Tom Bostic

Thomas Wahlroos was the unfortunate soul that has to bear the burden of being eliminated in 7th place at a WPT event. Worse yet the Championship event. What does that mean? No televised final table. Sucks to be Thomas Wahlroos.

He made a play and was very unhappy with the result, repeatedly stating "How does he call with that hand?" Sorry Thomas, but if you’re going to claim your bust out was a result of your opponent's poor call, we need to take a closer look at the situation.

Thomas is sitting 3rd in chips with around 4.5 million, with blinds of 80,000 - 160,000. A tight player in Mike Wattel opens the pot for 420K. A player named Paul Lee makes the call behind Mike. Paul has won a preliminary event at the Bellagio earlier this month, and made a final table in another. He is a legitimate player, however, he is not afraid at all to mix it up and gamble with his chips. Thomas has been playing with him all day and should know this. Anyway...action gets to Wahlroos in the big blind. Thomas is what we call a "defender" in the poker world. He hates folding his big blind. Anyone that has played a significant amount of time with him will know this. He decides to re-raise Wattel and Lee for all his chips, a pretty hefty raise. He has Wattel covered, but Lee is the chip leader.

Wattel folds and Lee calls without too much hesitation holding A-Q off. Wahlroos turns over As10s and is appalled by Lee's call. This play is not a matter of a loose call by Lee, but a gross miscalculation on Wahlroos's (is that right???) part.

First... this looks like your standard squeeze play. Through and through. Wattel and Lee are obviously players, not born yesterday. They know what a squeez play is and both of them suspect something is up when Thomas makes a raise 10x the original raise.

Second... Wahlroos is a defender. He hates giving up his big blind. Both players are familiar enough with him over the past few days to realize that. He is likely to re-raise with a large variety of hands.

Third... Wahlroos KNOWS that Lee is the most likely guy to call him at the table. At times reckless, he has been calling opponents down with marginal hands the whole tournament. Wahlroos has seen this. Of all the guys to make this move on, Lee was not the guy.

Long story short, the As10s didn't improve and Mr. Wahlroos is out.

Why do I bring this situation up??? As in the case so many times in poker, if we continue to blame our results on the poor play of others, chances are we are not looking in the right spot. Look inside yourself and the situation to realize why things happened the way they did. It is easy to blame a beat on the "donkey" play of an opponent. The hard thing to do is pin the tail on your own ass.