It was a good day for Brian Townsend, one of very few so far this year. Compared to his combined losses of over $2.5M for 2010, $142K might not seem very much, but it is still $142K that he didn’t have the day before. This is what poker is about. Forget your results from before and concentrate on playing the next hand as well as possible.
Yesterday it was christinhoch who was the main contributor to Townsend’s winnings, losing $103K in 395 hands of $100/$200 PLO. Patrik Antonius also tried to get a piece of the action, but he didn’t fare much better , dropping $39K in just 72 hands. This was at $300/$600 PLO, so it was not a big swing really, but a nice pickup even so.
Townsend rivers a wheel to win a $113K pot.
This is really quite an amazing pot in that christinhoch is willing to commit over 2.5 buy-ins with nothing more than a pair of aces. And when the cards were flipped it was clear that christinhoch was right to do so on this specific hand. However, christinhoch plays the whole hand in a very strange, or at least inconsistent manner. She (I am just going by the screen name) just flats Townsend’s preflop raise seemingly wanting to keep the pot under control. Then, when the flop comes, she doesn’t seem to mind changing gears and risking her stack on the hunch that she is in front.
But even here she starts playing pot control after Townsend’s re-raise. In principle I can understand that she wants to see what comes off on the turn, but since there are no flush draws on the board, she has no clue about which turn-cards will help her opponent. If she feels that her aces are so strong, it must be much better to shove the flop after she is re-raised. First of all, it puts Townsend in a very uncomfortable spot with the hand he has at that point. He could very easily be drawing to the gut-shot straight draw, and since he is not drawing to the nuts, he cannot feel too comfortable with that one either.
Then, when the turn comes, christinhoch apparently decides that the nine of clubs is a safe card for her, but if she feels that way, she must go and make a pot sized bet to prevent Townsend from getting a free card by checking behind. The check-raise achieves absolutely nothing in this spot since Townsend will be correct to call with any hand considering how much money is in the pot. At this point it probably would not have made any difference since Townsend now has a very big draw, but that is irrelevant when judging christinhoch play here.
Maybe I have missed some of the finer points of this hand, but it just feels like christinhoch is just making some random actions and in the end she happens to be all in with the best hand. To me it seems like Townsend deserved to win the pot, and apparently the card gods agreed.
Townsend rivers the nut flush to beat christinhoch’s two pairs.
Discuss in forum