It was a 45-player poker tournament; everybody started with 1500 chips. After making a couple of silly misread to the opponents, I dropped to the shortest stack with less than 30 chips in my hand at the very early stage (the red line).
What would Martin Jacobson do? I asked myself.
Don’t give up and don’t play loose. Be extremely patient and tremendously disciplined. I waited a few hands and started to double up two times and got me back to around 500 chips. I took my time and got back to the game slowly. I was playing far under the radar. After 1.5 hours, I made to the final table with the shortest stack (again LoL). I think I had around 4k chips; while the chip lead had around 18k.
From the chip graph, the stack trend of the chip lead shows that he is a pretty strong player. He seldom had significant decline and he was always the lead to the final table. So my strategy was to try to isolate and play with him super cautiously.
The key hand: I had 7k chips and the chip lead had 20k. The blinds were 300/600 with 250 ante in the pot. My hand was A-Q offsuit and I raised to 1500 preflop. He called at the button and everybody folded. The flop came 3-A-A. I checked and he bet 1500. I called and the turn was an Q that made me a full-house! I checked again and he checked too. Now the river came an 9, so it was 3-A-A-Q-9 on the table. I checked again and he bet 2000. I put all-in, and he called. He showed A-9… he had a full-house too. I took the giant pot and became the chip lead.
I made it thru to the heads-up. However I made a misread to my opponent and lost my pair of 7s to his Js, together with my tournament. I thought I could perfectly imitate the WSOP 2014 final table 🙂
What did I learn?
By following them thoroughly, it is not that difficult to get into the final table. Seriously.
- Don’t give up and don’t play loose.
- Be extremely patient and tremendously disciplined.
- Adapt the strategy to the environment.
The WSOP 2014 Final Table
Martin Jacobson started the WSOP main event final table with 15m chips, 6th among 9 players: while the chip lead had 39m. Although Martin picked his hand very cautiously, he once got dropped to less than 9m chips. He didn’t give up, accumulated his stack slowly, and made to the stage with only 3 players. Here they are in the photo, from left to right: Felix Stephensen, Jorryt van Hoof, Martin Jacobson.
Martin knocked out Jorryt, the original chip lead, and doubled up to over 100m. He finally won the tournament without making any significant mistake throughout the final table.
He kept his condition well for this tournament by doing yoga and eating healthy. Lots of young and contemporary poker professionals nowadays have a healthy life like Martin. Quite a few top professionals, such as Daniel Negreanu, eat carefully to adjust their play conditions. This is why poker is seen as sports by people who really understand poker.
I hope more people will understand the real side of poker.
DN.ASOBIBA 