Sam Farha, since his 2nd place win in the famous Moneymaker WSOP, has quickly become one of the most popular and fun to watch players on the professional scene. Sammy is feared not only for his ability to really play any two cards (and I mean really, not just suited connectors, but J 3 unsuited and other abysmal crud) but his extreme aggression and a willingness to really chameleon the table. A lot can be learned from this monster.
You see a lot of players talk about how they like to play ‘any two cards.’ Usually when they say this, though, they mean they’ll play 4/5 suited, they’ll play J 9 off, hands that can make straights or flushes in weird ways. Sammy Farha really will play ANY two cards. I’ve seen Sammy on High Stakes Poker calling raises or reraising with hands like J 3 off preflop, and winning the hands, because people are so afraid of what he ‘might’ have. He also tends to get people pushing hard at him because of his reputation as a ‘trash man.’
One of the great things to take from Sam Farha is the idea of throwing in a little gamble now and then. Try raising with weird cards from weird positions now and then to throw your opponents off when you show them, or sometimes you actually make the hand and no one else can put you on it. If you’re playing the nuts all the time, you become known for it, and it’s a lot harder to get paid on your money. Introducing randomness into your game is vital for keeping your opponents on their toes. It’s pretty amazing to see the kind of hands Farha can win with by purely aggressing his opponents off their hands.
But as much as Farha likes to gamble, he is not as wild as he may appear to certain players. Sammy is a master of moving from an apparent ‘wild man’ image into a very tight aggressive mode that other players mistake for more of his wild work. He also will turn around and play his big preflop hands like they are trash, mixing his opponents backwards into trapping themselves. For every wild hand that you see Farha winning with, you will also see him turning over monsters that he often gets paid more for. Several episodes of High Stakes Poker show Sammy winning pot after pot, building his stack off of nothing, proving once again that you don’t need cards to win hold em: you need moves.
