Poker Articles

Hey there PocketFivers, let me be the first to introduce myself. My name is Billy Westom, and I am a professional poker player from Longview, WA. I represent a group of talented young poker players, primarily out of the Northwest, who have been playing together for around 4 years. Over the years we have accumulated a team of six: MrCasino, JasonGray, Octavian_C, jakz101poker, thetruth503, and myself. We are all here together in Las Vegas for the WSOP, and I’m going to give you a glimpse of a few typical days for the team while we seek a championship bracelet, and a few unique experiences that we have encountered.
 

I got into town on the 5th of June, while the rest of the team has been here since the beginning of the Series. I was down in Phoenix visiting family, getting some nice rest before the grind of every day poker. Upon arrival and catching up with everyone’s status for the week, I realized that it was officially the first time the entire group of professionals has been together at a tournament series at the same time! This is mostly due to the fact that Eric lives in Illinois, and myself and Kyle are virtually just beginning to get seriously into larger buy-in MTT’s. I played a few events in 2005 and 2006, but not the serious volume that I am preparing for this month. With our success online as of late, we knew we had to take a shot at the WSOP.
 

The first tournament I played was the $540 buy-in Deep Stack Extravaganza at the Venetian. There are some excellent tournaments going on at the Venetian every day, which have reasonable buy-ins, great turnout, and are obviously known for their deep stack structure. For the $540 buy-in you receive 15k starting chips with blinds starting at 25-50 and levels lasting 40 minutes. With the competition of the Caesar’s Palace Mega Stack series, the Venetian poker managers added chips to all of their tournaments to accommodate the demand of the players wanting more play for their dollar. While playing this first tourney an interesting hand came up that I want to share:
 

With the blinds at 100-200, I limped under the gun with AK off-suit. Under normal circumstances I obviously throw in a raise, but there was a very aggressive, and actually very good, player to my direct left, who had been trying to isolate limpers and play on the flop. So I figured I could make a decent trap with this hand. If it didn’t work out, AK is a fine hand to see a flop with. That player actually limped, as well as an older gentleman (not sure of his name). There was one problem: this man threw in two 500 chips instead of 100 chips, and was forced to raise. I knew it was a mistake, but the floor ruled that the bet must stay. Obviously with my AK I was glad to get those extra chips in the pot. The player in the big blind actually also called the raise. So with 2700 in the pot, I threw in a raise of 3500 to 4500. I had a stack of about 15k to start the hand. I immediately noticed the effect on the older gentleman.

The limper to my left folded, and the man looked around the table, annoyed, saying, “I don’t understand why these kids do this, I made an honest mistake, I’m a nice guy, why would they do this…” Now you realize that probably, to everyone at the table, it looks like I am squeezing with maybe any two cards because I know he didn’t mean to raise. Actually, even if I didn’t have such a strong hand, I may have done it. I knew that this would probably put this man on serious tilt, but hey, there are no friends at the poker table, right!? It’s unfortunate that in a competitive game such as poker, anyone would believe that a particular play would be a personal jab. Anyway, he looked at me for a few seconds, and asked me how many chips I had behind. I told him my chip count, and he looked down at his chips, announcing, “I will put you all in.” The player in the big blind folded his cards, and I immediately called, knowing that he would probably be doing this move with any cards to “teach me a lesson.” He turned up a QT off-suit (not my ideal choice of a hand to be up against), and proceeded to draw two queens to take about 10k of my remaining stack. Of course, as he is stacking, he is mumbling, “that’s what happens, that’s what happens…”
 

Now some people may argue that getting my chips in there with AK is slightly weak, especially with a deep stack at the early level of the tournament. Although, there are a couple factors that make it a pretty easy call. First of all, there are many hands I can have dominated, including obviously AJ, AT, KQ, KJ, KT, all of which I believe would be in his range in this situation. He could also have a small pair, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to be in a flip situation this early in a tournament. That’s where the second factor comes in. A few friends and I got to the Venetian about 15 minutes late (they allow up to a 2 hour late registration for their Deep Stack tournaments), and they had to open up new tables for us to play. Of course, we all are put at the same table. So now, until our table breaks up, we are going to have a really hard time getting value out of our hands, because we don’t necessarily want to take each other’s chips. We’re not colluding or anything like that, just technically “staying out of each other’s way.” So I factored this into the call, knowing that it would be one of the only few opportunities I would have a chance to get a big stack at this table.
 

With only around 3k chips left after this hand, I felted 77 to KK and headed back to the house. My friends and I decided to rent a house down here for the month instead of staying in a hotel. Split between the group it becomes much cheaper overall, and we are able to have more freedom to do other things, including playing pool, table tennis and taking a swim.  We also have more comfort to play online. All of us are trying to play online as much as possible while not in a live tourney. It’s always the best choice if there isn’t a World Series of Poker tourney that we are interested in, or if we just want to stay home and relax for a day. Our typical online schedule consists of the Nightly Hundred Grand ($162 buy-in), $22 re-buy, $33 re-buy 6 max, and $100 freeze-out on PokerStars. We also play the $109 “cubed” (1 re-buy, 1 add-on), $65k guaranteed ($163 buy-in), and $33 re-buy on Full Tilt Poker. For Jason and Craig the $109 re-buy on PokerStars is added to the list. Then Sunday eventually rolls around. This is undoubtedly the biggest day for online tournaments. A serious online player can easily invest $2k-3k with all the majors and smaller tournaments around the various sites. Although, since we are here for the WSOP, if there is a good tournament to play there, we will skip online and go for a bracelet.
 

For most of Final Table Team, the first week or so of the Series has been frustrating. Although for Craig, it has been encouraging. As of writing this article, Craig is tied for the most cashes at this year’s Series with four, along with Nikolay Evdakov. Craig’s best result was a 15th place in the Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi-Low-8 or Better event. He also took 17th in the $1k re-buy NL Hold’em. With Craig’s (MrCasino) success in the $109 re-buy on PokerStars, he knew he had to try this tournament at the WSOP. He learned there are a lot of differences in strategy between the two tourneys, which he will be writing about soon for an upcoming article.
 

Well I am getting close to winding down now. It’s 5 a.m. and we were out all night bowling for prop bets. I’m not sure what will be on my schedule today. Perhaps just chill at the house and play online. We’re always looking to meet fellow PocketFivers, so don’t be afraid to introduce yourselves.  You can check out www.FinalTableTeam.com for the latest updates on the team’s progress.



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