Sunday
January 31, 2010
Seems that PostflopAction took a day off to rest on his laurels after his big win the other day. In his absence, Gus Hansen seized the opportunity to secure himself a nice win. Almost all of it came in the PLO part of the seven game and Brian Townsend was the main donator, dropping about $230K. Phil Ivey and Cole South did also contribute with six figure losses, so of not for them, Hansen would have more or less broken even for the day.
Hansen flops two pairs and is able to fade Ziigmund’s draws to win a $127K pot.
This was Hansen’s largest pot of the day, and it is quite interesting to see Hansen’s line on the flop here. From his point of view Ziigmund will either have him crushed or be on a flush draw. There are really no likely straight draws out there, in particular in view of Hansen’s pair of threes, so putting Ziigmund on a range is not all that difficult. It therefore makes a lot of sense for Hansen to see what the turn brings before he commits the last $32K, and when the ten of spades comes, he does just that.
Ziigmund had, as he often does, played his draw very fast. This time he was only a 11-9 underdog on both the flop and the turn, so he was certainly justified in doing so. He just didn’t have luck on his side here, so he had to ship a large chunk of change over to his opponent.
Ziigmund turns a straight to crack Antonius’ aces. $215K pot.
Even though he lost the pot above to Hansen, Ziigmund still managed to net a six figure win for the day, and he had the honor of winning the day’s largest pot. The hand also shows the dilemma with playing aces in PLO. Once you have put in a 4-bet or more before the flop, you are more or less committed to playing the hand for all your chips. And even though you will, for the most part, have sufficient odds to do so, you will find yourself in some tough spots. It is much easier to be on the other side, playing a hand like Ziigmund’s in this situation.
When Ziigmund sees the flop, he can see that he will be the favorite if Antonius has Aces or any other overpair. And even if Antonius should not have a hand like that, he is likely to have a hand containing high cards, so betting out is the obvious choice. From Antonius point of view it is difficult to put Ziigmund on anything but a drawing hand. If Ziigmund had flopped a set here he would have most likely gone for a check raise of Antonius’ expected continuation bet, so a drawing hand is at the top of Ziigmund’s range here. Of course, Ziigmund will bet out sets here once in a while, something that shows the predicament Antonius’ finds himself in. Regardless of this, he really has little choice but sticing his chips in and hoping for the best.
With open cards we can see that Ziigmund is an 11-9 favorite on the flop, but the turn kills all of Antonius’ hopes of taking down the pot. He probably played the hand exactly the way he needed to, but in the end of the day, all he got for his efforts was a $113K loss.
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