The six-handed tournament may be one of the more difficult events to play at the WSOP for a few reasons.  1) It's a completely different game than full-ring tournament poker. 2) You are forced to make tough decision after tough decision because the range of hands your opponents play increases dramatically.  3) The tables are filled the action-junkie pros playing every hand and constantly forcing you to make those tough decisions.

After ending the first break as chip leader in last summer’s $2,500 event, I was able to keep that momentum through most the day.  I went into the dinner break with over 60k in chips, nearly a 2-1 advantage over second place. (Part 1 Part 2 Part 3)

After hitting those key hands early, I was only tangled up in one big pot before dinner.  I held 108 in the big blind and was able to rake a big pot when I turned a full house and another player rivered the top straight.  After that, I simply ran over the table.  Remembering that sometimes your cards don’t really matter helped my stack surge. At one point, I raised 12 consecutive hands, winning 10 of them (a few times I didn’t bother looking at my hand—not highly recommended).  I was a stealing machine, but every time someone reapplied pressure, I seemed to have a hand and often busted them. 

Joe’s advice proved prophetic when he said, “Play your tightest game after the dinner break.” I guess everyone else started sipping the crazy juice while I ate a cheeseburger, because we lost table after table after table when we returned.  After a year of covering poker tournaments, I suggest making this one of your 10 commandments as it proves true event after event. 

Unfortunately, when our table broke, I completely lost my ability to get a “feel” for where we were at in the tournament.  I kept drawing the next table on the list to break.  Every twenty minutes I had a new seat at a new table with new players.  It was impossible to get anything going; I even had AA twice during this period and lost both all-in preflop (once for 10.5k when I flopped a set and lost to a four-flush).

This constant shuffling threw me off and led to a critical mistake.  I ended up sluffing off a ton of chips with A7 on a 1074 board. I had no true read on my opponent, but I put him on a total whiff or a draw and called off ½ my stack to his all in (actually the dealer announced 17k when it was truly 33k and that didn’t help either).  As it turned out, he had 1010.  Whoops. Yet again, I forgot the advice "don't play a big pot without a big hand."  Middle pair does not count as a big hand.  Just two hands later I was able to get it all back when he called my all in on a draw and missed.

I avoided playing big pots for the rest of the night, and slowly chipped my way back up to ninth place out of the 53 remaining.  A few of those pots came from being ready to pull the trigger when I sensed weakness in an opponent.  One memorable pot came from calling down a double-barrell bluff from Antonio Esfiandiari (he held 5 high and I paired a 6).

Day 2 was a bit rough; I couldn’t seem to get anything really going for me again.  If I made any mistakes during this stage of the tournament, it was not recognizing the value of patience and position.  The deck was not being kind to me and my impatience led to overplaying a few hands from the wrong spot. 

Harry “Lucksack” Demetriou was at my table playing every pot like he had the nuts. He was throwing sick beat after sick beat on his opponents, twice going runner runner against them.  I was about to get a taste of it for myself. 

With 19 people left, Harry opened the pot for the umpteenth time when I looked down at the AdAc.  The blinds were 1.5k-3k and Harry raised to 9k.  I reraised to 25k and the rest is like that slow-motion death scene when the hero has dodged his last bullet…

Harry insta-shoved, I insta-called for around 100k…I saw the Ks door card and the Kd quickly followed it.  Just to stick it in me a little more, the lucksack actually made a four-flush with the As (I say lucksack in the nicest way possible).   

My impressive little run ended with the worst possible beat, giving Harry the chip-lead I should’ve had.  Anything can happen in this game.  That’s why I’m giving the first six-handed event this year a shot.  I’ll keep you updated on my progress starting at noon. 

And if I don’t make it past the first break, at least I can cheer on fellow PokerWire blogger Shaniac at the final table of the $1k rebuy event.