The Steinhorn Stare

After some good play and a cash on Saturday, I was excited to play again on Sunday. Unfortunately, the Venetian event on Saturday went late, so I didn’t get as much sleep as I had anticipated. Regardless, I was up at 10am on Sunday, and headed down to the Amazon room in the Rio to register for the WSOP $3000 no-limit event (Event #28).

As expected the field was relatively small for this one, as it was a larger buy-in event and it took place on Sunday. After a couple events not seeing any pros in sight, I sat down at this one with several at my table, including Minh Ly, Greg “FBT” Mueller, and Hoyt Corkins. A tough table, but after several WSOP and WPT main events, it really doesn’t phase me anymore; in fact, I’d rather have a table of “known entities” (even tough ones) than a table of “idiots” looking to prove themselves.

The first half-hour was definitely interesting, as I picked up KK four times (yes, FOUR times in 30 minutes). The first three I won small pots with, but the fourth was more eventful. With blinds still at $25/50, a professional player who I recognized (but don’t know his name) raised under-the-gun to $150, and it was folded around to me in mid-position. Hoping to isolate the raiser, I re-raised to $450, and it was folded by to the under-the-gun player, who hesitated and then made the call.

The flop was: 5 6 8 (rainbow)

He checked, I bet $600, and he raised to $1400. I figured he either had a middle pair between 9’s and Jacks, or overcards looking to push me off AK, if that’s what I had. Assuming he’d wait for the turn to put in a raise if he had a big hand, I wasn’t concerned when I put in the next raise to $3000. Unfortunetly, I suspect he knew I wouldn’t put him on too big of a hand with his flop check-raise, and that’s why he did it, attempting to induce my re-raise. Anyway, he pushed all-in, and as he only had a few chips more than my re-raise, I had to call. He showed 79s for the straight, and pulled down the pot. A horrible flop for my KK, but well-played by my opponent; had he waited until the turn to pounce, I may have been able to get away from it.

About 40 minutes later, and still around $4000 in chips, I once again picked up KK (yes, FIVE times in 90 minutes). With $50/100 blinds, I raised under-the-gun to $300. Surprisingly, I got four callers behind me. The small blind then attempted a squeeze play (a squeeze play is when a late position or blinds player makes a large raise after a lot of callers, expecting that since most everyone was just calling, no-one had a very strong hand. The key is to get the original bettor/raiser to lay down, and the rest generally fold like dominos). Not only was I not surprised by the squeeze play, I was thrilled that the action again opened up to me so I could re-raise to isolate the the field and not have to play my KK against several players.

The small-blind raised to $1300 (too small of a raise into a pot of $1800, in my opinion), and I hesitated in order to give the impression that I had a tough decision to make. Normally in these situations, the player attempting the squeeze play had a hand like AK, AQ, AJ, KQ, etc, possibly down to middle suited connectors. With a small or medium pair, the player would likely just call instead of raise, in order to win a huge pot (implied odds) should he hit his set on the flop.

The reason I hesitated is that I was fairly certain all the callers behind me would fold (if they had big hands, they would have re-raised to isolate me earlier), and the small blind likely wouldn’t call without a relatively big hand like AK or AQ. Even with AQ, the small blind wouldn’t be pot-committed (he was only getting about 2:1 from the pot and still had enough chips to play if he laid down to my re-reraise), so I wanted to give him the impression that I was weak so he’d make the call. I went so far as to comment that I believed he was putting on the squeeze, indicating to him that my re-raise may have been with a weaker hand because I knew he likely didn’t have a big hand.

Surprisingly, he called my all-in! More surprisingly, he called with just KQ!!! I was amazed. If I were him, I’d have to have put me on either a big Ace (AK, AQ — in which case he was dominated), a big pair (AA, KK — in which case he was crushed), or at worst a small/medium pair (in which case he was a coin-flip). I can’t imagine what he thought I might have that he could beat with KQ, but regardless, I was thrilled he made the call.

That was, until I the board came out: 9 T x J x

My KK had been beaten by KQ for all my chips, and there was nothing left to do but say, “nice hand,” and to try to walk away without screaming in frustration. While a part of me wants to cry bad-beat and berate the poor play of my opponent, it’s hard to complain when you get in a situation where you’re better than a 5:1 favorite to double-up, even if the cards don’t fall your way.

After that beat, I decided I likely wasn’t going to play my best game anytime soon, so I decided to forego the Monday event and fly home early to see my two girls…

I imagine I’ll head back to Vegas next week and/or the following to meet the rest of the crew heading out there this week…if so, I’ll write more when I return…

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.