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Nice Guys Finish Fourth: Part I[ return to main articles page ]

By: Devin Porter    [See all articles by Devin Porter]
Published on Mar 30th, 2006
Devin Porter finished fourth in the 2005 World Poker Tour event in Aruba, which will be aired for the first time on the Travel Channel on April 5.

I'm sitting in the Atlanta airport frozen stiff....I had just been talking to my friend about how excited I was, how awesome this Aruba trip was going to be, and how I was going to just play a tight poker style, take the 6 grand cash in my first ever WPT event, and then enjoy the next days relaxing on the Caribbean shore... <READMORE>

My reason for being frozen solid? I'm listening intently to 3 guys and a girl sitting two rows behind me talking about the same thing I am, discussing their strategy for getting in the money. All of a sudden it hits me; Dont play that way! I've always done well in poker by going away from what others are doing, so if that was the mindset of the others, I was going to come out firing!

Day 1 Flight 1

At my first World Series of Poker, I drew the last flight for Day 1, and I saw it as a huge disadvantage as I had to wake up "early" and play the next day after playing till 1 am the night before, while 2/3 of my competition would be fresh. So I was quite excited at starting the ub.com Aruba event on Day 1.

Ahhh, here we are at Table 3, seat 4....where I start my journey to the final table....or the beach. Most of the players have a press pass type card around their neck that shows their online poker name, so I can't help but survey the competition and see who's here. I see a couple of names that strike a bell, but nothing that would cause me to dig through the memory bank and try and come up with some "notes" on how they play. Then the guy to my immediate right sits down and introduces himself as debo34....hey! I know this guy. We've played many tournaments together on UB. Alright, cool....let's play some cards.

A couple rounds go by without much action, and I remind myself to play aggressive, to take control of the table. Very next hand, I look down at a very powerful 10 4 offsuit...."I raise! Let's make it 300." My sudden burst of aggression is met by "Call, call, call." Flop misses me completely; AKJ rainbow! Quick peptalk to myself and "Bet! Make it a thousand straight," to which they all responded by folding! Alright! Wahoo! My first pot.

I have built my stack from the original 10k starting chips to about 14k when I get AK in the BB. Folds to guy with about 6k left on the button, who raises it up 5x the BB (50-100 blinds at the time). I didnt want to play this hand out of position, so I raised it up to 1800 and take it away right there. "I call"....crap! Saved by the flop! A 10 4....I check, he pushes all in, and my pair holds up over his JJ. I head over to the rail bursting with excitement as I explain my now over 20k stack to Adam and Polariss from p5's...

I continue my aggressive poker, picking up a ton of small pots (and learning why the pros think it's so important to get a good table draw....I mean, this was getting too easy) and getting to around 30k, when Mr. Debo34 gets em all in ak vs kj and of course gets outdrawn!! I was genuinely upset, as we had talked a lot and become friends on the battlefield.

My mind is soon back to poker, though, as the very next hand I look down at Pocket Kings and finally get the chance to raise the pot with a real hand. I'm met by 2 callers and a flop of K23! O.k. how to proceed....what to do... I knew that they had seen me dragging in a ton of pots, but I also knew that these weren't the type of players to recognize that, or have the balls to make a move back on me. I decided to go with the loose table image play and put in a small bet about 1/3rd the pot... First victim retorts with "I'm ALL IN!" Second victim, "I'm all in too!" Welp, that takes the thinking out of it, and I'm now sitting at just under 50,000 at the dinner break.

After an amazing steak dinner on the beach, I head back to the battle to find debo34's seat being filled by a clean-cut baby face whose chips I couldn't wait to take...Oops!! Looks like that "kid" is none other than SamENole! OK, so maybe I'll just stay away from him...

Play ended with me having a top 5 stack for the first flight, and I was thinking I'd be top 15 after all flights had finished. I had 2 days to party, swim, enjoy the beach and think about anything else but poker, and how cool that day really was...
Read Part Two</READMORE>
 

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