Joe McKeehen Poker Strategy

Joe McKeehen is one of those rare examples of modern WSOP Main Event champions, who proved their worth by following up their epic 'one time' with a string of other impressive results.

McKeehen managed to cash in 16 WSOP events including another win in a $10,000 Limit Hold'em Championship two years after his Main Event triumph. Joseph has almost $14,000,000 in tournament winnings which puts him in the top 25 of the All Time Money List.

Hero Call For the History Books

The Internet is chock-full of amazing poker hands, but a very small subset of them manages to transcend all the other ones and find a place in poker history books. A spot between Brynn Kenney and Joe McKeehen from the heads up portion of the 2016 PCA Super High-Roller is a great example of that phenomenon. The hand started with a standard 2x button open with K6s from McKeehen followed by an equally mundane flat call of Kenney with A2o.

The flop including 6s4cQd gave the WSOP Main Event winner a second pair with a backdoor diamond draw which was enough for him to cbet and Brynn decided to stick around with his A-high. 3d on the turn improved Joe's equity but it was also a brick that made it all but impossible for him to receive three streets of value without another flush card hitting the river. Because of that McKeehen decided to take a conservative line and check back after his opponent. The river brought another brick card to the board in the form of 3h that completed this deceptively interesting runout. Going for two streets of value with something like K6 made a lot of sense in this spot, perhaps too much sense.

McKeehen didn't really have a lot of hands to take a bet/check/bet line with on this dry board. All the Qx type hands and better would've just bet the turn, which meant that it was hard for Joe to show up in this spot with a balanced range. Kenney decided to exploit that and target all of the second pair type hands in Joe's range with a very smart and ambitious raise over the top of McKeehen's river thin value bet.

This is How You Trap

While we all love watching the exciting, unorthodox plays of the talented professionals it's important to point out that good, solid, exploitative, tight-aggressive approach is still the name of the game even in relatively tough environments.

Raise calling with AK pre-flop followed by a call down on an A-high board with two different flush draws that missed by the river is not exactly rocket science, but a disciplined play like that is exactly what's necessary to consistently show a profit even in today's game.

Better Lucky Than Good? 

Here's the thing. You can't become a WSOP Main Event winner without a great deal of luck involved in the process. However, putting yourself in a spot that allows you to enjoy that luck is purely a matter of skill.

One could argue that this memorable set over set spot from 2015 WSOP Main Event practically played itself, and that might be right when it comes to the post-flop play, but some players would've just folded sixes pre-flop despite the favorable stack to pot ratio, and deny themselves the opportunity to win the pot.