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#562 – London 2008 #69 – WSOP-E – Night of the Living, Part V – Tall Stack

Posted by Editor | Filed under Howard Lederer, London 2008, WSOP-E 2008

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The players have vacated the table. Only their stacks – both their armor and their ammunition – mark their places.

At the center of the table is Ivo Donev’s stack, 255,000. It consists of a column of 20 blue 5,000-denomination chips, 6 similar columns of yellow 1,000-denomination chips, and partial rows of both on top of the foundational columns.

At the far end are Sherkhan Farnood’s chips, 295,000. Like Donev (and most poker players), he stacks his chips in columns of 20. Most of his chips are blue so his stack actually appears smaller than Donev’s.

This is not an accident. With blinds of 5,000-10,000 in all the games, there is minimal need for 1,000-denomination chips. They will, for some time, be necessary for antes and for the 12,000-24,000 level. But it’s mostly a blue-chip game and tournament director Jack Effel has tried to get the players to color up most of their yellows.

Howard and Sherkhan did this as players routinely do. Ivo Donev, however, refused, which puzzled Jack Effel.

I understood. Donev was already the short stack. Releasing his armada of yellows for a single column of blues would leave him feeling underdressed, exposed. It’s not logical, but it’s reasonable.

Nearest to me in this image is Howard Lederer’s looming stack of 563,000. Howard’s habit is to build columns of 40, twice the usual height. He has two towers of blue chips, flanked by three yellow towers.

I actually asked him one time about his chip-stacking habits. He said something about the presumptive quantity of taller stacks and the feeling of looking over them at an opponent; my notes of his answer have not survived and the quote was not memorable.

Yet it had a lasting impact on me, whatever he said. When I have the arsenal, I stack my chips 40-tall and, like Lederer, imperiously drop a chip from a tall stack to mark my cards and announce that, yes, I’ll be playing this hand.

Howard’s stack looks big but efficient. “Efficient” is also a word I would use to describe his game. He seems to play fewer hands than Sherkhan and certainly fewer than Donen (who seems to be playing every hand). Even four- or three-handed, he doesn’t automatically complete when he has the lowest card in Razz or Stud EOB or the highest card in Stud, and he doesn’t automatically raise on his button in Hold ‘Em and Omaha EOB.

While collaborating on THE STRATEGY GUIDE, Howard explained how his playing style had evolved over the years, he thought, from “tight” to “solid but capable of anything.” Indeed, Barry Greenstein told me back in 2004, and I think said the same thing on his web site, that Howard’s emergence as a leading tournament player coincided with this change. He had marked Lederer as a tight, predictable opponent and this shift made him more dangerous and successful.

It’s clear over the course of many hands that Howard will play position, bluff, or pursue a hand based on the appearance of the board rather than on actual strength. But his image is one of solidness. You EXPECT to see him turn over a big hand if you push him to a showdown. He tries to trade on this image, making some moves when the cards are dead. In addition, during the middle and later portions of hands, he will open his play and semi-bluff or attempt to wring value out of a hand in a marginal situation.

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