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When I was first getting into poker 4-6 years ago, I remembered thinking that the best players were supposed to be the ones winning most of the pots, managing to have the best hands when called and successfully bluff when others folded. So, when a player I considered bad beat me out of a pot, either because he caught me on a bluff, got me to fold the best hand or “lucked” into a better hand than me, I got frustrated. I thought since I was the better player I was “supposed” to win.

That’s not to say I didn’t have any understanding of luck, I knew you couldn’t win them all and often justified sessions in which I lost by thinking to myself that in the long run I’d always beat these bad players. But, the idea of the long run not happening NOW would frustrate me, and occasionally I would “tilt” by making what I knew was a bad play in order to try to win back the money I lost. I knew tilting was bad, and told myself I shouldn’t do it (or maybe that because I was a good player I didn’t do it [after all, the poker pro's from the television never tilt, right?], rationalizing any bad tilt play as being ok due to some line of reasoning I made up after the fact). Granted, I was playing in $5 games where nobody really knew what they were doing, I thought I was good because I won in them, and I won in them mostly because I had slightly more knowledge than most players as a result of reading about pot odds or continuation bets from simple Cardplayer articles or Full Tilt tips from the pros. I was hardly the poker master I thought I was.

Then, my sophomore year of college came and a regular game started forming on the hall of my dorm with mostly players new to the game, or ones I’d played with during my freshman year. I started playing the game full of confidence since I’d been tracking  my bankroll (after reading some article about the importance of bankroll management) for 9 months using an online blog (the remnants of which still exist alongside some ridiculously bad hand analysis here: http://nameas96.livejournal.com/) and I knew that through my poker prowess I had won $350 (lucking into $200 from a freeroll in an underground NY club). I had also just started believing that the best players in the world were loose-aggressive like Gus Hansen or Daniel Negreanu. So, since I was clearly the best player in this game I decided I should play loose-aggressive, raise every pot I could pre-flop, constantly “outplay” the good players in the game like my friend Zach (which in my mind meant bluff him out of every pot he played) and I’d be guaranteed to crush the game. I put very little thought into factors such as that $5 buy-in games with .10-.20 blinds leave very little room to outplay people, that more people at the table means more hands you have to beat more than it means more players you get to beat in each hand, and that good players like Zach quickly realize when you try to bluff them every single pot you play together and punish you for it. By the end of my first semester even though I was the ”best” player in the game who made all the best bluffs and easily won the most pots, I had lost $50 while Zach had utterly crushed the game and some uber nits seemed to have most likely won money as well.

I was a little distraught and confused after having lost in a game where I felt I was so clearly the best player. Worse yet, I couldn’t blame luck since I’d been a loser over the “long-term” that was the first semester (granted, I doubt I had even played 2,000 hands total). As a result of all the introspection, I had my first poker epiphany of sorts- I was trying so hard to outplay people that I was making bluffs and plays just to make bluffs and plays. I realized that if I was really a good player, I’d pay enough attention to the other players to pick up reads and adjust accordingly. I didn’t have to try to outplay people to outplay people, I just had to play poker and let the situations come to me. Well, I instantly started winning and over the next semester I utterly crushed, doubling my bankroll by winning $300. I’m pretty sure everyone else in the game was a loser (with Zach being the only one who officially tracked that he’d lost money in the period).

From there, I started playing in larger $20 games with tougher players, deposited $100 online and kept slowly building up my bankroll. I remember having another epiphany moment about tilt control after reading a post by Gigabet on 2+2 (http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Number=1825403), and my game really started to take off. Poker was becoming less and less about having a specific type of style, making the best bluffs, outplaying the most players, or even being the best player in every game. It was just about adjusting to your opponents, minimizing mistakes, and maximizing profits in the good spots while minimizing losses in the riskier ones (then again, from my exploits playing ridiculously aggressively I’d learned the wonderful benefit of appearing maniacal- people play really bad against you. So, I decided it was well worth enduring a little extra risk by trying to appear maniacal in order to capitalize on the positive effect of having people get frustrated and tilt into you). Three and a half years after that first epiphany (also through the great benefit of getting to talk poker with Zach and a friend I met online, Skalsky), my bankroll has been multiplied a hundredfold and I’ve been able to actually derive a little supplementary income simply by playing a game I enjoy.

At this point, I wish I could say I’ve completely conquered my tilt problems. While I rarely just angrily shove or call all-in with garbage, I still get frustrated by losing and fall into my old patterns of trying too hard to outplay people in spots where I have no rational reason to make a fancy play from time to time. It’s hard to completely control your emotions, and even though I think I’m pretty good at letting things brush off of me, I am human and imperfect and I don’t always play my A game. Not to mention, it’s so easy as poker players for things outside of poker to seep into and have negative effects on our poker games without us even noticing they are. In fact, as of late I’ve been consistently suffering from these mistakes of making unnecessary, unjustified fancy plays far too often and I’m realizing more and more that it probably has to do with things I’m dealing with out of poker. In fact, I’ve even started noticing a correlation between periods in which I tilt and certain life situations I find myself in out of poker.

By far the worst downswing in my poker journey took place in a 2 week period a year and a half ago just before my college graduation. I still remember how heading into my graduation I had no idea what I wanted to do after college. I still wasn’t even sure what I was interested in as a potential career path, let alone a specific job. I was staring off into the big, unknown entity of the future scared poopless. The only thing I did know was that I liked poker, I was pretty good at it, and I seemed to have a real passion for it. Granted, I never really wanted poker to be a full-time profession, but since I wasn’t sure what else I wanted to do I became really motivated by the idea of 1) trying to win a lot of money in poker before graduation in order to take the pressure off and 2) testing myself against some tougher opponents in order to prove to myself I could become a truly great player and maybe become a real player. Well, what happened? I decided to start playing any and all takers at 1/2 NL HU, try to outplay them constantly regardless of reads or justifications, and refuse to quit them until I lost painful amounts. More specifically, I lost about 30 buyins (6k), half of my working bankroll, and a whole lot of pride (note: I’ve since added uber conservative bankroll restrictions like never allowing myself to lose 1/20th of my broll in 1 session or start with more than 1/50th of my broll at risk in order to prevent this from ever happening again).

Thankfully, I wound up taking a break from poker after that fiasco to focus on finals and then enjoy New York City before I left it. I stopped stressing about where my life was headed, got my head on straight and wound up taking a successful trip to Vegas during the WSOP before starting a finance internship. Unfortunately, after my finance internship ended (and I realized finance was not at all for me), I was again left staring into an unknown future abyss and again turned to poker. This time I grinded online MTTs for a couple of weeks, played like trash and became as disinterested in the game as I ever have. From there, I wound up travelling around the US a bit before going to Ethiopia and having an incredible 2 month experience. When I came back from Ethiopia, I got a non-profit job in DC and despite being pretty rusty from not being able to play poker for 2 months I went on a mega rush and things have been pretty smooth ever since.

That is, until now. With my job set to end in January, I’m again looking at the future unsure of what I want to do with myself or where I could be heading, again feeling a desire to try to win a lot of money from poker quickly so I don’t have to sweat having no income while incurring numerous travel costs on a potentially exciting trip to Europe/Ethiopia/Yemen/wherever else I feel. And, again, I notice myself making way too many fancy plays, trying to outplay people just because I want to outplay people. I turned in a session playing MTTs yesterday that I can safely say was the worst session of poker I’ve played since those 2 weeks a year and a half ago. So, how do I fix it?

Well, I’m thinking maybe the best thing I can do is stop trying to force things, not just in poker, but also in life. Maybe it’s ok that I don’t know exactly where I’m heading or what I’ll be doing. I’ve learned many times that you can’t force poker, you’re best off just adapting to the situations that come and trying to make the best of it. Why not apply those principles to life? Life has already given me some pretty great situations, and I think I’ve taken advantage of them. Not to mention, thanks partially to poker, I don’t have to take any job I can get once unemployed. I can afford to explore the world, focus on spending quality time with friends and family, and let life come to me. And, hopefully, if I keep remembering not to get frustrated and try to force everything, I’ll be adaptive enough to have as fortunate a journey in life as I’ve had so far in poker.

There were two ways these opening exchanges were going to go: cautious or very cautious. "Have we seen a turn yet?" asked a colleague in the press box, approaching an hour into play. "No," was the answer to that, hinting at the trepidation among these nine, none of which could in any way be described as a nit. (The first turn card did eventually come, at 2.05pm. It was followed by our first river card and our first showdown. Read about it below.)

The first verbal declaration of all in came from Phil Ivey, reraising Jeff Shulman but putting what looked like an agonising decision on Joe Cada in the small blind. We've seen quite a bit of Cada over the past couple of months, most notably in Barcelona and London on the European Poker Tour, and he wouldn't stall without good reason. Eventually he passed up the chance to knock out the superstar, perhaps fearing the consequences should he double him up. That moved Ivey up to about 10 million, but which keeps him in the bottom three in chips.

It's difficult to gauge how the game stands from those chip counts at the moment, although they can loosely be split into three groups of three (with a bit of blurring at the boundaries). At the top, Darvin Moon, Eric Buchman and Steven Begleiter are playing a different game to the rest. They are comfortable and can still afford to take it easy. They can call in position with marginal holdings, hoping to hit a flop. Or they can bully with a re-raise whenever they like, especially from the three players immediately below them in the counts.

Those three, Shulman, Cada and Kevin Schaffel, are probably being forced into making the most poker decisions around the table. They still have a stack big enough to scare the leaders into getting too deeply embroiled, but with around 10 million apiece, they're often in a tough spot. They can afford to fold to a re-raise, but don't want to be bleeding too many chips lest they end up in the category below.

There we find the short stacks: Ivey, Antoine Saout and, in particular, James Akenhead. The three of them will have spent a deal of time over the past couple of months planning their shoving strategy: what hand is good enough to re-raise all in pre-flop. They came into today's play knowing that subtlety was going to be difficult; they needed to find a spot to get their chips in.

We saw Ivey do it, and Saout has also open-shoved pre-flop to take down a pot. But we must assume that Akenhead has been utterly card dead. He's yet to win a hand and has dropped to below four million, which means he is all in or fold until he doubles up or departs. One of those is likely to happen in the coming hour or so.

Once that happens, the game will probably open up, and even Daniel Negreanu agreed. "Expect this level to be really nuts," said the Team PokerStars Pro. At the moment, though, the stacks are too tentatively positioned for this to be a free-for-all. And there ends this episode of cod analysis.

WSOP Final Table 2009

Let's hear some action from that past hour:

We know a flute with no holes is not a flute, and a donut with no hole is a danish. What is an hour with no flops? Well, not entirely that interesting (and not nearly as tasty as a danish would be right now). The last hour of action was nearly flop-free.

When Joe Cada came in for a raise to 750,000, Steven Begleiter re-raised to 2,250,000 from the small blind and picked up the pot. On the very next hand, Begleiter raised from the button and won the blinds and antes again. When Phil Ivey raised the next hand to 800,000, Eric Buchman pushed him off with a raise to 3 million. Then Ivey came in for 800,000 and picked up the blinds and antes. Buchman did the same thing on the next hand.

Finally, we got around to seeing our very first turn of the day. Eric Buchman came in for a raise to 800,000 and got a call from Jeff Shulman. On a flop of [Kh][7d][7s], Buchman checked, Shulman bet 1,750,000, and Buchman called. Both players checked the turn [Th] and river [3c]. Buchman showed [Qh][Qd] for the win.

One hand later, the players went on their first break of the day.

One of the most active players from the early skirmishes has been Joe Cada. Here he shares his thoughts on the final table with the video blog team:

Watch WSOP 2009: Joe Cada on PokerStars.tv