -- or so I believe -- but haven't been getting great cards, so I only have about $6,600 at a time when the average stack is about $10,000. Once again, I am on the button. Everybody folds to me, and I look down and find Q-10 unsuited, a hand I normally throw away without thinking about. Plus, the old me would not want to go broke right before the dinner break.
But the new me ... now that's a different story. The new me doesn't want to spend 75 minutes eating from the Foxwoods buffet while worrying about being short-stacked. So, even though I am only 46 from cashing -- there are 126 of us left, and they are paying the top 80 -- I decide to go for it. I limp in for $300, the small blind and the big blind call, and we watch the flop bring Qh-5c-4c. The small blind checks, the big blind -- my man Spiro, a dangerous but generous player who loves the game with a pure passion that can only be admired -- checks, and I bet $800.
The small blind folds, and, much to my amazement, Spiro raises $2,000. My immediate reaction is an inner screaming: "FOLD! FOLD! FOLD!" I've played with Spiro quite often, and he knows that I know that he knows I'm a solid player who usually has something when I bet. In other words, he knows that the worst hand I could have -- unless I'm on an out-and-out steal -- is the hand I do, in fact, have. And he has raised that hand $2,000. But even as my fingers are reaching, involuntarily, to muck my hole cards, I'm thinking, "Wait a minute. What could he possibly have?"
Now, since Spiro is the big blind, and got to see the flop without putting any more money in the pot, he could have, literally, anything. However, the one thing he could not have, in my opinion, is good hole cards, because, if he had, he would have raised a couple of limpers before the flop. And by good hand, I mean, any pair, including 5-5 or 4-4, which means that he could not have a set of either. I also eliminate A-Q and K-Q from the possibilities, which tells me he can only have one hand that beats me at this point -- Q-J -- and I kind of doubt he would raise $2,000 with Q-J in that position, or Q-anything. So I'm pretty sure he is totally bluffing or, more likely, on some kind of semi-bluff -- most likely a flush draw or, less likely, a straight draw.
In which case, I am ahead of him -- and at least a 2-1 favorite to win the pot. Now I could just call and see what the turn brings. If it's a third club and Spiro goes all-in, I could then fold and save my last $3,500. But the new me is more worried about missing an advantageous opportunity than playing it safe, and I'm afraid that if the turn card does not help Spiro, which is likely, and I then go all-in, he will fold, because the pot odds vs. the odds of his making his flush (or straight) on the river would not quite justify a call. So I go all-in right after the flop, knowing Spiro has to either fold (if he's on a pure steal) or call (if he is, as I believe, on a semi-bluff).
Spiro calls, and turns over Qc-8c, which gives him three more outs than I thought (the three remaining 8s). But I'm pretty happy when a couple of blanks come on the turn and river, leaving me with almost $14,000 in chips to think about while I chow down at the buffet.
9 p.m. -- There is no such thing as a smooth tournament. After my big hand against Spiro, I spend a few hours nursing my stack into the money. With about 55 people left, and the blinds at $600-1,200 (plus $200 antes), I'm sitting with $17,000 in chips (a bit under average at that point), when I am dealt Ad-Kd in the big blind. The guy in first position raises to $3,500, and the guy right behind him -- the guy who was seen on ESPN's coverage of the WSOP telling David Williams that, if he could outlast one more player, he would win an additional $100,000 -- goes all-in for $14,000.
The way I figure it, there's about $21,000 in the pot, and it will cost me another $12,800 to call, which means I'm getting better than 3-2 on my money (I'm assuming the original raiser is going to fold), and unless David Williams' friend has A-A or K-K -- which I think is unlikely, since with either of those hands I believe he would have made a more modest raise, hoping to induce a single caller -- I'm only, at worst, the slightest of underdogs to win the pot. (If he has A-K, I'm a favorite, unless his A-K is suited, too. And if he has something like A-Q suited, I'm a big favorite.) The question is: Do I want to put my tournament life on the line in a coin flip situation?
And the answer is: Yes, because, as Matt Matros has made crystal clear to me, when you have a real statistical advantage in poker, you must take advantage of it -- at least, if your goal is winning the tournament as opposed to just cashing. (Plus, I had already moved into the money, so what the heck.)
The good news: An ace came on the turn. The bad news: A six came on the flop, giving David Williams' friend an unbeatable set. Which wouldn't have been so horrible, except that he decides that merely winning the hand is not enough -- he also decides to "Arieh" me. "Calling me with A-K!" he sputters. "He called me, all-in, with an A-K!" As Steve Martin might have said, "Well, parrrr-doan me."
(The derivation of the verb "to Arieh": During a WSOP telecast, Josh Arieh berated Harry Demetriou for putting Arieh all-in -- AFTER ARIEH GOT LUCKY AND OUTDREW DEMETRIOU ON THE RIVER! Arieh seemed offended that Demetriou would dare to go all in against the great Josh Arieh, just as David Williams' friend was outraged that I had had the temerity to call his all-in bet with a mere A-K suited, which, by the way, was a lot better than Demetriou's A-J unsuited.)
Midnight -- The final lesson of an otherwise rewarding day: Sometimes you can be too aggressive.
Somehow, despite having my stack reduced to a little more than $4,000 by David Williams' friend, I nursed my way into 22nd place. (Okay, so I got lucky a couple of times. Well, more than a couple.) At that point, I had about $8,000 in chips (the average stack of the remaining players was more than $60,000), and I had to make a move soon, because otherwise I would be blinded and ante-ed off in just a few hands.
I was in the small blind, and I decided, without looking at my cards, that if it was folded around to me, I was going all-in. Not to belabor the obvious, but I figured it was about 3-1 that a random hand would fold in the big blind to an all-in bet -- even for only $8,000 -- and that even if I was called, I'd be, at worst, a 70-30 underdog, as long as the big blind didn't have an overpair and both my cards were live.
Which was almost exactly what happened. Everybody folded, I went all-in .. and the big blind called before I could push my chips toward the pot. Then he turned over 8-8, and I flipped over my hole cards ... 8-2 unsuited.
Oops.
So I finished 22nd, taking home a little over $2,200 for my 14 hours of work. Not much to the bottom line, but pretty satisfying to outlast all but 21 of 860 players. Plus, I played the way I had planned -- the new, aggressive me -- and pretty comfortably, at that.
Look out, Phil Ivey.
ATTENTION, IRS: HOW JAY IS DOING IN HIS NEW CAREER
Last week: won $860
Career-to-date: plus $32,594
Jay Lovinger, a former managing editor of Life and a founding editor of Page 2, is writing on his poker adventures for ESPN.com and also writing a book for HarperCollins.
