Is aggression over-rated in live tournament play? I am just asking. I hardly ever even play live myself. Sometimes I think I am just not a people person.I have, however, watched hundreds and hundreds of highly edited live hands on television. I have studied thousands and thousands of hands. I have more poker books than Barnes & Noble. I have sat in worship at the feet of the Doyle Brunsons of the world who have preached aggression, aggression, aggression for decades now.
I understand aggressive play is the key to success in cash games and on the Internet. However, the WSOP Main Event results have caused me to question the orthodoxy. In fact, I am here to suggest the key to success in the ME is a lack of aggression, a lack so great as to be described as squeaky tight play.
It should be noted, my theory does not explain the success of Jamie Gold and Jerry Yang in recent years. Of course, nobody else's theories have, either. Just how do you make your way through a deep-stacked field of 6,844? The Main Event is more a maze than a tournament. Whereas many players approach the event as a testosterone-filled cage match for egos, the survivors seem to excel at avoiding conflict, not inviting it.
Maybe they were just tired.
Have you been listening to these people, the November Nine? I have.
The oldest player is the chip leader. You don't get to be a half century old in this world without knowing a little something about survival. Dennis Phillips, age 53, plays what has been described as a conservative and straightforward game. An amateur - he's not quitting his job.
Next in line chip-wise is Ivan Demidov, making his first appearance in the World Series. Twice the Russian was down to 6,000 chips the first day, but the final table bubble was, well, uncomfortable. "I didn't really play my best game," Demidov explained. "Sometimes I played too scared, too tight... I couldn't afford to gamble a lot."
Ylon Schwartz is a champion chess player, clearly a strategic thinker. "I decided to take it easy and play it cool," he said. "Day one. Everybody was overbetting insane amounts of money. It was great to just sit and wait to have my opponents dominated. If you just stick around and wait, someone will eventually make a mistake...." In the beginning, Schwartz waited. In the middle, he played small ball. Towards the end he got tight, as the MTT turned into more of a super satellite.
Darus Suharto is an accountant, a profession which suggests to me a cautious personality. He is a TAG stylist. "I didn't expect to last this long," he admits. He's not quitting his job either.
Craig Marquis took it one day at a time. "I went into every day with the goal simply of making it to the next day."
Kelly Kim, the short stack at the Final Table come November, had this to say..."The journey is so long. You play every day, you survive, and you wait for the next day."
Success is survival. Folding is still the best play in poker.
Ideally, you want to play against opponents who are weaker than you. In the World Series of Poker Main Event, there are hundreds of the greatest players from around the world. This is, after all, the nature of the event. Are those the type of players you want to challenge? I suggest the answer is a resounding "NO." So, to be successful, to survive, the key is to avoid better players, especially those who have position on you.
Apparently, avoiding good players should not be a problem in the early going. This is the flip side of the WSOP ME. "They were just dumping chips," exclaimed Kim. "I really believe this tournament has the biggest overlay of any poker tournament."
Look at the owner of the most WSOP bracelets. Please, he wants you to. Hellmuth - who placed 45th in the 2008 ME - plays a game of survival. A trapping small ball style. A cautious style which seeks to avoid risk at all costs.
Hellmuth prides himself on his reading ability. The ability to read your opponents is as important in the hands you don't play as the hands you do.
It's one thing to be aggressive, it's another thing to get your money in bad. Of course, if you do get your money in bad, you have to survive. "It wasn't an easy, smooth ride for me at all," admitted Scott Montgomery, third in chips among the November Nine. "I had to get it in bad a few times along the way."
We all know you get aggressive on the bubble. Right? Right? Montgomery hated to do it, but he admits he folded perhaps 20 hands to the cash.
Peter Eastgate, a cash game expert, believes good cash game players should have no problem making the adjustments necessary to be successful in tournament play. "Cash games are far more complex," Eastgate told a reporter recently, "and the decisions you face in a tournament are much easier." Part of the explanation, I believe, is simply that aggression is less inherently necessary in successfully navigating your way to the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event.
Your opponents expect you to be aggressive. In fact, they are counting on it. Aggression becomes the irresistible force which continually crashes into the immovable object, which is just more aggression waiting for its own turn.
Which brings us to David Rheem. Originally tutored by the Mizrachi brothers, "Chino" plays a relentlessly aggressive game. He is in 7th place, he is short-stacked, and he is arguably the most aggressive player who made the final table. He can get out of line. But if "Chino" can read his opponents well enough to fold at the right times, I am picking him to take down the $9,119,338 first place prize and WSOP bracelet.
Survival is success.
Aggression is winning it all.
And November is a freeroll.
