Last week The Visionary playing under the moniker “visionary129” came 3rd in Event 28 of the Poker Stars WCOOP series taking home over $269k for his efforts. Here he gives a brief insight into his mindset throughout the gruelling two day event.

Obviously I was delighted to walk away with 3rd in what us one of the biggest online tournaments of the year. $269k is a huge score, and you have to be grateful if you ever get an online score like this. I was at the same time very disappointed to finish 3rd having had over 2/3 of the chips in play. At this point I maybe should have taken a deal, but I felt I would win and wound up getting unlucky three handed. I am generally happy with my performance, particularly the way I was able to adapt to the tournament conditions and the players I faced.

The WCOOP two day structure was very slow, allowing lots of play and the opportunity to see a lot of hands before I was under any pressure from the blinds and antes. It was very important to be patient and disciplined, and there was certainly no need to force the issue, as with a regular structure. I was gifted a great number of chips as people ran bluffs in an effort to accumulate chips too quickly. I was able to capitalise because I was still in the tournament having been extremely patient in waiting for the right spots. I also played for 16 hours straight on day one, so I was really pleased to have got through the day without surrendering to fatigue.

The structure also provided for essentially a post flop tournament. For the majority of the tournament I was over 100 bb’s deep rendering position even more important than usual. I successfully used peoples preflop aggression against them by calling in position and taking the pot on a later street.

Another key to this tournament was that I was able to single table Day Two, and also the latter stages of Day One. Over a long period of time I was able to observe patterns in my opponents, and to think about how I was going to exploit them. You need to have the flexibility in your game to out manoeuvre people in a variety of ways, and the confidence to execute a plan when you see an opportunity. However, to be able to do this, you need to be able to watch your table conditions and game-flow very closely in order to get your timing spot on. I believe observation, adaptability, and timing are 3 essential ingredients to defeating the stronger online fields. I would not have been able to do this if I were multi-tabling.

If you are backed by poker-allies, and would like to watch hand histories, please message me, and feel free to ask questions regarding any hand I played.

Neil