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Going the distance in the main event

When you watch the WSOP main event on television one thing always becomes very evident, you need a lot of luck to make it to the top. To outlast almost 9,000 players as Jamie Gold did is 2006 it takes a lot of things. Skill, patience, luck, and cards are all factors in a huge field just as they are in any poker tournament, only in this one you need it to last for days.

I've been lucky enough to win myself into, and play the WSOP main event, the past 3 years, and in the past 2 have been able to make it to day three. The first year I really didn't know what to expect going in. I played a little too loose because of the great structure, and it eventually cost me. What I came to realize is that with this great structure, the WSOP main event for me was about one thing, staying out of trouble. With a starting stack of 20,000 chips and 2 hour levels to me this makes a lot of sense. I'm able to pick and choose my spots without having to gamble. If I'm not sure whether my hand is good, and am facing a tough decision for a lot of my chips, then I simply fold and pick a better spot. The structure allows me to make folds that I might not be able to make in other tournaments because the depth of my stack.

In my second year of playing the main event I had something very fortunate happen to me. It was dinner break on day 3 and we were less than 2 hours from the money. At the time nothing was going right, and I had lost close to half my stack and making it to the money seemed to be in jeopardy. I was feeling a little down and running some hands by my buddy p0ker h0, when he got a call from Phil Hellmuth inviting us to dinner. I'll never forget this hour long dinner. At this point I really had only known Phil for a short time. Phil sat and talked strategy with me for the entire dinner. He went over scenarios and strategies that were invaluable. He kept preaching the same thing to me, patience patience patience. He got me back in my comfort zone, and I went on to get my first WSOP cash.

The whole spectacle that is the WSOP main event can be very overwhelming for someone who is playing it for the first time. I suggest a formula that is slow and steady. Pick your spots carefully and when a good amount of your chips get into the pot, make sure you are confident that you have the best of it. I'm not sure who said it when talking about the WSOP main event when they said, "you only need to win one hand an hour", but I find this to be fairly accurate. It doesn't take splashing around in a ton of pots and spewing off chips to accumulate a stack with this structure.

Good luck and hope to see you in Vegas this summer!!!

Debo