Matt Giannetti Final Table WSOP

Usually in tournaments I tend to play a lot more flops in general.  Because of my cash game experience I feel that it's one of my biggest edges, and allowing yourself to be able to use what you're good at is the best way to chip up.  That’s always my strategy in general.  It wasn’t so much that final table specifically though I'm sure most people don’t see that commonly at final tables because it's not typical tournament strategy.

If I think my hand has decent potential, I'm not going to go crazy and play like 10-5 offsuit, but if I think it has decent potential, I'll play it.  There will be certain players who I feel I won't be able to get good value out of my hand even if it hits, like Ben Lamb for example is going to be a tougher player to get a lot of value from out of a marginal hand, but against a lot of the other players if I really think I can get value out of it, I have no problem seeing flops with it and playing from there.  I feel very comfortable making reads and kind of knowing that I'm capable of flopping top pair and folding it if I don’t feel its good.  Certain players might feel like if they flop top pair they gotta call all the way down, but I'm gonna feel it out and make every decision as it comes.

On the flop, the two eights against Pius. Basically, when I call the flop I pretty much was going to go with the hand.  And just deciding to play the hand the way I did, with the call on the flop I basically was going to be willing to commit my whole stack.

It was a 30 million dollar pot going into the turn and I had 42 million behind.  When he hits the queen the last thing I want him to do is check.  Once he checks I feel for sure he's hit the queen and he's gone from bluff off mode to check call mode.  It was a really sick feeling once he checked there.  So calling on the flop, that was a big decision.

Yeah, but if you play my style where you'll see me fold the button frequently, which again is not typical tournament strategy, if you're trying to play more selective hands than you have to be willing to get the maximum value out of them.  And going crazy and 4 betting eights, which are a pretty good hand four handed, you really...  I'm not trying to say I'm a genius or anything but look at how the rest of the hand played out.  I got another 7 million on the flop with him having three outs, and honestly I think if he doesn’t hit the queen I think he's gonna fire about 12 million and then at that point I'm going to protect the rest of the pot and ship my stack. That was a huge swing in the tournament.

Yeah.  I'm not really calling 7 million on the flop to float.  I feel like I have the best hand.  And just based on how aggressive Pius is and stuff, just based on everything, I feel like against him in that stuation you have to go with eights.

I think it was probably a more crucial point in my tournament than the jacks hand, and the jacks obviously crippled me and if I had won that hand I would have been in a great position and they hurt a lot.  But if you look at the jacks hand, yeah it was a bad beat, but I mean Lamb is 25% to win the hand.  There with the eights Pius has got three outs with two to come and I think I'm going to win an even bigger pot if he doesn’t get there. 

I’ll play most players like that, I give people rope and if they want to hang themselves they hang themselves.  I'm not one who feels like I need to protect my hand.  I'd rather give people chances to bluff off their money than protect pots. At some point if the pot becomes big enough and it’s a big enough percentage of my stack then I'll go into protect it mode. But for the most part I have probably a slightly dífferent approach than most players.