Does A Stacked Table Equal A Stacked Deck?

The pros weigh in on the positives and negatives of landing at talent-packed table.

ON A RECENT EPISODE OF NBC’S POKER AFTER DARK, Jamie Gold found himself in the final three, seated between Johnny Chan and Phil Hellmuth, and couldn’t help but comment on the level of difficulty he was facing. Frankly, Gold’s degree of difficulty at the outset wasn’t much better, considering the other three players at the table were Chris Ferguson, Berry Johnston, and Huck Seed.

Of course, Poker After Dark is a made-for-TV version of poker where the tables are always going to be stacked with top names, but even in the “real world” of poker, the luck of the draw sometimes leaves a pro surrounded by other pros in the early stages of a tournament with hundreds, or even thousands, of entrants.

So just what are the pros thinking when they find out their table is full of other pros? For some, they think it’s the worst possible scenario. Others welcome the challenge and think of it as a learning experience. Here’s what 10 of poker’s finest had to say about the subject of landing at a stacked table:

ANNIE DUKE
I hate stacked tables! Yes, you don’t have some maniac breaking you with a bizarre hand, but who wants to play against good players? It’s harder to make money and you have no edge. People who say they like good players because they know where they are at are lying or they don’t understand poker. Give me a table of bad players any day; that is why I play the game!

I understand that you can learn from other great pros being seated with you, but you never want to see that in a big tournament. The toughest table I ever played at was obviously the Tournament of Champions in 2004. The lineup for that table was myself, Phil Hellmuth, my brother Howard Lederer, Johnny Chan, Greg Raymer, Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, T.J. Cloutier, and Chip Reese.

SHANNON SHORR
I recently had Scott Fischman, Devilfish [David Ulliott], Ted Forrest, and John Murphy all at my table at the Bellagio $15,000 event, and they are all good players, but I actually liked that table because I didn’t expect them to be re-raising too much. Not Murphy, but the other guys are older guys and they don’t do a lot of re-raising pre-flop, so I could be aggressive. I went in there planning on being aggressive.

At the same time, the way most of us play tournament poker is that we don’t want to play against each other; we try to find the weak spots and exploit those. A lot of guys won’t play back at me, which is nice, so I just have to find those few weak spots at the table. At the Bellagio there weren’t that many, but when there are those spots, it’s great, for sure.

JONATHAN LITTLE
I don’t like tough tables simply because your profit in poker comes from weaker players. The latest two final tables I have reached on the WPT have both been super tough. Five out of the six players were at least fairly well known, either live or online. The Niagara Falls final table included both Scott Clements and Barry Greenstein. At the Mirage, Darrell Dicken, Phil Ivey, and Amnon Filippi were all at that final table that I took down.

DANIEL NEGREANU
I think it’s always better to have a soft table draw because it gives you an opportunity to get some easy chips from bad players. It can be a bit more of a rocky road against bad players, but it’s well worth it.

However, I must admit, when I played in my very first WSOP event in 1998, I had the following table draw as my starting table: Men Nguyen, Erik Seidel, Dan Harrington, Johnny Chan, Humberto Brenes, Dewey Tomko, Huck Seed, and myself. I survived that table and went on to win the tournament.

DAVID SINGER
The thing most people don’t realize is that in tournaments, what table players get is a big part of who is going to do well. When you get a really good table draw at the beginning of the tournament, it is very helpful; conversely, if you get a bad table draw, there is nothing you can do about it. Sitting there and being pissed off about your luck isn’t going to help you.

I just try to pay a lot more attention to my opponents; they really aren’t going to be giving anything away. Actually, at times, that isn’t true. Most of the time they aren’t going to give anything away, but if you pay attention, people have off-days and people aren’t playing the same way every day and it’s very possible, if you are paying enough attention, one guy could play different that day, or he’s not in a good mood for whatever reason. It is very important when you are playing against better players in particular to really watch how they are playing. It is harder to outthink them, but you really have to try and anticipate what they are doing and how they think you are playing. You just have to bear down and concentrate.

JOHAN STORAKERS
I have no problem with a tough draw. Against better players, it’s easier to form an overall picture of the task you have ahead of you. Of course, in my opinion, I would rather have an easy draw because then I can accumulate chips when bad players make mistakes. That way I can avoid getting short-stacked, getting close to 25 times the big blind.

Naturally, every once in a while you get a table with almost all pros. The first event I can think of is when I got to sit between Johnny Chan and T.J. Cloutier in one of the WSOP events in 2002.

JOE SEBOK
The number-one thing you want to see when you sit down is players that you don’t know their name. That is the first thing that you want, a bunch of people that you don’t know, because that means probably they aren’t playing as much poker as you are, at least professionally speaking.

I want passive players at my table, players that are going to call raises and then fold every time an ace hits the flop, or they are never going to raise me unless they have a big hand. I want people that are predicable and are just going to play their hands rather than actually playing the game. That goes along with being a better player. Better players play the other players, and you just want guys who don’t do that.

For me, the worst-case scenario is when Barry [Greenstein] is at the table, for a multitude of reasons. People always complain and they think it is a disadvantage for the other players at the table, but the fact is we are in a big disadvantage. I’m not going to try and bluff Barry out, which means the pots that he’s in, I am super predicable. I’m not going to do anything. If I raise, I have a hand, and same for him. If he raises, he has a hand. If he folds, it’s because he didn’t have anything. He is never going to try and bluff me, he’s never going to try and trap me, and if we are playing together, people can read off that and they can know if it’s a three-way pot and I put in a raise, I have the goods. If he puts in a raise, he has the goods. The other players in the hand have a massive advantage, they literally can figure out what our cards are.

We play super aggressive and we are all about intimidating people, so when we can’t get out there as much and steal as much and attack because there is one player at the table you are purposely trying to stay away from, it’s hard. It basically puts your game somewhat on lockdown, and it makes it difficult to play until you get them out of the hand. It is very, very, very frustrating.

JEFF MADSEN
When a table is stacked, I don’t sit down and think it is a bad draw. I don’t really mind tough tables. I like interesting tables, and sometimes when you have a lot of good players, sometimes I get more comfortable because they all want to feel the table out more so maybe they are all less likely to make moves because there are so many good players. It can give me room to play my game, and I know that they are going to play a little more solid.

If there is a table with people I didn’t know, I wouldn’t know if they are capable of calling all their money off with crap. If it’s someone I have never played with, I really don’t know how they play. At least if it is a bunch of good players, I kind of know where I am at.

CHRIS FERGUSON
I don’t worry about a stacked table too much. Yes, I guess if you are playing against great players you are not going to do as well, but you have to ignore that. You just have to play your game and ignore that you are playing against a table full of professionals. Some of these guys are going to get through, and you want to give yourself the best chance at getting through as well. The way to do that is just to play your game.

I remember a couple of tables where I have had like four world champions in a row on the first table of a tournament. One particularly stacked table I remember was the 1997 World Series of Poker Main Event. I had one unknown player at my table. There was Stu Ungar on my left, two to my left was Billy Baxter, three to my left was Phil Hellmuth, and four to my left was Chris Bjorin. I know Tony Ma was also at that table. This was when there were only about five tables left in the tournament. I just didn’t let that get to me. I wasn’t thinking I was in bad shape at that table, I was just watching and learning and trying to give myself the best chance to get there. It really wasn’t intimidating to me at that point, I was just trying to play as well as I could while watching and learning.

I think I learned a lot watching Stu Ungar play that year. This was back in the day when a lot of professionals were making the final table of the Main Event. Ungar ended up winning it that year.

HOWARD LEDERER
A stacked table is a bad draw, and no one is going to convince me that it isn’t. When I sit down and I recognize six of the eight players that I am seated with and then I hear that the other two are some of these young kids that I have never heard about but they are name players and they are good, that’s not a good thing. I’m not happy about it and it will hurt my equity in the tournament. I would much rather play against people I have never seen before who are not good players.

That being said, I have played a lot of cash games; I have played in some of the biggest, toughest games in the world for years, so I do feel like my game is made to beat that kind of table and I have had some success at those games. I think I do better than most would do in those situations because I don’t have the kind of game that is just going to try to run over the table at every table I’m at; that kind of game is going to have problems at a stacked table. You have to adjust your game, and I have been doing that in big cash games for years, so I don’t get intimidated or get too depressed about it, but I certainly acknowledge the fact that it’s not good for me. I would much rather play against a weak player than a good player.

The toughest draw I have ever had was my opening table at the first $25,000 buy-in tournament at the Bellagio. It was actually documented by the WPT show. In seat order, there were Phil Hellmuth, David Plastik, Huck Seed, Phil Ivey, Peter Costa, myself, John Juanda, and Paul Magriel. Soon after, they brought Erik Seidel and Scotty Nguyen over after a couple of people went broke. It was just this ridiculously loaded table at that tournament. There were like 30 bracelets at that table.

Katie Lindsay is a Los Angeles-based poker writer who contributes to numerous magazines and Web sites.