My $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. Experience

I entered this year's $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event at the World Series of Poker with a great deal of optimism. I was well-rested, focused, and believed that I was near the top of my game (of course, my ceiling may be the floor of some of the other players in this event). This event is by far the largest limit tournament of the year, both in buy-in and prize pool. Being primarily a limit player, I thought this event provided my best shot for a big score in the Series.

To get the big score, though, I would have to navigate some treacherous waters. This was a five-day event, and most of the world's best poker players were represented among the 148 entrants. It was no surprise that I never found myself at anything resembling a soft table.

Day One: My first table was unusually tough, even for this event; I knew every player at the table (not really a surprise), and they all could play. Some of my opponents included Ted Forrest, Jeff Lisandro, Chad Brown, Max Pescatori, David Chiu, Andy Bloch, and Tim Phan.

I played my most interesting pot of the day with Tim. Tim is a great all-around player from the L.A. area whose quick wit makes me think that he would be an all-world trash-talker on the basketball court. The hold'em hand we played was unusual in that on the river, I made a horrible bet, Tim made a great call, and I won the pot.

Here is the hand: Playing $1,000-$2,000 limit hold'em, Tim raised the pot from middle position and I made it three bets with pocket nines. He called, and the flop came 10-10-3 rainbow. Predictably, he checked and I bet. He called. The turn was a queen, and we both checked. Obviously, this was a marginal check on my part, but I thought Tim had to hold a hand to call my flop bet. I didn't believe he would call on the flop with "air," as he would respect my reraise. He may have something like A-K, but I doubted that a bet on the turn would protect my hand anyway, as I thought he would go to the river with this hand. I didn't want to be put in a tough spot if he check-raised; plus, my check on the turn might enable me to bet for value with more success on the river.

The river was ugly - another queen, leaving me with essentially 9 high. Tim checked, and I bet as a bluff, thinking Tim may lay down something like K-J if that was his hand. I knew that he had to call me with an ace, so the range of hands that this bet might be effective against was thinner than an anorexic in a refugee camp.

Well, Tim made an excellent read and call, but his hand was only 8 high (pocket eights). He thought (correctly) that I would check ace high on the river, so I had either some sort of monster (which seemed unlikely) or a pair smaller than tens and was betting as a bluff. He got unlucky that I held the only pocket pair in that zone that he couldn't beat. This was definitely an instance in which I misplayed a hand and got unjustly rewarded for it, while Tim made a nice read and got punished. Fortunately for both of us, we would meet up again down the road a ways.

Day Two: After surviving the first day at a tough table with considerably more chips than the $100,000 we started with, I was extremely optimistic entering day two. Overall, my strategy for the tournament was to try to play most of my big pots in the flop games - hold'em and Omaha eight-or-better - as they are my two best games. In the other three games (razz, stud, and stud eight-or-better), I hoped to make most of my key decisions early in the hand, such that when I did stay around until the river, I would be in a dominating position and would have to be very unlucky to lose. For example, once I decided to get to fourth street in one of the stud games, I was typically very quick to release my hand if I caught bad and my opponent caught good. This meant that one brick in stud eight-or-better was enough, even though players will typically take the cheap fifth card to see if they can improve. To me, the problem with this was that improvement on fifth street would tie me on to the river, and my opponent's better fourth-street round would put him ahead in the hand. So, I just avoided this situation, for the most part, and played some "weak-tight" poker in the razz and stud eight-or-better portions of the tournament. This enabled me to lose a lot of small pots (when the math of chasing was close) but still win some big pots against opponents who tried to chase me down.

My table draw on day two was definitely an improvement over the opening-day lineup, although the extremely talented John Hennigan was seated directly to my left, and Barry Greenstein was moved in early on in the day. I put an ugly beat on Hennigan in a hold'em hand, in which I raised with A-K and he reraised me with A-A. I caught one of my better flops, Q 10 4, and held the ace-high flush draw. I ended up winning the pot with the least likely hand, though: trip kings. John paid me off, but I could see that he hated it.

Near the end of the day, my table broke, and I was relocated for a half-hour of razz prior to the end of the night. Now, nothing can ruin a perfectly fine session like this stupid game. My stack was very comfortable at nearly $400,000 when my table broke, but I lost about a third of it in that last half-hour. Nevertheless, with only about 50 players remaining, I still was sitting on close to an average stack going into day four, when we would be playing down to 21 players.

In the next issue, I'll relate the roller-coaster ride that followed.

Mark Gregorich has played poker professionally in Las Vegas since 1995. He is regarded as one of the top Omaha
eight-or-better players in the world, and contributed to that section in Doyle Brunson's Super System II. Mark is primarily a cash-game player, but occasionally tosses some dead money into the prize pools of major tournaments.