WSOP adventures: a min-cash, bad beats and stupid aces
My trip to the World Series of Poker was a great time. Or was it?
Walk through the Paris and Horseshoe casinos during the World Series of Poker and it seems you can’t turn a corner without tripping over a bad beat story. Whether you’re milling around the walkway between casinos, grabbing a bite during the dinner break or even standing in the payout line, overhearing some poor guy’s tale of misery is unavoidable.
Of course, few of these bad beat stories are newsworthy unless you’re one of the game’s top players. Lots of legends of the game saw their dreams of deep runs in this year’s Main Event fizzle early on.
Phil Hellmuth, the all-time leader in WSOP bracelets won, pushed the action on Day 3 with Ace-King, all-in against Michael Zulker’s pocket queens. Hellmuth hit a king on the turn, which gave him a 97 percent chance of winning the hand (another player folded the third queen pre-flop), but he saw his tournament end when the case queen came on the river.
Doug Polk, cash-game specialist, poker coach and YouTube influencer, also went down on Day 3 before the money bubble. He was all-in with pocket aces and got called by Luke Chung, the table chip leader, who had pocket kings. A king came on the flop and Chung’s set held up, bouncing Polk “about 150 spots shy of the money,” according to PokerNews.
Polk, a Club WPT Gold ambassador, took it in stride, humorously fitting in a promo for his online sponsor as the board ran out against him.
“Aces versus Kings! Brought to you by Club WPT Gold. My name is ‘Code Doug’ and you can sign up today,” Polk quips just as the King of clubs comes out on the flop. “Not even code Doug can save you with a 100 coins freeroll on September 20. Sign up today. Code Doug.”
And while living icon Chris Moneymaker didn’t technically run into a bad beat, he did suffer a brutal loss in the opening stages of the Main Event’s first flight.
Moneymaker made a full house — jacks full of queens — on the turn but was facing a player with pocket queens who made a better full house when the queen came. From the PokerNews recap:
"Do you really have pocket queens?" said Moneymaker. According to the PokerNews reporter, Moneymaker talked through a few more parts of the hand. "If you've got queens, you've got queens," he said before calling.
I ran into Moneymaker in the Horseshoe a few minutes after he got knocked out. He was headed up to his room but took time out to pose for a selfie with me.
“You must get asked to do this a thousand times a day,” I said.
“It’s part of the deal,” he said with a smile.
As the World Series of Poker Main Event heads into final table play, I’ve been home from Las Vegas for more than a week and I’m still not sure how to evaluate my experience.
A success because I cashed in my first event ($300 Gladiators of Poker)? A failure because I didn’t cash in the four other tournaments I entered? A bigger failure since I got knocked out of the Gladiators before my flight bagged for the day? (It meant my cash didn’t come with a vanity Hendon Mob entry.)
A success because I felt confident and played well for most of the trip? A failure because I made an avoidable mistake that bounced me from one tournament and had a poor stretch of play in another where I let the player next to me get into my head?
A success because things might have played out a lot differently if I had just won a couple timely flips? A failure because I often played too tight and cared too much about staying alive?
My first time at the WSOP was all these things. I have a lot of takeaways but the main ones that stand out:
It’s not possible to make a deep run against thousands of players without a good amount of luck. I was on both sides of it.
Overall, the quality of play ranged from solid to not very good. I had one player at my table who needed an explanation of antes and another who was baffled that we would leave our chips at the table during the first break in play.
Booking a room in the Horseshoe (one of the two host casinos) was one of the best decisions I made. Being able to run up to the room on breaks was a huge benefit.
Will I return? Definitely. Are there things I would do differently? Certainly.
One of the things I might do is build in more down time away from the poker table. Easier said than done when there’s not much incentive to go outside into the 100-degree desert.
Post Script: F*#king Aces
One of the things that makes the World Series of Poker so special is the chance for a home game player from Anytown, USA to sit down at the same table with some of the world’s best players.
For me, it was a pivotal hand against three-time bracelet winner Yan “Anson” Tsang in the $600 PokerNews Deepstack Championship. Tsang, a Hong Kong resident with $4.2 million in tracked tournament earnings, won two of his bracelets in Pot Limit Omaha events in the World Series of Poker Europe (2022, 2018) in Rozvadov, Czech Republic. He won his third bracelet in a No-Limit Hold’em event on GG Poker online.1
Tsang had been fairly quiet at my table for a couple hours. For much of the time, he was short stacked and played pretty tight. When another player joined our table wearing a silver bracelet, the player sitting next to Tsang, half-jokingly asked if it was a WSOP bracelet, not knowing he was sitting next to an actual multiple bracelet winner.
(I knew because one of the first things I did upon joining the table was to check out the other players using the WSOP+ app. Love that app but that’s a story for another day.)
By the time, I faced off against Tsang, he had built his stack up to one of the larger ones on the table. Shortly before the third break, he ended up cracking my pocket aces with 6-5 suited when he caught a third five on the turn. To get there, he had to call off my big bet on the flop.
I can’t really blame Tsang. He was fortunate to hit a small pair on the flop and had position on me. He had already cashed for $107,000 in the $25,000 High Roller Pot-Limit Omaha event a few weeks earlier in the WSOP. A $600 buy-in tournament is basically a free-roll for him at this point.
While the hand against Tsang didn’t knock me out, it cost me a third of my stack and left me with just enough chips to afford 18 more big blinds. A couple levels later, I pushed all-in with pocket queens and walked into pocket aces.
The encounter left me with a single 1K chip. I was all-in again and ran into back-to-back pocket aces. Game over.
GGPoker's parent company, NSUS Group Inc., purchased the World Series of Poker (WSOP) brand from Caesars Entertainment for $500 million. The announcement of the sale occurred in August 2024, and the deal was finalized in October 2024.