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Loving Las Vegas

My Fictional Win at the World Series of Poker:Four - TV Table  
By John Vorhaus

 

Midway through play on day three of the main event at the 2005 World
Series of Poker, with the starting field of 5,000 plus whittled to a “modest” 700 or 800 players, I’m lifted and shifted to the TV table. I
assume this is luck of the draw, and has nothing to do with my stunning good looks (absent) or my dazzling strategy (get lucky) or the fact that I’m wired for internet sight and sound.

 

In any case, there I am, awkwardly learning the trick of showing my hole cards to the embedded little lipstick cam while ESPN’s other cameras swoop and hover like carrion-fowl, eager to feast on the — let’s face it, agony of defeat makes great television — bustouts. I’m determined not to be one of these, and seem to be in no immediate danger, for my chip count is up over 150K; not the chip lead, but not chopped liver.

 

Twentysomething wunderkind Walter ‘Run the Table’ Sable is sitting to my immediate left. He’s living up to his nickname, banging away at pot after pot, hardly letting anyone else get a bet in edgewise. Not what you’d call a camera-shy guy, he’s also milking his moment at the TV table with jokes, banter, and frequent forays to the rail to swap spit with his eye-candy gal pal, Claudine, a pit-viper player in her own right. They make quite a pair, these two. I hear they’ve got tattoos of one another’s silhouettes on their butt cheeks.

 

With Walter on my left I know I should just sit tight and hope for big tickets to trap with. Yeah, that’s the safe strategy, but it’s not the game I came to play. Having crossed my Rubicon of doubt on day two, I’m looking to put myself in a position to win this thing, and letting Sable stall me out for hours is not going to advance that cause.

 

I’m gonna have to get creative.

 

I cast my mind back to the rope-a-dope sequence I laid on Pat Hand, back on day one of this gymkhana. By painting myself as weak, loose and tilty, I seduced him into betting off all his chips with a lock loser. But that clown had all the mental deftness of a dinosaur egg. Sable’s going to be a much trickier safe to crack, especially since he’s got position.

 

But hang on now, maybe I can use his positional advantage against him. After all, he knows he’s got position, plus table image, lots of chips and a fierce reputation; all of these things can be expected to keep a player like me in line. And what does a player like me, thus kept in line, do? Sits tight and hopes for big tickets.

 

Since Sable takes this as my default strategy, I figure I’m probably clear to run at least one check-raise bluff. I wait long enough to look tight, then limp into a pot in middle position with rags. When Wally makes his standard probing, let’s see what you’re made of, shoe clerk raise, I reraise him half my stack. As expected, he puts me on the big-ticket tip and gets away from his hand. That’s a pot, but that’s only part A.

 

Now he’s alert to the possibility that the guy in front of him is not a complete rollover. He’s wondering whether I had a hand back there or just a questing spirit. A little while later, I flat-call his under-the-gun raise from my big blind, then check-raise a flop so ragged he has to figure me for a piece of it, and lays down. That’s part B.

 

You know the expression, “Third time’s the charm?” Well, around here we say, “Third time’s the adjustment.” When you run a series of moves on someone, your first shot comes as a surprise, and as a surprise it usually works. Your second stab in the same direction provokes great suspicion; just as two points define a line, two frisky moves (such as check-raises) suggest a tendency toward trickery. A foe of sufficient cleverness can detect these tendencies and unscramble their patterns. The third time you try your move — third time’s the adjustment — your enemy is ready with his counter-measure. He’s got you!

 

The first time I reraised, Sable became alert. The second time I reraised, he formed a hypothesis. My third reraise will confirm his hypothesis — that I’m a lying sack of cheese — and he’ll be ready to lay me low. Unless, of course, I happen to have a hand. This would be part C.

 

Everyone knows you don’t win big tournaments without some breaks along the way. These breaks are commonly thought of as, you know, you’re A-K holding up against a pocket pair or a slightly underdog flush draw getting there. To me, the luck of poker is getting the cards you need to sell what you’re selling when the market is hot. I’d set up Walter Sable to believe that I wasn’t going to let him (by golly) run the table, not while I had something to say about it. Now he’s ready to come after me. Next time I flat-call, he’ll raise with any semi-strong hand and if I reraise — which he expects I’ll do according to the program he thinks I’m running — he’ll come over the top for a massive bet and put my feet to the fire.

 

Luck, then, is me picking up pocket kings while this idea is still fresh in his mind. Luck is Sable deciding that pocket jacks — those troublesome pocket jacks — is a sufficiently strong hand with which to launch his counter-attack. Luck isn’t really kings holding up over jacks; that’ll happen eight times out of ten, more or less. Had I sat tight and waited for big tickets, I’d have taken a small piece of Walter on that hand. By setting up and defeating his expectation, I’m able to grab most of his stack.

 

Now I’m the big stack at the TV table, and now I get to play bully. For two solid hours no one else can get a raise in edgewise and I run my stack up to almost half a million. Somewhere along the way we cross the money line. I don’t even notice. A money finish doesn’t interest me now. I’m in it to win it.

 

Okay. We go to tomorrow. The machine is hitting on all cylinders now. If she doesn’t throw a piston rod, we should be in pretty good shape.

 

NEXT: Money Shot

 

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