Page 10 - May 2006 • Southern California Gaming Guide

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
World Series of Poker® on $240 a Day
Part 3 of 4
by Jim Mercurio
is is part three in a four-part series to prepare readers to take their shot at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) or similar events. e WSOP ( June 25th–August 10th) is a series of tournaments that begin with several tournaments with buy-ins in the range of $1,000–$2,000. With a thousand dollars, a little bit of luck and the following tips, a player could satellite his way into $3,000 worth of tournaments.
Last issue, I discussed the strategy for the satellites, small one-table tournaments where a player wins his or her way into a larger tournament. Let’s say you put up $180 and win your way into a $1,500 event at the WSOP.
U nlike the $10,000 Main Event where players begin with $10,000 in chips, players begin with the amount of the buy-in. In this case, $1,500 in chips. Although your stack is about the same size as in a smaller tournament, the di erence is that the elds will be
much larger and, more importantly, the blind levels will be 2–3 times as long as in the smaller events. To accommodate televised nal tables, many of the smaller events are being stretched to three days.
Hollywood Park nooner—they will be 100–200. I cannot overemphasize how much of a di erence it is to be the raiser with AK rather than the caller with AQ or to make your stand with queens instead of those 9s. If an AJ calls you, would you rather be 71:28 (queens) or 55:45 (nines) for your tournament life?
Because you don’t have a lot of chips to start, don’t start acting like Gus Hansen on crack and call o 25% of your stack out of position with a 45 o suit. If you end up with a big stack, you can start to get frisky. If
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Poker: Wired Aces and River Rats
Page 10
May 2006
First things rst, you can’t worry about the size of the eld. You make it to the nal table of a 1,000- person tournament the same way you make it to the nal table of a 40-person tournament. You pay attention to your table and play good poker. Worry about the other 90 tables and the distraction will hurt you.
In a tournament where the blinds are 50–100 and the level lasts only 20 minutes, if I’m getting near
short-stacked (with a chip count of only 15 times the big blind) I might get a little bit desperate. All of a sudden calling an all-in with an AQ is tempting and even 9s can seem like aces when I’m rst in the pot.
However, 90-minute levels allow you to be patient. A player at the Los Angeles Poker Classic made it to 6th place in a 1000-person tournament by playing only 28 hands. Remember, two hours from now, the blinds are not going to be 600–1,200 like in your