Nice trip report and man I'm amazed you remembered my old 'braa raise the turn' below my handle on 2+2. It accompanied a picture of my parrot Sophia.

I found this thread because I'm still following you on twitter after doing recognizance work the night before I'm inspired to write up a report of my entire WSOP after I get back from scouting apartments in Vancouver.

Not sure what your handles are online but have we played much over the past few years?

Btw, that hand you thought I should ship with my range I had KQo on KT867 that brought in a bd flush and after he bet 30k on flop 70k turn and 60k on the river into an aprox 240k pot leaving himself about 200k behind.

I'm glad you chimed in! Best of luck with Vancouver--I'm a bit jealous. Great city.

I'm "Mortal Limit" on PokerStars. You beat me up a little in the 5-10 and 10-20 8-game mixes last year. I thought you played well and was definitely trying to learn from you when we played. (Assuming you're "Enon" on Stars.)

Thanks for revealing your hand here. FWIW I didn't mean that as a claim about what's GTO (the way I did about the Apathy hand on day 3). I just thought that you had to shove against that guy in that spot. And then you did! Given that you had KQo, I'm inclined to think you at least roughly agreed with me.

All my best,

--Nate

EDIT: I hope you do write up a trip report! I'd love to read it.

nate -

i loved reading this entire thing. i've always found everything i've read of your contributions to the forum to be done with such respect for everyone as well as with a great generosity in sharing your clearly articulated, deep insights. it's kind of exactly what is missing from a lot of posting here, and so it's always appreciated even more for that reason.

thanks for what you give to the community.

Really enjoyed reading, thanks for taking the time to put this together. Not to derail the thread at all, but since I enjoyed this so much, are there any other great wsop TRs floating around from this year? I find them fascinating as I've never had a wsop type experience and am eagerly awaiting my first

One more question -

I'm not a complete noob to MTTs by any means, but am certainly more of a low-mid stakes MTT player and not someone who understands the kind of spots you mentioned once or twice where a player should be jamming river with his entire range. Obviously I'm sure the situations which would call for this have a lot of variables, but can you point me towards any threads or situations or just... things to think about where I could start to understand that kind of play? I feel like it's something that I'd really like to know more about.

Thanks!

BallPeen--

First, thanks for your very kind words earlier. That's exactly the kind of forum contributor I want to be.

There were two hands where I said that a player should jam or make a big bet with his whole range--Enon's hand on day 5 (that he was kind enough to give details of above) and my hand against Apathy on day 3. Those are very different hands, and there were two fundamentally different kinds of reasons for the two conclusions.

When I thought that Enon should jam his whole range, it was simply because the river bet looked weak. The board had come out with a four-straight and his opponent, a middle-aged guy who had raised preflop and bet both the flop and the turn, made a small bet and looked very uncomfortable. Some players are good actors in this spot, but I was willing to bet that he really hated the board--enough to fold to a raise--yet felt obligated to bet anyway. Also, the stack sizes were excellent for a jam: Enon reports that the guy bet 60k into 240k with roughly 200k behind. That means that Enon was jamming 260k total to win 300k that has already been bet, which is an attractive price against an opponent who is likely to hate his hand. Note also that the other guy was faced with a 200k call to win 520k; those odds are not so good that he will be forced (in his mind) to make a crying call with something like AA or AK. It's possible that there's a hand or two that Enon should call with, but either most or all of his range either (i) can get folds from better hands a lot of the time or (ii) can get value from the other guy's AA/AK those rare times he does make the crying call.

My hand against Apathy was (a bit) different, and when I said that he should jam the river I meant that I thought that was the game-theoretically optimal thing to do for him. Here I'm heavily indebted to Chen and Ankenman's Mathematics of Poker, in particular section 14.1, which examines situations where:

(a) One player has just bluff-catchers, and both players know it;
(b) The other player can beat a bluff-catcher with >50% of his hands; and
(c) Stacks are deep.

(Actually, Chen and Ankenman's example is more specific than this, but the generalization is easy to see.)

The idea is that when X's range is much stronger than Y's, and stacks are deep, X should (when he can) bet enough that Y can't call ever. And when this is the case, simple game-theoretic reasoning lets us conclude that this is the optimal strategy for each player. (Why would X do anything that lets Y get value on the river, given that he has a way to limit Y to zero value on the river? And since Y has a strategy available to him--folding--that guarantees him zero value, why would he ever let himself get tricked into doing anything else?)

Anyway, this is not exactly what was going on between Apathy and me, but he was close enough to being in X's situation in our hand. The river just hit his range a whole lot better than it hit mine, and we had roughly 1.75x the pot left in the effective stack, enough for him to make it impossible for me to call with bluff-catchers. He ended up betting 75k instead of 200k, but that is probably enough given (i) that it's a tournament and (ii) that he didn't know much about me.

I hope those explanations help.

All my best,

--Nate

I can't decide if I would rather have writing or poker lessons from you, but just wanted to chime in with the masses on how well-written and enjoyable this TR is.

Hey Nate -- I don't have anything to add that hasn't already been said, but I couldn't let myself read a TR like yours without, at a minimum, saying thanks ushering us inside the intensity of the room and the remarkable minds at work within it.

I've never played a WSOP event and, now, likely never will. But thanks to your TR I'm at least able to walk alongside for a few minutes -- smell the fear, wipe the sweat, exhale, refocus, and do it all over again moments later. Thank you.

Congrats on the deep run, kudos on your writing skills (treasure them above all in this day and age), and best of luck to you in the future.

Matt

great TR!

They certainly do help - thanks for taking the time to explain. I'll be thinking these over as part of my studies.

Hey Nate, loved these posts and looking forward to hearing your interview on the BaseballProspectus podcast!

Thanks!

Frankly, I'm terrified. I didn't feel sharp, and I constantly felt as if I wasn't saying things that would conduce to an interesting conversation between Kevin and me. I can remember most of the things I said, and in my memory they're reasonable enough, but I have no idea what happened to them between my brain and Kevin's hard drive. (I frequently correct myself, mumble, etc. One reason I'm drawn to editing is because I notice such a gap between the form my thoughts first take and what I actually mean to think with them.)

So, the interview might have been a disaster. But it might have been solidly mediocre, too!

All my best,

--Nate

what a great read, wp & wp!!

So glad this got bumped. Nate, awesome read! I'm preparing for my first WSOP-C event and will read this thread several more times to extract more wisdom from them which I'm sure I missed today. I'm sure your busy with your grad papers but I, and I'm sure hundreds more, would love to read any posts you would have on game theory or live tells. And if you feel like helping out a donk with his first big live event, feel free to pm me!

Immodest bump for the forum software upgrade.

Very appropriate. My first read, and I'm very thankful. Congrats on your 2011 run and for our sake as much as yours, I hope to get at least six more days of trip reports from you in the 2012 ME.

That's kind of you--thanks!

bumping for the 2012 WSOP - this is pretty much mandatory reading if you are going!

Well, a little late to the party. This run was the genesis of a fantastic Podcast, Thinking Poker. They mentioned this trip report last night, and here I am. All I can say has already been said elsethread. This was a fun, great read.