Key Hand One: The Bluff that Turned the Tide
Key hands are the ones that turn the tide of fortune during a poker tournament. Few players realize that the key hand in a tournament might be one that was played long before the final table. If you win your key hands, you’re in good shape. If you lose them, you probably will be out of action a long time before you want to be.
For example, the key hand at the 1984 World Series of Poker championship event was not the last hand played between Jack Keller, the winner, and Cowboy Wolford, the runner-up. Keller wasn’t even involved in the key hand that led him to victory—it was played between Wolford and Jesse Alto, who finished third. And when Jack Straus defeated Dewey Tomko in 1982 by catching the winning card on the river, it actually was a previous hand that Straus had played and lost—leaving him with only one chip—that led him to eventual victory.
Television audiences often are surprised that the winning hand at the final table is so weak. But tournament veterans know that in heads-up play, it doesn’t take a strong hand to win a showdown, it only takes the best hand. Doyle Brunson is proof positive of this—he won the championship two years in a row with a 10-2, now called a “Brunson.”
I’ve played at the final table of the WSOP four times, coming in second in 1985 and again in 2000. My writing partners Tom McEvoy, Dana Smith and I originally wrote this material for our book, Championship Tournament Hold’em Hands, published by Cardoza Publishing. We watched video tapes of the early WSOP final-table action, we were there as spectators at some of them, and Tom and I actually played a few of them. I’ve adapted these lessons for you from our book with Avery Cardoza’s permission.
The first key hand I’ll be discussing in this set of lessons happened at the final table of the 1978 WSOP. Bobby Baldwin and Crandell Addington were heads-up for all the marbles. Baldwin won the championship that year, and currently is the head of MGM-Mirage. He plays in the Big Game in Las Vegas with Doyle, Barry Greenstein and Lyle Berman. Addington, a highly respected Texas businessman and poker player, is a longtime friend of Doyle’s and he wrote an interesting chapter on the history of no-limit hold’em for Super System Two.
When he was about 28 years old, Bobby Baldwin was considered to be the best no-limit hold’em player alive. He was very highly regarded by all the old pros. Bobby Hoff once said that Baldwin was 15 percent better than anybody playing at that time. During the 1978 WSOP, Baldwin and Crandell Addington were playing heads-up for the title when Baldwin pulled off a successful bluff that changed the entire course of the tournament. Although it was not the final hand, this was the key hand because it shifted the momentum of the final-table play.
Addington had the lead at this point. With the blinds at $3,000/$6,000, he raised $10,000. We don’t know what his cards were, but we do know that Baldwin called the raise with 10-9 offsuit.
People don’t realize that a lot of times, hands are played out in a player’s mind before he ever sees a flop. When Baldwin called Addington’s raise with a 10-9, he probably had it in his mind that even if he didn’t get a great flop to his hand, he was going to win the pot anyway. In other words, long before the flop actually came up, Baldwin had decided that he was going to make a move on this pot. This hand probably was the turning point of the whole tournament.
The flop came Q-3-4 with two diamonds and Baldwin led at it for a substantial amount. Addington called. Off came the ace of diamonds on the turn, putting three diamonds on the board, and Baldwin moved in. That was his opportunity. You’ve heard me say a million times that you must have nerves of iron to play no-limit hold’em—you have to be willing to sacrifice everything you have on a major bluff. And Baldwin was such a good player that he didn’t think twice about it. When the board came with something that he could represent, even though Addington had called him on the flop, Baldwin moved on it.
What if the turn card had been a brick? In that case Baldwin would have shut down. He would have taken his loss with the hand because he knew that Addington had a hand when he called him on the flop. Realize, too, that when Baldwin moved in on the turn, Addington could have had two diamonds in his hand, but that was the chance that Baldwin had to take. Since Addington had raised before the flop, there’s a chance that he had a pair or a “big ace,” and that he did not have any diamonds in his hand, in which case Baldwin’s power play would work.
When an ace came on the turn, if Addington had put Baldwin on a flush, he wouldn’t have called anyway even if he had a big ace—but he would’ve taken more time to muck his hand. As it happened, he threw it away quickly, so the chances are that he did not have a big ace. Baldwin flashed his cards as he scooped in the pot, but we’ll never know what Addington’s cards were.
This successful bluff changed the tide of events at the final table. If Addington had called, the tournament would have been over because Baldwin probably had no outs if, for example, Addington had a queen. And Addington would have had what he coveted more in life than all the money that he had earned from the oil business, which was very substantial. He would have won the World Series of Poker championship.
