Andrew Lichtenberger: “I didn’t really do any preparation coming into this final table. I had played with all of these players before a decent amount. I’m not a huge fan of the ‘cramming before the exam’ sort of approach. It’s best to be in the moment and aware enough to utilize my prior knowledge to my benefit.”
Andrew “LuckyChewy” Lichtenberger came into the 2023 WPT World Championship final table with a massive chip lead on his fellow competitors, with over 38% of the chips in play.
The table was stacked with crushers. Chris Moorman, Ben Heath, Daniel Sepiol, Artur Martirosian, and Georgios Sotiropoulos were seated at the table, with combined career earnings of more than $48,000,000. This hand was a huge moment in the tournament.
In the video below, Andrew talks through the hand moment to moment, providing exclusive insight into the thought process of one of the best tournament players in the world.
The hand
The blinds were 600,000/1,200,000 with a 1,200,000 ante. Andrew was sitting in the cutoff with a 159,600,000 stack. Sepiol had the button with 38,900,000 chips.
"Being as big of a chip leader as I was at the start of the final table, I knew I would be driving a lot of the action," Andrew tells us. "I obviously stand to lose a lot less in any pot I play than the other players. They have to be a bit more careful. There were a few spots early on where players were playing back at me. This hand was one of the main ones.”
Table presence
Lichtenberger always sits very tall at the table and almost always has a slight grin on his face. He had this to say about his table presence, energy, and good posture.
“I think I could always stand to improve my posture at the table. Good posture helps your focus. I think it's effective for me. If you're slouching, at least subconsciously, you’re putting your mind into a more vegged-out, relaxed state, right?
"When you're playing at a very high level, it requires a lot of focus and concentration. If you become too relaxed in your body, I think it can be an impediment to success. And yes, I do tend to be always smiling a bit. I try to stay pretty lighthearted at the table and in my day-to-day life. I find that when things become overly serious in my mind, it's usually not good. I tend to have better results when I am kind of jovial and enjoy myself.”
What's luck got to do with it?
“I firmly believe that luck is not purely random. I think there are aspects of randomness, but I believe that there are also some components that are, I would say, controllable. And this is something I would love to quantify. I'm intrigued by the idea of putting brain scans on poker players.
“I'd be happy to volunteer. I want to bring science into the field of luck and begin to understand the mystery behind it. I'm fairly convinced, just through my own lived experience, that it's not just ‘being’ lucky. Basically, there is more to the nature of 60/40 or 55/45 coinflips than just what the raw numbers would indicate.”
Andrew Lichtenberger has career earnings of more than $20,000,000, and over the last fifteen months, he’s had three seven-figure scores. He recently co-founded a poker community and training site called Octopi Poker with Nick Schulman and Victoria Livschitz.
Octopi Poker uses GTO tools, drills, coaching, and a collection of streamed hand histories for an all-in-one integrated platform for collaborative poker study. Follow Andrew on X @luckychewy.
