Poker pearl #60

Jake Cody (see above from Card Player magazine) won the $25,000 Heads-up WSOP Championship. He's a 22-year-old professional player from the United Kingdom. Cody says:

You should be very flexible when you play heads up. One of the most important things is adjusting to your opponents to combat their styles. Don't make it easy for them and don't play into their hands. Always be the one who's making them answer questions.

Odds and ends:
I played in the Wednesday night tournament at the Horseshoe Casino again yesterday. When we got down to three people, we all had about the same sized stacks and agreed to chop. I like this tournament because you start with 20,000 in chips. Even so, a player busted out in 25 minutes. If they gave you an infinite number of chips, some people would find a way to lose them.

One cute hand. I limped in for 2000 from the cutoff with ♦9 ♦8. I often raise with hands like this to mix up my play. The button raised to 7000 and one of the blinds called, so I did, too. The flop was a rainbow 7-6-5 -- Yahtzee, as Grange says. It went check, I checked and the raiser moved all in! I obviously called and he showed ♣A ♣J. I don't blame him, he needed chips and figured the flop (even though coordinated) probably didn't connect with anyone -- wrong!

I'm going to the North American Bridge Championships (also called NABC) in Toronto later this month. I'll be playing in the three-day Life Master Pairs with Rick Rothwarth and in the Werner Open Pairs with John Schwartz. I've been to Toronto before and it's one of my favorite places in the world, so I'm looking forward to it. My first day of play will be July 22.