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#840 – 2009 WSOP Revisited #3 – Eyewitness to History – Razz Final Table, Part I

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Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been winding out my stories from the three days I spent playing Razz. My runner-up finish in the $2,500 Razz event wasn’t just a great personal triumph but an opportunity to see many great and notable players. I’ve already told you about playing with and alongside Dario Minieri, Huckleberry Seed, Archie Karas, Sam Grizzle, and Miami John Cernuto.

But I saved the best for last.

If I had not been playing at the final table, I probably would have been standing on the rail watching Jeffrey Lisandro take his shot at World Series of Poker history. Lisandro entered the $2,500 Razz having already won bracelets this year in Seven-Card Stud and Stud Hi-Lo. If he won his third bracelet in 2009, he would join Phil Hellmuth, Ted Forrest, and Phil Ivey as triple-bracelet winners. He would also complete an unprecedented Stud Triple Crown.

I wanted to remember the experience of playing with Lisandro on the day he won his historic bracelet so I dictated this account the next day. Sorry that it’s taken me this long to write the accounts of the first two days as well as find time in my schedule to edit the story of the final table.

This blog is written primarily to answer the following questions: (1) What was it like playing with Jeffrey Lisandro when he won his third bracelet of the 2009 Series? (2) What made him so unstoppable, especially in the Stud games this year? (3) How did you finish second?

We started the last day with thirteen players remaining. I was ninth in chips, with about half the chip average of 200,000. After a couple hours, we were nine-handed and moved to the secondary final table, just outside the ESPN final-table stage and bleachers. I made it to the final nine by chipping up in small ways: identifying who wouldn’t play without a real hand, playing the appearance of the board, and not getting stuck in a call-fest with a marginal hand. Still, I had only 150,000 chips, seventh of the remaining nine.

Until a few hands before the final table, when we were ten handed and I was moved, Lisandro and I did not play together. For the later part of day 2 and all of day 3, however, Jeffery was the chip leader, so I knew he was out there.
Jeffrey still had the chip lead with 500,000, but it threatened to be a horse-race. Kenna James was just 25,000 chips behind, Ryan Fisler had 345,000, WSOP veteran Don Zewin had 285,000, and Steve Diano (who had a huge stack for much of Day 2), had 240,000. While I was still short, I expected to follow the same strategy, not necessarily to fold my way to a higher finish but to look for ways to pick up or save a bet or two.

For the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening, Jeffrey Lisandro put on a show. Certainly, he ran great but his approach was designed to take maximum advantage of that, forcing the action, making opponents declare strength early or call along.

He played in the ultra-aggressive style that people who have played with and watched Phil Ivey would be familiar with. It was Lisandro’s intention to play almost every hand that he could credibly play. Therefore, if he had an eight or better showing, he would always open with a full bet. If he had a slightly higher card, and there was just one lower card to act after him, he would open with a full bet. If somebody else opened with a full bet, he would at least call or – it seemed uniquely against me – would raise to two bets. As long no one was showing aggression against him and his board looked at all alive, he would stay in the hand and if possible take the betting lead.

If the cards are running at least decent for you, this is an incredibly powerful way to play, especially if opponents do not understand how to adjust. Jeffery ran very well at the final table and it was clear that his opponents had no idea how to counter his aggression. I had some idea, and played pretty well against him most of the day, but even I made mistakes. The entire experience reinforced my understanding of how difficult it can be to beat a skilled player with experience and a high level of aggression if his opponents are less experienced and he is at least getting decent cards.

There are three ways to combat Jeffrey Lisandro’s powerful aggressiveness: (1) call along with him and wait until the board breaks in your favor or significantly against him and either trap him or call him down to get value; (2) counter his aggressiveness with more aggressiveness, raising the stakes earlier in the hand; or (3) avoid playing hands with him where possible.

I tried all three approaches during the day, and for the most part, he chipped up against me only when I chose option #1. I still made the mistake on a few occasions by engaging in the call-along strategy, but I much more often found ways to avoid confrontations with him and on several occasions played even more aggressively (sometimes with what had to be inferior cards) and got back a lot of the chips that I lost on option #1.

It was only a call-along confrontation when we were three-handed where he won the showdown that he picked up a significant amount of chips from me. The rest of the table, however, stuck primarily with option #1 and nearly all of them lost most of their chips in huge pots against Lisandro, with him either having better cards, outplaying them late in the hand, or drawing better cards by the end.

I understand the allure of just calling along with an aggressive player. It’s easy to think that you are trapping your opponent or that he’ll over play his hand and just by calling him you’ll win more chips.

But this has several problems and Lisandro knows just how to exploit them. First, it means you can only win in a showdown. The aggressive player can win with either better cards, a better draw, or by getting you to fold. The passive player, in contrast, can only win in a showdown. Most experienced players, whether or not they are good at Razz, would know this instinctively, but with the stakes magnified and the pressure of a final table and the world-class aggressiveness of a player like Lisandro, it is easy to forget the basics and try to get fancy. Second, what you are implying when you call along or try to trap is that you think you can outplay Jeffery Lisandro at the end of a hand.

That makes no sense to me. He’s one of the best players in the world, playing incredibly well, and he is on the heater of his life. Why would you want to pick now of all times to make this situation as complex as possible and try to outplay him. Again, it is understood by most players that if you are playing somebody better than you, your chances of winning are better if you raise the stakes early in the hand and worse if you play along and make it more expensive at the end, where the better player’s experience gives him an edge. Naturally, no one wants to admit that they are playing against a superior player; in this case, however, I had no trouble conceding that Lisandro was the better player and it would be smarter for me to try to win hands on fourth and fifth street than to call along and try to outplay him on sixth and seventh street.

Remarkably, none of my opponents shared that opinion. Nearly every one of them got involved in hands with Jeffrey where they called along, allowed him to exercise most of the aggressiveness, and then got stuck with incredibly difficult decisions on sixth and seventh streets, where Lisandro’s skill and experience gave him an edge that even his opponents should have recognized.

The important thing about being aggressive is that you sometimes need to do it without a hand. Howard Lederer taught me this when we worked on the Limit Hold ‘Em chapter of the Strategy Guide. If you behave aggressively only when you have a big hand, then you are telling your opponent when you have a big hand. Consequently, these players who called-along would generally win relatively small pots against Jeffrey when they did out draw him because they would give away the strength of their hand by their sudden aggressiveness and give him the opportunity to fold relatively weak or marginal holdings. As Howard Lederer said to me, “Sometimes you have to re-raise with nothing.”

I did this on several occasions (I think two or three) and it worked out well. On one occasion when I re-raised Lasandro when we both had low cards showing, he simply folded to my re-raise on third street. On (I think) on two other occasions, he folded on fourth street when the card on fourth was either strong for me or weak for him. These were instances when I did not have particularly good hole cards but tried to play his game against him and it worked well.

The biggest hand I lost against Jeffrey Lisandro was an instance when I started this way, he had an actual hand, and I wasn’t skilled enough to get away early. Maybe as I get more experience, I’ll develop that extra gear, as I have in No Limit Hold ‘Em, of being the aggressive player who knows how to get away from some hands without paying too high a price. In that instance, when we were four-handed, I started with (I think) 9-6-7 with a 6 or 7 showing. He also had a 6 or 7 showing and completed. I raised him and he three-bet me back. Again, when I am more experienced playing at this level, I may be able to develop the ability to decide to fold a marginal hand here versus deciding whether he is trying to re-re-steal, but I shifted to calling-along mode. I called his three-bet and the board ended up being ambiguous enough the rest of the way where I called him down. I ended up with a 9-7 against his 7-6. It is possible that I was ahead of him at the beginning of the hand and he caught up at the end but I am not blaming that. I felt like I was playing above the rim with him, but he was playing way WAY above the rim against me.

I suppose I say this as a credit to myself as much as I do as a compliment to him, but nobody else playing against him that day seemed to be able to combat his aggressiveness. Consequently, almost everybody lost almost all their chips to Jeffrey Lisandro. In addition, in two other instances, opponents folded giant pots to Jeffery after he bet out on seventh street, leaving themselves less than two big bets. These were both instances where his opponents started the hand in the middle of the pack chip-wise and committed themselves to the hand only to save a couple of chips at the end because they didn’t believe he would bluff or make a marginal bet on the river. Even if they were correct in their folds at the end, the fault was with the initial strategy. By letting themselves get into a hand where Lisandro had a chance to outplay them in complex situations on the final streets, they put themselves in the worst possible situation to take him down.

Finally, there was the option of avoiding confrontation. With Lisandro being that aggressive, there was definitely an impulse to want to play a hand with him because there was a good chance that he had weak hole cards. But because you could never see his hole cards until the end, unless you played back at him aggressively, all you were doing was giving him credit for having the hand he was representing and calling along until you had an indisputetably better hand based on the board, or you got yourself stuck into a big-pot complicated situation on sixth and seventh streets.

There were several instances where I simply folded playable hands after Jeffrey bet. Granted, that often happened when there was another caller or there were players behind me who had what looked like playable hands. The important thing was that I decided that I didn’t have to be sheriff all the time. It seemed like a lot players at the final table took marginal hands against Lisandro, calling all the way.

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