Zugwat, aka Steve Silverman, is not a player we mention a whole lot in these reports, and unfortunately for him, this time we are only doing it because he had a really bad day at the tables. He plays almost exclusively heads-up no-limit, and is known as a tough opponent, but things really did not go his way. First he took on DjAdi and lost $193K in 2873 hands and shortly thereafter he played 2332 hands against ZeeJustin which ended with a $174K loss. It is quite rare to see such huge swings considering that the stakes were ‘only’ $100/$200.
His graph for the day is probably pretty depressing for him, but it shows an amazingly steady decline towards his final result. After about 1050 hands he stacked DjAdi twice and almost managed to come back to even, but from then on there was not much for him to feel good about.
Zugwat turns a flush draw and moves in, but ZeeJustin has two pairs which hold up. $70K pot.
This is the largest pot that Zugwat was involved in yesterday, and it came in the last 30 minutes of his long session. His play here looks reasonable reasonable, but it seems to me that is slightly –EV from the flop onwards. First, there is the call of ZeeJustin’s check raise on the flop. Granted, there are many spots when playing HU that you should not give up AK even when you miss the flop, but this board is really not a very good one and you have no guarantees that your hand will be good even if you hit a pair on the turn.
When Zugwat turns the flush draw it is obviously difficult to get away from the hand. But still, I think he takes the wrong approach by going for the check raise. Considering that ZeeJustin is getting 3-1 on his call after Zugwat shoves, the fold equity is not all that great. This means that Zugwat needs to have almost 40% equity after the turn for his move to be correct. Considering that he only has 34% if he is behind and all his flush and over card outs are live, it seems to me that his play was not very well thought through.
The better alternative might be to bet out on the turn, and though the result would be the same on this hand, I think it will better in the long run. It gives a lot more fold equity, particularly since you might get the chance to bet again in the river, and it prevents your opponent from playing pot control and checking a marginal hand on the turn. You will also charge your opponent for drawing those times you are actually ahead at this point. Of course, there could be other considerations that go into Zugwat’s decisions in this hand, but to me it smells a bit of tilt, something that would be easy to understand after being beat up for eight straight hours.
Finally, the two largest pots of the day:
Phil Galfond turns a flush and induces a river bluff from Ziigmund. $120K pot
Galfond makes a strange call on the flop and gives Ziigmund a $99K pot.
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