Maximize Your Buy-In Value

I recently decided to take a shot at the WPT Event taking place at the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City. The Borgata has opened a brand new poker room that leaves little to be desired. The high stakes section alone has over 40 tables with plenty of action to be had at all levels and variants. This was a welcomed site as I needed to earn my buy in for the main event.

I found an opening at a 10-25 no limit table. The buy in is unlimited yet I chose to buy in for close to the minimum. As I did not know most of the players there and they had no clue who I was, it was inevitable they would put me on scared money. I took my time cherry picking hand to enter a pot with and always entered on a raise. I took the first few pots down with little resistance as I had established a very tight table image up until this point.

On one specific occasion I found myself holding pocket Jacks under the gun and decided to limp in. Two others limped in from late position and the two blinds followed us to the flop. The flop as A-J-3. I put out a bet of 150 got one caller and the button raised to 450. The small blind folded, the BB called as did I. The turn was a 7. I led out with a bet of 700. No sooner was did I release my chips, I was immediately asked how much I got left behind. When the action got to the Button he immediately raised an additional $6,000 putting me all in. Everyone else folded around and I immediately called.

The Button had bought in for $50,000 and had been muscling the table all day. When he saw me buy in with a little over the minimum he immediately assumed I would be on scared money and he could bully me off of the hand. The called shocked him, as did my set of Jacks that clearly dominated the A-2 off suite he was playing from the button.

I took $13,000 net profit off the table in an hour and 40 minutes and bought in to the WPT main event. The moral of the story is, in a cash game you can sometimes accumulate a large profit faster with a small stack than with a big stack as your competition will make a critical error and underestimate you wherewithal.

John “The Greek” Leontakianakos is a professional poker player with 27 years of experience. He is currently in the process of publishing a book on poker and runs his own website called JohnTheGreekPoker.