PROspective with Ryan LaPlante

The Hunt for Six Figures and a Bracelet.

This is the first part of a multi-part series on my summer at the WSOP and closely chronicles my deep run in the $3,000 buy-in NLHE event. (Hand information may be slightly inaccurately depicted due to my faulty memory!)



The best time of the year is over. The World Series Of Poker (WSOP) has finally come to a close. By the time this is published, most of the aches and pains from a brutally awesome (or painful) summer have healed, and everyone will be looking forward to replenishing their bankrolls for the next one.



I happen to be one of the fortunate few to be able to have a fatter wallet than when the summer started, and was also lucky enough to achieve a career goal of mine. This was all possible thanks to a mix of good timing, good luck, and good play.



Keep reading and you'll get a first hand account of a whirlwind three days I had, insight into major decisions I had to make, and my thoughts and feelings over the course of those days.



Day 1: June 16th



“A Long Morning”



The start to my day could not have been worse. I had seen my doctor that morning and heard very bad news on my health. It was the kind of thing that can only be either very good for your game or, more likely, very bad. My state of mind after hearing it was pretty shocked; I had considered not playing because of it, but didn't know how I'd stay sane if I just sat at home.



The kind of mindset it put me in was very interesting, as it essentially ensured that I would play fearlessly to the point of almost carelessness. Thankfully I was very aware of this, so made sure to keep my inner demons at bay and not pull the trigger at every opportunity.



Knowing this will help to some degree understand the thought process I had going into hands throughout the course of the tournament. That being said, even if I was in a normal mental state, I likely would have had many of these hands occur the same way anyways.



Hand 1: Five-bet folding vs. Martin Finger



For those of you who don't know, Martin Finger is a German wunderkind. He is a young phenom with an already impressive resumé, and plays poker at a incredibly high level. At the time the hand occurred, we had been chatting about poker and life, and were having an all-round enjoyable time. He had late registered, and our table draw was one of the more difficult ones. As a result, both of us were playing in a very aggressive manner leading up to this.



Table Info: Nine-handed, the blinds are 150/300 with a 25 ante. Martin and I are in the hi-jack +1 and hi-jack respectively. We are playing 14k effective, and he has me covered. I have Q-9 off-suit.



It folds to Martin. He opens to 800.



Thought Process: Based on how the button and blinds were playing and their stack sizes, I believed that he would be playing a wide range of hands from this position. Because of this, I thought that it would be a great place to attack his open. As my hand strength is fairly weak and doesn't flop the best, my only options are to re-raise or to fold.



I re-raise to 2,050. The action folds around to Martin, who raises again to 4,500.



Thought Process: While his raise should be concerning, it doesn't necessarily mean that he has a very strong hand. Whether he is apt to be very strong here or not will come down to how he perceives my re-raise. If he thinks I will only do it with strong hands, then I should fold to his raise unless I have Q-Q+/A-K. Instead, I believe that he will assume I am capable of raising with a very wide range of hands. As a result, he will attack it with aggression with the worse hands he may have, so it should be a good spot to re-bluff him. Also, while I may be putting in nearly 40% of my stack, I must fold to a shove due to how little equity my hand will have versus the range I expect him to shove.



I raise to 5,875. Martin shoves. I fold.



Thought Process: While I lost around 40% of my stack on this play, it doesn't mean that it was a bad play. It may have been that my perception of the situation was wrong, or he may have just had the top of his range.

45 minutes or so after the above hand, Martin busted in a blaze of glory. He spun up a fairly large stack, then spun out just as quickly. Not long after he busted, he was replaced by a good online American professional named Bryan Piccioli.



Bryan and I hadn't seen each other in awhile – since the last WSOP. We had met in Cabo around 1.5 years previously, and had both been there for the online grind. Because of this, and because of playing similar tournaments online, we had a lot of previous history.



Hand 2: My Recklessness Gets Rewarded Against Bryan Piccioli



Table Info: Nine-handed, the blinds are 200/400 with a 50 ante. Bryan is on the button and I am in the small blind. We started the hand with around 13.5k effective, and Bryan has me covered significantly. I have Ah8s.

Folds to Bryan on the button. He min raises to 800.



Thought Process: He will be playing a very wide range of hands from the button with this large of an effective stack. While I may have a hand that is ahead of his raising range, it doesn't play very well out of position. Because of this, and due to how shallow we are, I can comfortably re-raise with intention of stacking off pre-flop as a shove if he plays back at me. I also expect to get enough folds to make the raise profitable outright. While I expect to get called pre-flop often, even when I make it a reasonably large size, I don't mind this due to how shallow we are playing.

I re-raise to 2,150. Bryan calls.



Flop: 9h-7s-4c

I bet 1,575. Bryan calls.



Thought Process: While we do not hit a hand on this flop, this is actually a fairly good flop for us. This is because the majority of the range of hands that Bryan will flat pre-flop do not hit this board either. As a result, we can reasonably expect to have the best hand and be ahead of his range. I bet small to get as much of his range as possible to continue vs. me, and intended to shove vs. a raise, and to either check-shove turn, or to bet turn and stack off depending on what it was. There is also the option of folding the turn in the event of a bad card.



Turn: 5h



I bet 4,500. Bryan shoves for 5,500 more. I call.



Thought Process: I make a large bet on the turn to get as much of his range to fold as possible. That being said, I knew when I bet big that I would have to stack off due to the pot odds I would be getting (4.5-1 or so, while I also believed that I would have around 17-23% equity versus his range). Thus while I called his shove, I wasn't very thrilled about doing so. I believe that betting a bit smaller and folding to his shove would have been better, due to how rarely people will re-bluff in this kind of spot.



Result: I show my A-8, he shows 10h-8h, the river is a brick and I very fortunately win with Ace-high.



This hand vaulted my stack and spirits back up. The rest of the night went smoothly, and with one level to go I flopped a straight with a straight flush draw to go with and got it in for a clean double. This gave me the kind of stack needed to muscle my way through to a tough Day 2.



Part 2 of this series will cover my 2nd day of play, including re-re-raise bluffing 9-4o pre-flop, and making what I consider to be one of the best folds of my life. I hope you have enjoyed it so far, thanks for reading, and best of luck at the tables!

