Managing Fatigue Reduces Bad Reads, Sloppy Bets, and Losses

Date: 2008.03.31 | Category: Hand Of The Week | By: Phil Hellmuth   

I’ll soon be traveling to Las Vegas, where one of the most important tournaments of the year takes place on April 19. The WPT Championship — a $25,000 buy-in tournament — is held at the Bellagio, and it will pay at least $5 million for first place. I can’t wait! In 2006, I made it down to the money, where I suffered a couple of bad beats and wound up finishing in about 50th place. Last year, I had the chip lead for much of days three and four, only to finish in 18th place when I overplayed pocket jacks. Too many times over the past year, I’ve looked back and wished that I had folded my pocket jacks versus Thomas Wahlroos’ pocket aces. Even though the flop was 9-8-5, I should’ve been able to escape. I didn’t, and the bad memory still stings. It comes down to smarts, because if I had folded that hand, I probably would have made it to the final six players, and perhaps I would have won the whole darn thing.

The WPT Championship is the one tournament I want to win as badly as I want to win another bracelet at the World Series of Poker. So, in my opinion, here is the order of importance of modern-day tournaments: the WSOP Main Event; the WPT Championship; the NBC Heads-Up Championship; any WSOP event; the Bicycle Club WPT Championship; the Commerce WPT Championship; the World Poker Open at the Gold Strike in Tunica, Miss.; the Bellagio “Doyle Brunson Five Diamond” WPT Championship; the Bellagio “Festa Al Lago” WPT Championship; the Foxwoods WPT Championship; and any WPT event.