WPT Championship Part 2: Soul-Reading Kid Poker

Just to freshen up your (and obviously my own ;) ) mind: I was telling you about my run at the $25,000 buy-in WPT Championship at the Bellagio.

As you probably still know, I was faced with an extremely difficult table, but nevertheless I was still able to gather some chips. Along the way I busted Tony Ma out of the tournament, when he made the nut straight on the turn, I made the nut flush, the money went in there and then and Ma was drawing dead.

At the end of Day 2, I was 12th in chips (Robert Mizrachi was leading the pack with $523,200; I had $306,600).

Day 3 began with yet another table of "new" faces. I found Daniel Negreanu at my table (Seat 3). I had never played for that long with Negreanu in a No-Limit game. (We did play some Limit games for days.)

At a certain point during play we are both in a hand and when the flop comes, Daniel check-raises. I think about the whole hand and say to him, "Your king-jack is good," and I fold my own hand.

Daniel is surprised; he looks at me and shows the table king-jack. We had some fun about it and in the meantime I made a deal with him: during our whole poker career we will have to show our hand to the other guy when the other guy "guesses" our hand exactly (not down to suits, and we must be heads-up in the pot).

PokerStars pro Daniel Negreanu: Has his soul read.

I was able to hold my own and steal some chips here and there. I was also able to bust a short stack; that gave me enough chips to move to a healthy chip stack.

My starting stack for Day 4 was $662,000.

Day 4 began pretty successfully for me. I was able to expand my tower of terror to a massive $900,000 ... until I found QQ and got it all in against A-K and lost that coin flip - which cost me more than half my stack. The hand just after those queens I wanted to take a chance and make a stand.

David Tran made it $50,000 to go, I was in the cut-off and flat-called with 9 8. The flop came Q 9 2, Tran checked to me and I moved all-in for $300,000 to pick up the blinds and antes plus David's investment, because I was pretty sure he held ace-king.

Unfortunately for me he didn't have ace-king, he had pocket kings and obviously snap-called. Turn came 7 and the river brought a no-good 5; I was eliminated in 31st place.

Although I was disappointed that I was not able to make it to the final table, I was happy that I improved from last year's top 10% finish.

Just days after that, there was another circus in town: the WSOP Circuit event at Caesars Palace ($5,000 buy-in). Out of all WSOP Circuit events this event has the best field, because everybody just finished the WPT Championship.

I decided I wanted to play that one as well, so I once again tried to win my seat in one of the satellites. Again, that plan worked out well.

Danny Wong: Two Wongs don't make a dent in a Chinese phone book according to Steve.

On Day 1 everything worked according to plan and I ended the day with $64,000 in chips (starting chip stack was $10,000). On Day 2 I was placed at the same table as Danny Wong (we are not related; Wong is a very common name in China, it is basically the Chinese equivalent of "Smith"or "Jones").

During that day I made a very nice hand: I held 7 8 when the flop came 9 6 T, so I flopped the nuts :) and I had an open-ended straight flush draw to go with it.

On the turn I hit my straight flush when it showed J. Unfortunately for Bill Edler (who is a Full Tilt pro) that jack gave him a king-high straight. Since he was pretty low on chips there was no way he could fold after he led out for $10,500, and I put him to a decision for all of his remaining chips.

So he called and was immediately drawing dead. (River came a meaningless 5.)

Not long after that hand, I got in a hand with Allen Cunningham; I am still wondering why he played that hand the way he did.

Allen opened for $12,500 (blinds were $2k/$4k with $500 ante) in the cut-off. I was in the small blind with J J and pushed for $69,500 more.

After quite some time Allen decides to call with K Q and spikes a king right there on the flop, eliminating me in 24th place. I really have my doubts about Allen's play, but we planned dinner again soon, so I will ask him what went through his head there. Allen went on to win the tournament so he buys :D.

Making Richie Rich pick up the tab next time.

Right after I won the satellite for the WPT championship I went to pick up my new car. For me, being Dutch, it is a rather strange experience to be able to get a "customized" license plate. In Holland you are just issued a plate number and that's it.

So since I was living in the States I always wanted to have my own license plate: "S18." All I needed more was a car that was worthy of carrying such a cool license plate. I was ecstatic to see how my new car looked with my own license plate.

I think the result is pretty cool :-).

For now I am getting ready for the WSOP... my first event will be the $10,000 buy-in Pot-Limit Hold'em event.

-- Steve Wong (Steve@888.com)

To follow Steve's progress in Event 1 and all events to follow, check out our live 2008 WSOP coverage.

More blogs from 888.com pro Steve Wong:

• WPT Championship Part 1: Something to Prove
• My Thoughts on Postponing the Main Event Final Table
• My Killer Poker Tip: Learn More Games
• The Players I Respect Most