High-stakes cash-game player David Oppenheim has stepped away from his nosebleed-limit tables to play in this year's main event. Even though this will only be Oppenheim's fifth tournament of the series this year , he has already cashed for over $100,000 in World Series of Poker events in 2008, finishing deep in both the seven-card stud and mixed games championship events. Today, he has been running over the competition to spend most of the evening at or near the top of the chip counts. Card Player caught up with with Oppenheim at the break following level 4.
Ryan Cadrette: Going into the break, you're way at the top of the chip counts. Are you feeling pretty good today so far?
David Oppenheim: You know, yeah. I'm feeling good and have had a couple of good things happen. I just kind of told myself that I was going to really put forth a good effort today, which is something I haven't really done in years past at the main event, and its worked out.
RC: When you decided to put forth a good effort, how were you planning on approaching the day? What kind of poker were you planning on playing, given that you have a deep structure, but that you also have a massive field with a lot of weak players looking to play huge pots? You obviously have a big chip lead, but were you planning to go big or go home?
DO: What's interesting is that at the beginning of the day, I was planning on playing super, super tight because of the structure. But after the first hour, I had played like 65 percent of my hands. You know, poker is situational, and I think you really kind of have to play by feel and just play by however the situation dictates.
RC: So have you woken up with a passive table that is letting you raise them off a lot of hands?
DO: I got involved early. In these six or seven thousand player fields you get a lot of guys who are kind of amateur type of players. And you know with amateurs you can really tell if they're weak or strong. And I've been kind of able to exploit that a little bit. You know, one of them gave me a nice thirty-thousand chip gift early on, which is always nice.
RC: Speaking of being able to sense whether players are weak or strong, I saw a hand earlier where you called a decent sized bet on the river only to have the player muck. You didn't even have to show down your hand. Would you mind telling us what you had and what you were thinking on that hand?
THE HAND:
Oppenheim Makes The Call
On a flop of K
4
2
, the player in seat 9 checked over to David Oppenheim, who fired a bet of 1,400 into the 2,200 pot. His opponent then check-raised to a total of 4,000. Oppenheim made the call, and the dealer dealt out the turn card the 2
. Both players checked to the river, which brought the Q. Seat 9 took another stab at the pot, firing out 8,000. Oppenheim leaned back in his chair, continuing to enjoy his massage as he stared down his opponent. After only a short period of deliberation, Oppenheim haphazardly tossed in his call, one chip at a time. His opponent shoved his hand into the muck, and Oppenheim raked the pot in without a showdown. He is up to 87,000.
DO: Yeah, I'll tell you what I had. I had king-queen. The flop came K-2-4. He check-raised me, and I was fairly sure I had the best hand. He was a wild player. The turn came a deuce, he checked, and I basically figured he didn't have anything. He was just kind of making a move at a pot, on a flop where unless you have the king, it's a tough flop to take off with. You know, these internet kids kind of know some different flops and the chances of you having some of it. I just checked, trying to induce a bluff, and the river came a queen, and I was calling him no matter what. So he bet out 8,000, and I just gave him a ten-second stare down, just to see how he reacted. And he really acted a lot differently this time than in other pots where he had strong hands. So I just kind of let him stew there for 15 or 20 seconds, and then I called him with kings up.
RC: You're well known as a cash-game player. The side games going on during the World Series are allegedly really juicy with all of the outside money coming in. How have they been treating you?
DO: At the games I play in, you just don't really get any tourists. We're basically a small group of players that play pretty high. The games have been good, though. That's what I pretty much spend most of my time doing. This is only my fifth tournament during the World Series. I spend the rest of my time playing in the cash games, and they've been pretty good.
