2
Fish or Shark?
When I came into the Full Tilt suite yesterday, I saw Howard Lederer and Andy Bloch discussing a hand. I sat with them and asked if the hand contained a lesson I might share in this blog.
“Here’s a tip,” Andy started, “don’t call an all in from Howard Lederer when you have bottom pair.”
Howard went on to tell me that a few minutes earlier, he had flopped top set and that another player had put all his chips into the pot after playing K-3 off-suit and hitting bottom pair. Howard noted that it was some of the first really poor play he’d seen in this year’s WSOP.
A few hours earlier in the day, I ran into Richard “Quiet Lion” Brody. He’d progressed deep into the six-handed no-limit tournament and was sharing a table with Dutch Boyd, Mike Matusow, and three players who were completely unknown to him. Brody described the unknown players as “very tough.”
These experiences speak to some of the difficulty that players face at the WSOP. Tens of thousands of poker enthusiast will participate in the events here. Most have faces that are unknown to the rest of the poker world. They come here from local card rooms and home games. Others play online.
Among the online players, there are a number who have gained significant reputations as outstanding poker players. Eric Lynch, who finished third in the pot-limit hold ‘em event, is well-known in the online poker world. He has made hundreds of thousands of dollars playing tournament poker online. At the final table of the pot-limit event, he displayed toughness commensurate with his experience.
Josh Shlein, barely 21, is an online player who made a WPT final table earlier this year and then finished third in the $1,500 limit hold ‘em event here at the Rio.
Now more than ever, it’s vital to go into any table with an open mind. The acne-faced kid sitting across the table may be a world-class player with a razor-sharp mind and a game that has been honed by thousands of hours of online play. The guy to your left who looks as though he chews nails for breakfast – he might be the one waiting to call off his money with nothing more than a gutshot.
Howard commented, “Some of the players you’ve never seen before are very, very good. Others amaze you in how poorly they can play.”
If you’re headed tot he Rio, you need to be ready for anything.
