We’re back with our “A Week in the Life of Anton Wigg” two part series, if you missed part one then fear not you can find it here.
Were you up or down last week?
My number one priority is to be happy with my game and the hands I’ve played. I also always try to look over my game and see if there are leaks I can plug, and if there are new “trends” that I need to be aware of. But to quote a friend of mine, “it’s the result that counts!” I won €1.5k playing cash games and around $6k playing tournaments over these sessions.
Skills To Pay The Bills?
Can you give the fans of poker an insight into the high levels of costs a professional player has to contend with during a trip like Prague?
These are my estimates from a fortnight in Prague: –
• €250 Accommodation (Hotel for EPT included in package)
• €150 Transport
• €750 Food and Beverages
• €600 Flights
• €135 Massages
• €150 Other Expenses
Walk us through one of your more interesting hands of the week?
Well there was an interesting hand against Benny Spindler and Steve O’Dwyer in the HR. I’m down to 24k and open the BTN to 800 with QJcc at 2/400 a50, Benny – with around 45k – makes it 2400 from the SB. Steve cold-calls from the bb with around 90k. I don’t think Benny needs to be very strong here. SB vs BTN with ante, I’m pretty sure he’s going to play it very aggressively.
He Just Called To Say….
Steve is aware of this and calls a very wide range here to get to play position very deep. I call since I have a hand that plays fairly well against their ranges and with position. Especially, given stack sizes where I think that they might be playing some fairly aggressive hands trying to squeeze me and the other guy, so with my shorter stack and a hand like QJs I should be able to play it very profitably even against two very good players so I flat.
The flop is Qh8h5c. Benny checks, Steve bets 4500, here I think it’s really close to a shove for me, but I think I have just a little bit too strong of a hand. I expect Steve to shut down a lot on the turn, but my hand, with the backdoor flush draw, is just a bit too strong for me not to try to hope he turns a draw that is good enough to go with, instead of having him folding out those hands on the flop, and in a three-way pot I think he might fold out hands like JJ-99. So I call. Now Benny raises to 15k. Steve folds and I take a couple of seconds just to think through the hand and be pretty happy to get it in. So I shove, Benny calls with 54hh
And we’re off to the races!
At first I wasn’t sure if I liked his line in a hand where he is setting himself up to look like he’s heavily weighted towards strong draws. And some nut hands like AA-QQ and AQ-KQ, but having a Q myself a lot of those combos fall out and I’m not even sure if he plays those hands as C/R or as just lead-bet-shove. That was my initial thought. But thinking more about it, I definitely think Benny’s line is better. Steve will stab at that flop, so often, and he doesn’t mind getting it in with dead money vs me. This way he gets some value from Steve and is getting it in against basically the same range of hands.
Was there anything about your game that was off for you last week?
I did get a bit emotionally tilted. I still think I played fairly well, but the feeling of taking a card-game personally is a bit stupid after six-years playing professionally.
Was there anything about your game that you were really pleased with?
Almost all of it. I felt like I made good decisions based on the information I had, didn’t make very many mistakes and recognised the ones I did.
How do you review your game?
I go through interesting hands, either during, or after my sessions with friends. We also discuss a lot of different thoughts and opinions on “trends” which I feel is one of the biggest sources of profit. Especially since HS-MTTs have gotten so tough.
Do you use a HUD when you play online poker to help not just with ‘real time’ game play but also for review purposes?
No, I’ve tried it for a while, and I see the benefits of it. But I think it gets a bit messy later on in tournaments where play changes a lot and the stats might actually be very misleading. Maybe one of my New Years resolutions could be to get some very basic stuff on a HUD to help me with the multi-tabling aspect of the game.
Lee Davy is a writer from Ogmore Vale in South Wales. You can follow his views and opinions through his blog at or on Twitter