Late Night, Bad Play

One trend we're noticing is the quality of play (and general level of patience) drops significantly as it gets later. More hands are being over-valued (A-K or medium pairs, mostly) and stacks that are not in danger are evaporated by poor decision making.

At Annie Duke's table, the person to her right and the big blind were fighting over a pot. The flop produced a Q-10-9. The big blind moves all in, and the person next to Duke quickly calls, showing trip Tens. The big blind flips A-J. Why risk all of your chips in an unraised pot with a gutshot draw? Lucky for him, a King hit on the turn to save his ass.

Moments later, Boston Rob lost half of his stack when his A-J fell to trip 6's (flop came J-8-6). While calling an all in with top pair and Ace kicker isn't a bad play at all, Rob didn't hesitate to call, not considering that his hand could in fact be beat.

One person focusing fine is Dutch Boyd. Dutch played a great hand against 4 other foes. After a series of raising and re-raising, the man to Dutch's left moved all in. The two others fold, and Dutch asseses the situation for awhile. He calls, flipping over pocket 9's. The all in raiser flips A-K. Dutches 9's hold and he now has over 40k. After the hand, he told the table, "I figured some of his outs were dead. Even getting rid of those Aces [from the two folders] means I'm in good shape."

Also over 40k is Vaughn Sandman. Although someone spilled his beer (Sandman called the floor manager and told him to get him another one), he's not rattled, continually building his stack.