Don't Try This at Home: A Cautionary Tale for Poker TV Viewers

With High Stakes Poker, the Professional Poker Tour (PPT) and the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event on my viewing list this summer, my DVR was bursting at the seams with poker programming. And on just about every show I watched, Daniel Negreanu was front and center.

I watched as he needled Minneapolis Jim Meehan into making terrible calls on the PPT. My jaw dropped when he called out the exact hole cards of his amateur opponents in the WSOP Main Event. Negreanu, it seemed, was able to play any two cards and make a winning hand. Whether he was flopping huge hands or making huge bluffs, he was able to bully his way to the final table of the PPT event at the Commerce Casino and he beat over 8,500 players in the Main Event of the WSOP, finishing 229th.

The problem with watching Negreanu is he makes it look so damn easy.

When I started my weekly Wednesday Series of Poker (WSoP) satellite league, I tried playing like Negreanu. Well, let's be a little more clear … I played every hand that Negreanu would have played.

I played any connected cards, unsuited one-gappers, suited two-gappers, it didn't matter. And I didn't just play them, I raised with them, I re-raised with them, and I bet every flop, turn and river.

I ended up winning a few early pots. But it didn't take long for people to start looking me up (we were playing Limit Hold'em). And once they did, the success rate of this strategy went down the drain. People played back at me at every opportunity. Every time I was in a pot it was like open season on my chips.

There were several reasons why Negreanu's style didn't work for me. I was watching Negreanu play No-Limit Texas Hold'em, not the limit variety I was playing, and Negreanu was playing deep-stack poker while our tournament structure is a medium-stack single table event designed to end in just under three hours.

But the most important difference is that I am not Daniel Negreanu. I can't look my opponent in the eye and tell him the exact two cards he's holding. I can't tell when a player will fold a medium-strong hand to a raise. And I always seem to put people on a bluff when they have the top hand.

I tightened up a great deal in weeks three and four and my play improved dramatically. At the end of those tournaments, the cards didn't cooperate and I ended up third in both. But I managed to get some much-needed points to move up the ladder.

I still have plenty of leaks in my game and I know I'll probably have to be very lucky to win the title Saturday. But if I've learned anything over the last six weeks, it's that I need to find a style of play that fits me, and it's not Daniel Negreanu's.