3 things we learned from the WSOP to remember next year

Now that another season of WSOP Main Event action has come and gone, it’s time to sit back and reflect not only on what we observed, but on the lessons we learned that will hopefully serve us next year when the cycle of hopes, triumphs and defeats renews again.

Make Folding Great Again

If you followed the WSOP Main Event this year, particularly during the later days of the event, you were privy to some incredible action. Time and time again we saw big bets, bigger raises, and even bigger all-ins. And while that in itself is not unique to 2024, what was noticeable was:

1. How many fewer speculative hands and outright bluffs were involved during the meaningful pots.
2. How many fewer “punts” there seemed to be compared to previous years (Jerry Yang’s magnificent 82o megapunt not included).

In fact, the vast majority of the time we saw the money go in during the mid-to-late stages of the tournament, it was monster vs. monster. This spoke to the larger trend we’ve seen in poker over the past few years of hero-folding outpacing hero-calling as the mark of a true professional. And if you doubt that to be the case, go watch the AA vs KK vs QQ hand in which the players didn’t even get to the flop.

The lesson being that those of us who aspire to play poker at the highest levels have got to become incredibly disciplined at the painful task of folding big hands in big spots. Because if the WSOP streams this year taught us anything, it’s that making decisions based solely on the absolute strength of our preflop holdings is a surefire way to hit the rail with nothing but a “bad beat” story that only our most supportive loved ones will care to hear.

Fields Are Leveling Up

On a related note, you’d think that with more than 10,000 players entering the Main Event, you’d find tons of soft spots and dead money to take advantage of. And while that might be true in the early days of the event (sorry Jerry Yang, I’m looking at you again), it was glaringly obvious this year that the cream truly does rise to the top, with 6 of the 9 Final Table participants having more than a million dollars in lifetime live earnings.

And while eventual Main Event runner-up Jordan Griff, an American cash game player, could be labeled as a true amateur, it appears that the days of riding a week-long heater – ala the previously mentioned Yang and the legendary heater of Jamie Gold – are coming fewer and farther between. The takeaway here being that anyone who has aspirations of becoming one of the true amateurs to make a deep run in the Main Event had better be putting in the work both on and off the tables all year long. Being an amateur in results is fine, being one in effort is not.

Process > Results

Those of you who followed the summer’s action via the ACR Punters’ Pad video series were treated to an inside look at what a WSOP grind truly is – both the dreams and realities of taking shots at the highest variance tournaments of the year.

It was Punters’ Pad participant and ACR Pro Ebony Kenney who summed it up best in her exit interview:

This game, if you focus on results, if you deem success or failure based on results and whether or not you won, whether or not you bagged (chips), whether or not you ran deep, those aren’t metrics that are going to help your mindset.

Of course, what Kenney was referencing was the reality of the life of any poker player, but especially tournament players: poker is about the long game. It’s not about cashing every tournament or coming out a winner in every cash game we play. Instead, it’s about continuously working to build and refine our strategy and understanding that success in poker is rarely fair and never linear.

But if we can make our focus personal improvement and learn to ebb and flow with the game as it continuously evolves, we’ll give ourselves the best shot not just at making a good run at the WSOP, but being at our best when we do.