Understand your mistakes

To bolster your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses, you must start by thoroughly understanding your mistakes. At the poker table, that’s an intricate, complex challenge, because the game gives you natural blind spots.

The World Series of Poker Main Event is a marathon, and I constantly preach that patience is the key to going deep in this tournament. While patience is paramount, execution is imperative to chip accumulation, and one of my most important pots came early on Day Three. I entered the day with 33,000 in chips and was up to about 55,000 when this hand went down.

With blinds at 800- 1600 and a 200 ante, I opened to 1,700 with A ♣4♣ . Everybody folded to the big blind, who called.

The villain had about 75,000 to start the hand, and he had a penchant for defending his big blind. The flop came down K♣7♥ 3 ♣ , and he bet 2,500 into a pot of 6,000.

I felt as if he was weak, but I’d be able to beat the weak hands later. I wanted to acquire more information while keeping the pot small in the unlikely event that he had flopped a monster hand like a set.

Thing is, most people would go for the check- raise with a set in this spot. He probably didn’t have two pair. Itwas possible he had a flush draw, and the only combo draw he could have was 5 ♣ 6 ♣ , which is the only one I didn’t want to give a free card to. If he had the 7 ♣ and another club, I wouldn’t want to get all my chips in, as I’d be behind. If he had a singleton pair, then I could get him to fold it later, because he couldn’thaveA- K, but I theoretically could. I chose to call.

The turn was the 4 ♠ . He quickly bet 4,000, and I was pretty happy about this. I felt that if he had a big hand, he would have taken more time to think about things, while players holding weak hands often want to appear strong and confident, hoping to induce a fold. I chose to call with the intention of winning the pot on most rivers.

The river was the 3 ♦ , and he quickly bet 7,000. I didn’t think there was any significant percentage of hands in his range that would give him a full house. I thought he had one pair with a queen kicker at best, so I wanted to bluff him off that hand. The question was: Howmuch to bet?

Would a raise to 20,000 do the trick when there was 19,000 in the pot going into the river? It would be 13,000 more for him to win 46,000, while I’d be risking 20,000 to win 26,000. If I shoved, then I’d be risking 46,800 to win 26,000. Any bet in the middle would skew the odds. I decided to shove, because I wanted to get him off a hand like king- blank and believed that hewould perceive an all in bet as stronger.

Hewent into the tank and eventually folded, which was a good thing, because I spun that stack all the way up to 6 million at one point before finishing in 25th place for $ 286,900. Devonshire is a professional poker player.