Thursday
January 14, 2010
There was a lot of action in the seven game yesterday, and we are finally seeing the usual suspects getting back into action. Durrrr played over 2200 hands and was rewarded with a $533K win while Antonius won $460K in 1860 hands. On the other end of the leader board we find Brian Townsend who lost $673K and Gus Hansen, dropping $348K.
Gus Hansen is all in on the flop with top pair, but Cole South has him thoroughly dominated. $246K pot.
This was the largest pot from yesterday, and it shows some of the perils of head’s up poker. Gus Hansen hit top pair with a decent kicker, and since the pot was relatively big before the flop, there was no way for him to get away from the hand. He has to think that he has the best hand on the flop, and once Cole South shoves, Hansen is clearly pot committed.
Some might argue that Hansen could just flat call the flop to see what happens on the turn, but I think that is an inferior line here. The board is very draw heavy, so there are a lot of scare cards that could come on the turn that would make it impossible to read where he is at. I just think that when playing heads up and having effective stacks of 100-120 big blinds, you just have to go with a hand containing top pair. In particular in a spot like this when you haven’t got much wiggle room on the flop because of the 3 bet before the flop.
Obviously you could argue that Hansen shouldn’t have called the 3 bet with K9 off. It is not a bad argument, but with two relatively big cards and being in position, it is a call that most players at this level would make. We have seen repeatedly players calling 3 bets with 84s and such hands, and K9 off is a much better hand than that when playing heads-up. Suited hands does not have a lot of value in these spots, but big cards has a lot of value because they can hit good top pairs.
Antonius flops the nut straight to win a $173K pot.
Antonius’ largest pot of the day was a real wild one. With two players already all in before the flop, Antonius flopped the nut straight and was sitting pretty since there were no potential flush draws out there. He was a 86% favorite to scoop the pot, something you don’t see very often in a four handed pot in PLO.
I am not sure about Ziigmund’s bet on the flop, but I guess the flop is so dry that there is still a decent chance that his aces are good at that point. On the other hand, the only reason for making this bet would be to get Antonius off his hand, something that would only happen if Antonius completely whiffed the flop. And if that is the case, he would be drawing very slim against Ziigmund’s aces anyway. I am not able to give any definite statements on this play, but it might be worth discussing in the forum.
One interesting aspect on this pot is that Antonius was actually the favorite among these four hands before the flop. It only goes to show that if you have two or more players going into a raising war before the flop, you will actually get a lot of value going along for the ride with a hand of small connectors. Conversely, it might not be the best play to keep raising with Aces in PLO if there is more than one other player involved in the hand. I have seen this many times before, and it is the reason why it is difficult to get anyone to fold pre-flop when playing PLO.
Durrrr’s pair of tens hold op against Brian Townsend’s AQ. $142K pot.
Just to show durrrr’s largest pot of the day, I give you this hand. It is really not a lot to comment on other than to observe that durrrr won a coinflip. The stacks were only about 70 big blinds deep, so the money would always go in before the flop here.
Discuss in forum