Why is there a Crowd Around my Table?

Table 42 Blue

As I approached my table I could see that there were an unusually large number of people gathered in that area of the Amazon Room. It turns out that my table was about 15 feet away from where one of the two final tables of the $40K No-Limit Hold ‘em Event #2 was taking place. I fought my way through the people, and I took my seat in Seat #2 at Table 42 Blue. In very sharp contrast to Table 90 Orange, this table was almost as far from any exit as I could possibly be.

I text Dan to let him know I got moved, and I settled in to get to work. I was working with about 8500 chips, so I was still a little below the average chip stack, but I still had over 20 big blinds in my stack. I was able to notice very quickly that the player on my left (seat 3) liked to mix it up with almost any two cards and was very aggressive when doing so. This came to benefit me early while I was at the table when I picked up pocket Queens, was able to raise preflop, and get him as one of my callers. The board came: 8-5-5. I led out and he decided to raise. I wasn’t 100% certain that he didn’t have a 5 in his hand, but when the action folded to me I decided that he wouldn’t have raised me there with a 5 since he probably could extract more by just smooth calling me there. That and the numbers would indicate that it is unlikely for someone to have a third 5 there. Those two things led me to repop it one more time and move all in. He thought for a while, and as soon as I didn’t hear the snap, “I call!” I knew that my Queens were good. He folded, and I raked in a nice pot.

I was able to pick one more pot off of this guy when I check-raised him off his hand with a straight draw and a flush draw, but I didn’t get a whole lot of hands at this table. The player in seat 9 was starting to get ultra-aggressive as the blinds moved up, but anytime I thought about reraising him, I would either get no hand, or someone else was getting in there and my hand was not good enough to stand up to two raises.

It was at this table that I met my Waterloo. My chip stack was about 13400. There were 44 minutes in the last level that we were playing today. The blinds were 800/400/100ante, so I had about 6 times ‘round the table worth of blinds. I was dealt Ace-King offsuit in the under-the-gun (UTG) position. In the last ten minutes several people were just shoving all in and taking the blinds down, and I was hoping to do just that here. I figured if I won this round of blinds I could easily afford to play no more hands the rest of the day, which I thought would be about three orbits at the pace we were currently playing. I decided to move all in with AK. The first three people folded, but a player who had been playing relatively tight called all in and then everyone else folded. I was hoping that he would show me a worse Ace (Ace-Queen, Ace-Jack, etc) or a pocket pair of Queens or less (although that would still mean I had to hit my hand to win). He turned over pocket Kings, which left me drawing basically to just one of the three remaining Aces. I missed, but I had my opponent covered by 1100 chips. I was in the big blind the next hand, but my 9-2offsuit was no match for the small blind’s 8-7 as I made a pair of 9s only to watch that turn in to a straight for the small blind.

As I thought a little more about the Ace-King hand and discussed it with some others, I ultimately still felt I played it fine there. You might be asking, “Why move all in right away?” (at least that’s the obvious question there), but even if I had just raised to let’s say 2500, or about 3x the big blind, when my opponent moves all in with his pocket Kings I don’t know if I would have folded Ace-King there anyway, since the only two hands I really have to be concerned with are AA or KK, and there was no way for me to know he had one of those two hands. My 2009 World Series had come to a close. At least it wasn’t as fast as last year, but the net result was still the same. It was time to shut the door on the WSOP and get concerned with the cash games, especially since a lot of my fellow poker players who were also eliminated were going to be sitting in those cash games as well.