Possibly because of the World Series of Poker , the online action in the high stakes session has been far from what we are used to seeing. The feel of real chips, the company of real people and some very real night clubs might be too much of a temptation for players who are used to hours upon hours in front of the computer screen with no other human contact than the pizza delivery guy.
Jungleman12, as many of you will know, is not old enough to play in the casinos in Las Vegas, so he has to wait for the action to come to him. And the other day, he finally got to play a 438 hands match of $500/$1000 NLHE against Patrik Antonius. However, the results, from jungleman12’s point of view, were not what he was hoping for as the Finn managed to take off with $167K.
Antonius picks of jungleman12’s triple barrel. $108K pot
This hand is fairly straight forward until jungleman12 decides to bet the river. The continuation bet on this flop is virtually automatic, and to check the turn would be to give away the pot unless something very good happened on the river. Bottom pair in this spot can’t stand any kind of a river bet from Antonius, so it seems right to fire one more time in case his hand is good.
We have all learned that if you have a marginal hand with showdown value, you might as well check the river since your opponent will never call with a worse hand than the one you’re holding. So why then, is jungleman12 betting the river here? The answer must be that he doesn’t believe there is much chance that he has the best hand in this spot, and that the only way he can win the pot is to turn his hand into a bluff. Looking at the way that Antonius played his hand, I must say that I cannot see that there would be many hands in his range that doesn’t beat bottom pair, so it seems like a fair conclusion from jungleman12’s point of view. The only thing he has to consider is whether or not he thinks that there is a 2-1 chance that Antonius will fold his hand, and apparently he thought that this was the case.
Antonius turns a straight and gets paid off handsomely in a $90K pot.
If jungleman12’s continuation bet on the last hand was automatic, Antonius showed good judgment to stay away from the same bet on this one. Obviously it is possible that such a bet would make his opponent lay down his hand, but it is also a distinct possibility that jungleman12 might find a check raise which would force Antonius to give it up without a fight.
If Antonius had completely whiffed the flop, it might have made more sense to bet the flop, but the gutshot draw he was holding probably swayed him to check behind and take the free card. And when he actually hit his straight on the turn he was nicely rewarded for his patience. It is unfortunate that we are not shown jungleman12’s hand in this pot, but seeing that he calls Antonius’ raise on the river I am sure that he has at least top pair, and quite possibly something better. With a hand like that, he probably would have check raised a continuation bet from Antonius, so that decision made on the flop probably created a $50K+ swing in Antonius favor. The devil is in the details.
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