Playing Poker with James Woods

WHO HAS TWO THUMBS AND KNOCKED JAMES WOODS OUT OF THE TOURNAMENT?

One of the highlights of the tournament I played at Foxwoods over the weekend was knocking James Woods out of it. Playing against him was very interesting. He has an unusual and distinctive style, but it’s one I've seen before and so it didn't take me too much effort to adjust to it.

James plays a lot of hands, which means by definition that he plays a lot of garbage hands. And he sticks around in pots for multiple streets, especially if he's hit a piece of the board such as middle pair. Believe it or not, it's because of this fact that his middle pair ends up being best; his opponents become so frustrated that they will start playing back at him. But James has a decent post-flop game, so he ends up winning more than his fair share of hands that make it to later streets.

In addition to his general loose style, he also overbets on every street. For example, during the 25/50 level he brought it in for 400 in middle position (I’m more likely to bet 125-150). This bloats the pot early and takes opponents out of their comfort zone. He also has a rather deliberative pace, shall we say. This doesn't go over well with the typical fast-acting, East Coast player. Sometimes you can put a player on tilt just by playing very slowly against him. (It doesn't work against me though. I don’t care how slow you are.)

Too many opponents will try to play back at someone like this by also playing garbage and seeing if they can win as well. But since James has more experience at that, it's not going to be a winning strategy for them. My approach is to play tighter than usual; i.e. play only really good hands. This is obviously something I'll have more experience with than James does, so now we’re playing poker on my ground. If I don't flop good, I let it go. If I DO flop good, I'll be more likely to let him bet for me until showdown, when I scoop.

It definitely helped that I was three to his left; not counting the blinds I had position on him in every hand except once each orbit. Any hold'em player will tell you what a huge advantage this is: I was able to see what he was going to do before I decided to commit my action.

We played a total of four hands heads-up. The first hand was early, before I’d gotten the hang of his particular style, and he won that hand. The other three hands I won, including the one that knocked him out of the tournament. (In case it matters, my AK beat his A9).

Including James, there was a total of 251 players in this tournament, and I ended up cashing in 21^st place, so not a bad result I must admit.

One other story I’ll share from my week at Foxwoods, and this happened at the 2/5 cash game. Early in the session, I was faced with a difficult decision in a hand. My opponent was particularly cranky (but aren't they all on the East Coast?). He started complaining about the amount of time I was taking to act. Now, people who play with me regularly know that I am not a Hollywooder. I tend to make my decisions quickly and act right away when the action is on me. This was a tough decision though, so I decided to think it through.

When Mr. Grouchy started to complain about my pace, I said, “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not a very good player. Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out what I want to do. I know that some folks don’t like it when new people try to learn how to play poker, but I don’t have anything else to do this weekend so I thought I’d come down here and see how long I could make my $1000 last. I can ask the Pit Boss to move me to a different table if you'd like.”

I immediately made eight new friends at the table, none of whom wanted to see me move to another table and all of whom were willing to let me take as much time as I wanted in a hand. And oh, by the way, over the course of that session I ended up busting three of those players … including Mr. Grouchy himself.