John Hewitt WSOP November Nine Bubble

My draw was fine.  Maybe I’m a bit too cocky, but I really enjoy being put in tough situations.  I wish the world could see the hands I was getting then.  I swear to you the top of my range was like ten-six offsuit and I was like, I can’t really open this.  And whenever I got dealt like ten-nine suited, it was already opened and three bet.  I really couldn’t do anything. 

I think it is really close.  Gianatti knows that the table has been really active and that his shove under the gun looks really strong and that he’s probably only getting called by jacks plus.  And he could be shoving anything, it just depends on what his mood is, whether he’s had enough.  It may sound weird, but he may have picked up a blocking hand like A-9 or A-8 and think, I have an ace so even if I get called I’m at least thirty percent and it’s a good spot to steal the blinds. He knows that the table has been really active so that no matter what he got in the big blind next hand he was going to be facing a raise from somebody.

A lot of people may differ from me, but in my mind from a strictly mathematical point of view you have to call.  I was having a conversation with Martins Adeniya and Ben Lamb the other day, and obviously they’ve played a lot more live events than I have.  We were discussing a lot of different hands that have been going on, and they made a point that doesn’t come up online, which is that in live tournaments you’re not in life going to be getting enough variance in 10k tournaments to see the long run.  But I was thinking making this call, I’m pretty sure I’m winning here.  I may be flipping, and if I’m flipping I’m flipping, but I want to build my stack.  People only talk about this hand a lot because it’s the November Nine bubble. 

Humberto Brenes told me that it was a fold.  But I mean I don’t know, Humberto is a live pro.  He has a different perspective.  To me A-10 was borderline.  If I had gotten A-9 it’s a fold, king-queen is a fold, all those hands.  But in my way of thinking about poker, I’ve never really cared about the money, I’ve cared about winning.  And the way to win is to accumulate chips regardless of what the money is.  Obviously  there’s good spots to accumulate chips and bad spots to accumulate chips, but you put this hand in an online tournament in a 100 dollar rebuy, that’s a snap.  And obviously I’m not a live player, but if you put me back in that situation I’m calling again. 

Martins was saying, yeah but you have to take into account that you may not be deep in enough 10k tournaments in your lifetime to always make that correct decision, so you need to think about the money to insure yourself that you make it to the long run, which you never think about online.  Maybe that’s something I know now, but that was my 7^th live tournament ever and my second cash, so live and learn.