POKER HAND #10

CONDOLENCES: to the family and friends of Andy Glazer. Andy was a great poker writer and from all accounts a decent person so it's sad that he died, and so suddenly at that. Here's some of his writing:

Although we didn't discuss too many specific hands from Arieh's WSOP, he did touch on a few. "Here's an example of one I figured out," the handsome father of two said. "In one hand, I made a king-high flush on the river, when the board came J 6 2 Q Q. My opponent bet, and I folded instantly, even though you'll see me calling with all kinds of weak hands in other situations. I knew I was beat there; I knew that because my flush card had paired the board, I was nowhere, and I was right. I can't wait until that hand shows up on TV, so I can find out if my reads were as good as I thought.

"My strategy throughout was to play small pots," Arieh continued. "I'd play those small pots and win — chip up, chip up, chip up — and then sooner or later I'd play a big coin-flip hand. If I lost the coin flip, the little pots had given me enough chips so that I was back where I started, and if I won the coin flip, I was off to the races with a big stack.

"I felt like Gus (Hansen, the terrific Danish player) was inside me," Arieh added. "I know how he plays, and it can be devastatingly effective."

I wanted to know if there was a particular point — other than the obvious, his bust-out hand — when Arieh felt the tournament get away from him. He remembered the candidate clearly. "Without taking anything away from David Williams, who played great," Arieh began, "my big trouble hand was when the blinds were $30,000-$60,000, he made it $120,000 with what turned out to be two fives, and I made it $620,000 with my A-K. It's hard to call half a million with a small pair like that, but he did, and when both an ace and a 5 hit the flop, he doubled through me.

"Never mind my winning that hand," Arieh explained. "Forget about my winning that extra $500,000, or even just his $120,000 if he throws it away. If I just don't lose that hand, I'm OK with about six million. But losing it, now I have only four and a half, David has the same amount instead of one-third as much as me, and Fossilman has eight million. So instead of a small lead on me, he has almost twice what I do and can play much more fearlessly. If there was one big moment, that was it, but it wasn't like I never got lucky in this tournament. At one stretch a couple of days earlier, I'd been all in with a short stack ($20,000) and held A-Q against an A-K with the flop already K-Q-2, and somebody said, just before the turn, 'I had a queen.' Bang, a queen on the turn, the old one-outer. If I don't get lucky there, there's no story to talk about later."

Win the A-Q hand he did, though, and a story did develop. "The first few nights, I didn't sleep well," he said. "I stayed almost as focused as I was at the table, because I didn't want to lose focus. Finally, my wife, Angela, came in, and I was able to get seven or eight hours of sleep … but I'd wake up with my mind racing, thinking about situations.

"The relative lack of sleep wasn't too bad," Arieh explained, "because I have a lot of practice playing eight hours a day, four or five games at a time, mostly Internet tournaments of all kinds. That's a learning tool that the new generation of poker players has that lets them get experience much faster than players used to be able to.

"Besides," Arieh said, "I was just watching the NBA playoffs the other day, and some reporter asked Kevin Garnett about fatigue. I loved Garnett's answer: 'I'm a pro. You don't get tired in the Western Conference finals.' The guys who step up when adversity or fatigue sets in are the players who make names for themselves.

"I was in great shape after day one, but after day two, I had almost exactly the same amount of chips, and, of course, par had changed a lot," Arieh said. "I wasn't worried, though, because the structure is so good that I knew I had time. I was on a real roller coaster ride. First, I felt great from my day one, and then I called home and found out Angela was in the hospital, and I was ready to go home. She assured me she was OK; I was still skeptical about staying and playing, but she convinced me, and obviously she was OK, because she came to join me a couple of days later.

"Before day three, Erick and I talked about Abe Mosseri for two hours, because he had chips and was going to be at my table," Arieh explained. "We knew Abe was a backgammon player and idolized Gus Hansen's play, because Gus was also a backgammon player, so we knew Abe would play situations like Gus.

"One hand, I raised from up front with J-9, wanting to isolate the blinds, because we had decided they were players I could outplay," Arieh continued. "Abe reraised from the button. The flop came A-5-4, and I led out for $40,000. Abe just called. A queen came on the turn, and I fired $140,000; I was trying to get him to fold a weak ace, and he folded his hand. Then, I showed the bluff, and for one moment, regrettably, the old Josh came out a bit. I said, 'Come on, Abe, we're not playing tiddlywinks.' Most people are going to freeze after getting called on the flop, so when I fired again, I wasn't surprised he let it go. Even though I regret the trash talk, I don't think he was able to play the same after that.

"Finally, I got down to $1.5 million," Arieh recalled. "Raymer made it $250,000, and Williams flat-called. I saw two nines and pushed all in, and Raymer had enough chips to call me with A-Q. That hand had saved me before when I had it, but now it was Greg's turn; the flop came Q-Q-J, and I was dead to a 9 and didn't get one. I felt like I let everyone down. I hadn't come to edge up in the money; I wanted to be the world champion. I felt like I owed it to anyone who had ever done anything for me."