No rest for the wicked. After playing close to 10 000 hands in the previous 24 hours, Isildur1 was back at the tables after a short break taking on Ziigmund and his nemesis from the other day, Patrik Antonius. The results this time were, to put it mildly, very encouraging for the Swede. In 3176 hands he won $330K from Antonius and a cool million from Ziigmund.
One of the most impressive things about this session was that he was playing multiple tables against both players at the same time. Obviously, he is very good at multi-tabling, but there can be no doubt that focusing on six tables puts you at a disadvantage when you face two players who only have to pay attention to three tables each.
Ziigmund’s top two pairs hold up against Isildur1’s aces and gut shot draw. $589K pot.
Even in session where you drop a million dollars there can be some bright spots, and for Ziigmund this came in the form of raking the largest pot of the day. After the normal 4-bet pre flop action, there was no way back for Ziigmund when he hit top two pair. The only question on this hand is whether or not Isildur1 should go all-in on the flop. He can be 100% certain that Ziigmund is not going to fold since he will be getting 4-1 odds on the call, so the only question is if Isildur1 has enough equity in the pot to make the shove.
It will cost him a little more than $235K to put his opponent all in, and this constitutes 40% of the total pot after Ziigmund makes the expected call. If Isildur1 knew what Ziigmund held, he would see that his equity in this hand is only 31,2%, so here it is a bad move, but apparently Isildur1 felt that he had enough value against Ziigmund’s range. While I find it difficult to define Ziigmund’s exact raise here, I have a feeling that Isildur1’s play is very marginal. If he is right, I doubt that his expected value on average is much more that 40%, so if he shoves or not is probably not very important in the long run.
On this hand I can grant the meta-game enthusiasts the point that moving here will probably contribute to hold Ziigmund in line on later hands, so that would probably tip the scales in favor of pushing all-in.
And here we are at what I feel is an important point when it comes to meta game considerations. It should not, in general, be necessary to make plays that in isolation are huge –EV plays in order to advertise a certain image. I think it is better to be aggressive with your marginal decisions, because giving up a few % of equity in a few spots here and there will have the same effect as making a big move in a dubious situation, and it will certainly be cheaper.
This time Isildur1’s aces are good. $507K pot.
This hand is not unlike the previous one in that Isildur1 again holds the aces without having really hit any kind of a dream flop. It was a bit unusual to see that Isildur1 did not put in a 5-bet before the flop with his hand, but he was probably just mixing it up a bit. He coould also have been keeping an eye on the stack sizes relative to the size of the pot on the flop. He might have been planning to raise Ziigmund’s continuation bet on the flop regardless of what came there, so in this case he will get better fold equity if the pot is relatively small at that point. His opponent will be pot committed in the same way as he would be if the pot is twice the size after the pre flop action.
However, looking down at the second nut flush draw and an overpair, Ziigmund was not going anywhere. His hand will play well against most of Isildur1’s possible hands, so there was little else to do but to push the chips into the middle and let fate decide the outcome. Isildur1 was a 55% favourite on the flop, and that hardly changed at all on the turn since Ziigmund picked up a second flush draw. Alas, for Ziigmund, the river brought no help, so he had to look longingly at the pot as the chips were sent in Isildur1’s direction.
Isildur1 flops a straight and a set, but Antonius sucks out when his top set turns into a full house on the river. $400K pot.
As in the match against Ziigmund, Isildur1 had to see Antonius take down the largest pot of the session. Of course, in hindsight, pocketing a nice win probably helps the mood, but the above hand can’t have felt very good because flopping a straight AND a set on the lop will normally win you most pots. The problem here is that Antonius also flopped a monster, and though Isildur1 was ahead, he was no more than a 3-2 favorite on the flop. On this hand, as luck would have it, this was more than Isildur1 could fade, so Antonius got a nice boost to his stack.
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