Poker Words - A Poker Blog: WSPL Goes to Vegas Episode 2/3

Game three is in the books, and I have now one two of them and sit atop the leaderboard. It looks like it is going to be a three way battle for the top two spots, although it is still pretty early.

I played a fairly vanilla game tonight. I was about third in chips for almost the entire way, except for a few minor hiccups here and there. Once we got down to three players, I jumped out to a lead and never looked back. Its the other two players that I want to talk about.

First is Mark. Mark is the new guy in the group and I hadn't played more than a few hands with him before the league started. After three games, I think I have a good read on him. He's a pretty solid player especially when the table is full and there are few fish for him. He plays fairly loose and pretty aggressive. It seemed like he was in just about every pot, and no one ever seemed to pick up a hand against him. He had a big chip lead early on and maintained it for much of the tourney. His downfall is that no one ever seems to play back at him, at least early on. Once we get deeper into the tourney the passive players have been eliminated, or forced into all-in or fold mode, so the pots that he normally steals he ends up having to fold, or lose.

For the most part I avoided hands with Mark. I'm getting used to his style but plays a wide range of hands that I don't want to have to try to figure out, especially when he is the big stack. Much better to bide my time and wait for him to either get into trouble or knock other players out for me.

Once we get down to four or five players, I don't have much trouble with Mark. He tends to over value his hands if he hits anything, but I can also get him to fold a fair amount of the time. He's definitely a force to be reckoned with, and may be filling the role of Smack this year, but I'm not nearly as intimidated.

Next is Rich. I think Rich may be the best player in the group. At least until we get to two or three handed. Once there he turns into this weak overly passive player which I just don't understand. I'm even more confused because I think he plays or played a lot of heads up online, so I think he should be really good at it.

When I play heads up, I will raise with just about and two cards, unless I think my opponent thinks I'm doing that and is likely to push back. Against Rich I get him to fold 3/4 of the time. On the other side, he flat out folds about half the time.

He survives for a while because I end up taking five or six minimum sized pots from him, then he reraises me big and wins a big enough pot to cover the ones he lost. I think if he would play a few more pots he would steal them from me and better disguise his big hands when he get him.

This marks the third time in two seasons that we've met heads up, and I've won all three. The first time I may have sucked out on him pretty bad, but who's counting?

Other notable performances for this week.

Noah was a no-show.

Aaron got short stacked early and battled to stay alive, placing in fifth.

Archie busted out first (but he still gets two points thanks to Noah). I still think Archie should be contending for a top spot, but he just doesn't seem to do well online.

here are the standings:

Week 3