WSOP Player Opinion

I havent made a meaningful post in a while so i thought i would do that. Some of the plays that i have seen are absolutely horrendous. The one time i was watching the rail there was a big play in front of me. It was Day 1C. It was late in the day, could have been the last level of the night. It is folded around to the button who has approximately 18k, raises to 1200(200/400) blinds. I saw his cards when he lifted them up and he had J6o. The big blind calls and has the button raiser covered by a few thousand. The flop comes 9 9 6. The big blind checks and the button raiser fires out 3000. The big blind immediately pushes his whole stack into the middle of the table.

Now if i am this guy i am not calling with J6. You cant beat anything. Not to mention you are staring at 2 9s on the board. What do you think the BB is pushing with here? As i was watching i could have sworn this guy had a 9. After deliberating for maybe 2 minutes, he calls and proudly flips over his J6 thinking he was ahead. The bb surpisingly(to me) flips over the A6. The A on the turn seals the buttons fate, only being able to tie if the case 6 hit on the river. It didn't and he went packing. All the while thinking, i could have been that guy with 20k sitting there, what is he doing?

About 5 minutes later they bring another guy to the table and he has A LOT of chips. He has around 85k and is reallly in no danger considering the second biggest stack at the table is around 35k. Plus its the last level of the night, why would you want to get involved now, when you can come back on monday or tuesday and have a very healthy amount of chips, when you got a great night of sleep. Well of course this guy didnt wan't to do that. I should also mention he was a party poker qualifier. I brought my cousin over and pointed to his stack. In a low voice, he says "it will be gone in 30 minutes". Well it only took about 18. What this guy mistakenly did, was try to take over the table without gaining respect. Sure he has a lot of chips, but when you get moved to a new table, you have a fresh image. He procedeed to double the guy up 2 to his left, then doubled up the guy to his immediate left, then doubled up the guy immediately to his right. He could have gotten away from all of the hands easily, except for the last one when he flopped top two with AQ on an A Q 3 board , when the guy flopped top set with 3 aces. People dont understand that you CAN NOT win the tournament on the FIRST day.

Now it brings us to an interesting hand that i saw on cardplayer. I dont really understand this play, but it worked out for the guy and now he has lots of chips.

5-4 Kills Aces and Kings

The player in seat 1 raises to $3,000 from early position, and two players call the raise. Jon Lane re-raises to $20,000 from middle position, and seat 9 moves all-in for $35,000 total. Seat 1 calls the all-in, and action is folded to Lane. Lane calls the raise. The flop comes A73. Seat 1 tries to bet $20,000, but only brings out $10,000 first and is cited for a string-bet; Lane makes the call of $10,000. The turn is the 6, seat 1 bets $20,000, Lane moves all-in, and seat 1 calls for his last $21,000. Seat 9 shows KK, seat 1 has AA, and Lane has 54. Lane yells, "Don't pair the board!" and the 2 peels off on the river to secure Lane a huge pot and eliminate two players. Lane is now up to $350,000.

What do you guys think of that play?

And this brings us to our chip leader for the WSOP so far. His pokerdb *online* stats for MTT's are as follows.

Est Winnings: $0
Est Buy-ins: $ 900
Rake: $65
Est Profit: -$965

To his credit he has only played 5 mtt's. I say online because it looks like he is a live player. I dont know how he got his chips but it wouldnt surprise me if it was somehow like up top. The play has been less than stellar here at the WSOP. Hopefully as the event goes deeper, play will get better.