Thursday
November 12, 2009
For those of you who are of the opinion that we have been focusing too much on Isildur1 here at highstakesdb is in for a new disappointment in this report. However, judging by the activity on the forums lately, it would seem that the emergence of this Swedish player has really captured the imagination of the imagination of our dear users, so I assume most of you think that covering him is ok.
Last night we saw him taking on Cole South and Brian Townsend in $200/$400 PLO, winning about $200K from each. However, the most interesting development was that Isildur1 had a short session of $500/$1000 against Patrik Antonius. And though the result between them was very even, I am sure it makes many of us salivate by thinking of an all out duel between these two players. This time Isisldur1 won $6482 from Patrik, but that doesn’t mean there were no big pots.
Patrik Antonius finds himself dominated on the turn, but sucks out to take a $225K pot.
On this hand, Antonius is made to look fairly stupid for calling off an over-bet with a small flush draw and fourth pair, and I must admit that I thought it looked like a donkey play when I looked at the hand the first time. However, if you are able to pinpoint Isildur1’s range in this spot, the question of whether or not to call is a pure mathematical exercise, so let’s do the math:
For the call to be correct, Antonius needs to win the hand 38,9% ($87 499/$224 998) of the time. I gave Isildur1 the following range:
77+, AcKc, AQs-AJs, AcTc, Ac9c, Ac8c, Ac6c, Ac5c, Ac3c, Ac2c, KTs+, K8s, QTs+, Q8s, J9s+, T7s+, 98s, 87s, AJo+, A8o, KTo+, K8o, QTo+, Q8o, J9o+, T7o+, 98o, 87o
When I ran the simulation in PokerStove, I found that Antonius’ equity against this particular range was 40,4%, so even if my range should be a little off, it is clear that the call was nowhere near as bad as it looked on the surface. Obviously, there could be hands added and subtracted from this range, and in addition some hands are more likely than others, but just to show that Antonius made a reasonable play, I think the example is sufficient. At the end of the day, at least no one can argue with the fact that he ended up winning the pot.
Isildur1 rivers a set and stacks Antonius for a $160K pot
Antonius was not alone in the suck-out department in this match, however. On this hand, it must be clear that, even if we don’t get to see Antonius’ hand, Isildur1 had exactly two outs after the turn and managed to get there. It is hard to criticize his play on the hand, though. The 3-bet before the flop is fairly standard with a hand as strong as a pair of 9. The flop did not look good for him, so he elected to not make the continuation bet.
On the turn, it is quite natural to make a bet since after Antonius’ check it is not unlikely that the nines are good, although when the bet is called, the that opinion changes real quick. When Isildur1 spikes his nine on the river, his only worry becomes how to extract the maximum. Since he has played the hand from the flop and onwards as though he had a marginal holding, it makes a lot of sense to go for the check raise. Antonius might very well try a bluff it he was drawing, and he would definitely bet an ace and probably a good queen as well. So there is little risk in checking. Now he was able to extract the maximum as Antonius called the check raise for all his chips.
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