Saturday
March 20, 2010
The Finn LarsLuzak aka Sami Kelopuro is one of the most active HU players these days, and you will most likely find him at the $100/$200 NLHE tables where he takes on anyone who feels they are up to the challenge. Obviously, with HU being such a high variance game he has his setbacks like when he dropped $130K to URnotINdanger2 a couple of days ago, but he has more sessions like the two wins yesterday against luvtheWNBA and URnotINdanger2 where he won a combined $72K.
LarsLuzak flops top pair and snaps off URnotINdanger2’s triple barrel. $56K pot.
Sometimes it might seem as though playing top pair in HU NLHE is just about putting in as many chips as possible on the flop and hoping that your hand stands up in the end. Particularly when you are playing deeper than 100 big blinds, as was the case here, you have a lot of other options that might be worth considering.
Many players think that the so called donkbet, the act of betting into the preflop raiser, is mostly a sign of weakness, but when playing heads-up things are a little different. Since many players will raise 80-90% of the hands from the small blind it is actually more a show of strength to call from the big blind than to raise from the small blind. So when URnotINdanger2 raised LarsLuzaks bet here on the flop he is representing a very good hand. Of course, LarsLuzak would not consider folding the top pair here, but controlling the pot size somewhat by just calling makes a lot of sense.
When he hits the gutshot on the turn, LarsLuzak has another reason to stay in the pot, and URnotINdanger2, who picked up the nut flush draw got a reason to fire another bullet. The most difficult decision for LarsLuzak came on the river, however. On the surface you might think that: ‘Well, I have top pair and it is a really strong hand heads-up so I have to call’, but the fact is that LarsLuzak only has a bluff catcher at this point. The consideration he will have to make here is what the chances are of URnotINdanger2 being on a bluffing. He is getting almost 2-1 on his call so apparently Luzak felt that there was a better than 33% chance that his opponent was bluffing, and as it turns out, he was right.
geoff7878 was the biggest winner of the day, and since most of his winnings came in the cap game, I will give you a couple of those hands here.
geoff7878 flops top two pairs which holds up in a three way pot. $48K pot.
OMGClayAiken gets his two pairs counterfeited on the river and geoff7878 wins a $40K pot.
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