Pro Frustrated with WSOP Donkament!
We all get frustrated at times playing in a tournament when it seems that some ubber aggressive player pushes their stack in on every flush and straight draw their dealt. It means risking your tournament life on a coin flip, and its difficult to play poker as its meant to be played. Even pro players get frustrated by it, as Joe Hachem, 2005 Main Event Champion publically declared prior to being knocked out of this year’s Main Event.
The 2005 World Series of Poker champion said he’s lost all respect for a new brand of extremely aggressive poker players who seem to want to gamble all their chips on every hand in the main event.
“I had quite a bit of respect but you know what? They know nothing about poker,” Joe Hachem said as he took a break from his sixth session of poker at the US$10,000 buy-in tournament.
“These kids really know nothing. These kids are just … idiots,” Hachem said.
“We’re playing for one of the biggest prizes in history and they’re getting … five hundred million blinds in there with second pair,” Hachem said. “To me, the reason I’m upset is because it’s disrespectful. We’re playing in the world series, we’re not just having fun at a local home game. These guys are pushing chips around like it’s nothing.”
During one hand, Tran folded a strong hand of ace-king before any community cards were dealt when faced with the all-in bet of an opponent. Tran would have been well ahead in the hand if his opponent held two other unpaired cards, but would have had about a 50-50 shot if the opponent held a pocket pair of queens or lower. If the opponent had kings or aces, Tran would have been a big underdog, and Tran didn’t want to risk his tournament on a single gamble without more information.
Hachem said playing against opponents who only know one move – no matter what they’re holding – is frustrating.
“Look, their style may be the way they play on the Internet and that’s what they’ve got to do because they can open up another tournament every 10 seconds,” Hachem said. “It’s fine, right, but you’re playing here, you got so much time, you got so much going for you and these guys just want to go to war every hand.
“That’s why a crazy Internet kid is very unlikely to win one of these things,” Hachem said.
Okay, maybe he shouldn’t have come and said these types of player ruin the game, but the fact remains, he’s right. Its not poker anymore, its the largest bingo game in history. There are ways to play back against ubber aggressive players, but the key is to catch cards and trap them with very strong hands. If you’re facing a cold deck though, or heavily card dead, it makes it less likely to be able to play this way though, and the skill of the game goes to zero.
Poker is meant to be played using skill moreso than luck. But when your opponent prefers to push into you every chance he can for your tournament life, you’re often faced with a tough decision. Do you call with top pair top kicker and hope for the best? Do you fold your trip nines on the flop because it came up with a flush draw? Some players are going to be willing to risk it, but GOOD players are considering the bigger picture. A single hand doesn’t decide the winner of a tournament, but the way the player plays every hand he is dealt does.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to be known as the LUCKIEST player to win the Main Event, but a skilled player who made good decisions throughout the tournament.
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