Mike D'angelo Poker
- Partypoker MILLIONS UK Fest: January 4-12, 2020 Main: January 8-12, 2020 Hilton Hotel Prague, CZE.
- Soon I will likely be a professional poker player, but for now you can still find me contributing film reviews and the occasional feature. I also, for nearly eight years, penned Scenic Routes, a biweekly column about film scenes of note.
- By Mike D'Angelo. May 1, 2007 iStockPhoto. Poker is a game of skill, but only in the long run - great players sometimes endure losing streaks that last for months, and a complete idiot.
Okay to set the scene, we were playing nine-handed, No Limit Hold ‘Em. I was first under the gun, but what’s important to note here is that the guys in front of me were getting messy with both their chips and the dealer button. The guy with the button had flopped it down between himself and the small blind, so from my angle it looked like the small blind was actually the dealer. How could I have made this mistake you ask? Well as often happens when people have been lighting up during the breaks of the game, he was getting a bit lax with getting his blinds out in a timely fashion (not that I’m bitter). And of course, I’m as sober as a priest so I look to my right, see the button followed by what I assume is the small blind so I dutifully toss out my “big blind” and, like a good donkey in training, wait for the action to come around to me (the presumed BB) before I take a peak at my cards (the preferred technique of pros everywhere). Except of course, the action doesn’t come back to me. I’ve just called the blind without even looking at my cards.Scenic RoutesIn Scenic Routes, Mike D’Angelo looks at key scenes, explaining how they work and what they mean. Prev Next View All In 2003, an amateur player by the improbable name of Chris. Mike D'Angelo / Mike De Angelo (8 episodes, 2016) Cohen Holloway. Jack McGurn (8 episodes, 2016) Meyer Lansky. Poker Player (1 episode, 2015) Marija Skangale.
After grumbling about the sloppy chip work ahead of me at the table, I announce that I have checked in the dark, although realizing that doesn’t mean much of anything to this call-happy bunch. I finally peak at my cards and I find AQ off-suit, which is actually the best starting hand I’d had all night up to that point. Obviously, under ideal circumstances, I’d have raised (even first to act) just to keep the cheapos from out-flopping me, but whatever. I’m quickly appeased when the flop comes in a rainbow of 5A7. I quietly begin counting all that money in the pot which will be mine in a minute. I raise 100. The girl to my right labors for a few seconds before making the call. I dismiss it as she’s been playing pretty loose all night and I figure she caught middle pair with a decent kicker. A couple people fold followed by a quick call by an accomplished player. I immediately suspect he’s got an Ace but that he doesn’t re-raise tells me he’s not confident about it.
The turn hits and it’s a lowly 4. Another card I don’t have to worry about. I bet 200. The girl next door calls, which definitely scares me as now I think she maybe hit two pair. Mr. Experience labors for an eternity before finally folding. He recognizes the strength of my Ace, going so far as whispering his hand to his girlfriend just so she can appreciate his table discipline. I’m starting to suspect I may be in trouble though. A Jack comes out on the river and at this point I know my only hope is to check then re-raise all-in if she tries to bet it but thankfully (in hindsight) she checks herself.
Mike D'angelo Poker Player
We flip over her cards. She’d had a 23 and caught an improbable, bordering on impossible, 5-high straight on the turn. I was out roughly 40% of my chips.
So what happened? Putting aside how sloppy the business with the dealer button was, my mistake was pretending I was Phil Hellmuth and deciding not to check my dealt cards until the action came around to me (a practice that is henceforth banished from my repertoire). If I had bothered to look at them as soon as they were put in front of me, my sizable re-raise would have easily scared away the 2-3 which was a shit hand, and possibly encouraged the more experienced player to go over the top with a bet to try and defend his hand (which ended up being a totally dominated A9). But instead, I gave a player the chance to win with one of the worst starting hands in the game and paid dearly for it.
I was pretty much on tilt after that so when I was dealt pocket Q’s in position I went all-in. It was the right move but only because of my low chip stack. I actually got 2-calls (yelp) but was better off than both of them. Problem is, one of the guys behind me pairs his Ace on the flop and I’m off to the rails. Done before 10:30 and I’ve got a long ride back to the valley in front of me.
Stupid fucking dealer button.
Finding tons of success in both online and live poker for the better part of the past decade, 30-year-old Ryan D'Angelo has built quite a reputation for himself as a No-Limit Hold'em player.
But on a blazing hot day in Las Vegas on Wednesday, a calm and cool D'Angelo won his first ever World Series of Poker Bracelet in a poker variant rarely spread outside high-stakes cash games and the WSOP, taking down the 2016 WSOP Event #7: $1500 2-7 Draw Lowball (No-Limit) title and the $92,338 first-place prize that came with it.
Mike D'angelo Poker Games
'I feel like I've worked on my game, tilt control, and everything, and I feel like it has all come together,' D'Angelo said moments after the win. 'It's kind of surreal right now. I'm just so grateful that this happened and I feel like its time for me to go on a big rush. This really is a great way to start to the World Series, its good to win a bunch of money and its good to stamp my name in poker history and grab the bracelet.'
D'Angelo admitted he hasn't spent too much time, outside of about 100 online sit and go's, playing 2-7 Single Draw. Yet still, he felt playing heads up has allowed him to pick up on enough of the nuances of the game to at least compete.
The event drew 279 entries and boiled down to a final table Wednesday that featured John Monnette and Dan Kelly, two WSOP bracelet winners considered among the top poker players on the planet in any variant. However, D'Angelo came into the event's final day with the lead, and really cruised to victory.
'I was really centered the whole tournament and the cards came my way,' he said. 'It was like the perfect tournament. I was never at risk and I was always able to pick up pots here and there, and it's such a fun game.
'It's nice to play a game that I'm not really used to, and I think that's what everyone loves about the World Series, is the chance to play tournaments in varieties they are not used to.'
Mike D'angelo Poker Tournaments
Monnette made it all the way to heads up, but D'Angelo really won the tournament three handed, taking a 6:1 lead into a heads-up match that finished before it was started. D'angelo and Monette were about even three handed, but when short stack Tom Franklin doubled through Monette, D'Angelo took a lead over the two of them and put his foot firmly on the gas from there.
'I was the big stack, so I could just open up and apply pressure,' he said. 'There was a big pay jump between third and second and they weren't messing with me because of that, so I could just be opening liberally on the button and they were folding.'
The rules of the game and the basic math is relatively simple, but most agree 2-7 Single Draw really hangs on a much more difficult concept: Reading your opponents. It's a five-card draw poker game where the player with the best low hand wins the pot. The aces are high, and flushes, straights and pairs count against your hand. There is a round of betting where you must come in with a raise before a single draw, and another round of betting after the draw. It's played no limit.
Because it so often comes down to trying to read what your opponent has, poker players that play more than hold'em often refer to 2-7 Single Draw as the purest form of poker. D'Angelo is certainly in that camp.
'It's so pure,' he said. 'After the draw its just do they have it, or don't they. It's a lot of meta game and leveling, and the meta game changes throughout because there are times when they might be bluffing more or bluffing less.
'It really is a pure form of poker, there's a lot of soul reading and does he have it or doesn't he?'
D'Angelo was set to register another event at the series coming straight off the win Wednesday, and it's interesting to note that if he does go on the heater he's starting to believe he's on the cusp of, he won't be the only winner.
He and wife Ronit Chamani donate a lot of time and money to the Food Gardens Foundation charity in South Africa, providing seeds and helping educate needy people on farming techniques in the region.
Mike D'angelo Poker Game
'They offer the opportunity for people to start growing food, providing for their family and maybe even selling it at the market,' he said. 'It's a great way to help people turn their lives around.'
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2016 World Series of Poker2016 WSOPDan KellyLas VegasRyan D’AngeloOnline PokerRelated Players
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