As more and more players get knocked out of the WSOP main event, we can hopefully expect the online action to pick up. It has really not been much to report over the last week, but over the last couple of days, the games have started to pick up a bit. Andy Bloch is not a player we usually see much of at these tables. He is more known as a tournament player, but by picking up $141K in the seven game, he is showing that he is a more than capable cash game player as well.
Of the more familiar faces, we notice that NEKOTYAN and Gus Hansen was able to secure themselves a couple of nice wins, while harrington25 did not fare so well with his $149K loss. There were not a whole lot of huge pots in this period, but I have managed to dig up a couple of interesting ones nonetheless.
Tuff_fish flops a set against Hal0zination who has a big hand himself. $44K pot.
Getting coolered is a part of any poker game, but there are times when it hurts more than others. Sitting over 200 big blinds deep and being covered by your opponent is definitely one of those times. Whenever you hold AK and get a dry flop like the one here, you are going to be in trouble when playing heads-up. And with the ace on the river Hal0zination’s fate was sealed. It might be argued that he would have had a hard time saving any money on the river regardless of which card fell. He would presumably have made a value bet and after that it would be difficult to fold to a shove form his opponent, but in any case the ace on the river was a case of ‘drawing dead and getting there’.
OlliPolli’s aces are good enough to win a $40K pot.
To use a cliché, there are more than one way to skin a cat, and OlliPolli is showing that on this hand. Normally, in a heads-up situation, and in position, most players would 4-bet the aces every time. On this hand I think that it wouldn’t have mattered much how the preflop betting went, because it seems likely that NeverBettor would have been committed at the flop anyway, but OlliPolli’s line is interesting. If he gets a flop that he likes, he will be able to make a sizeable raise of his opponents expected continuation bet. If all goes according to plan, he will be able to win a nice pot there and then. And if his opponent should continue with the hand in such a spot, OlliPolli will be no worse off than he would have been of he had 4-bet preflop. In both situations, he would have been pot committed on the flop, so if he loses the pot, the loss will be the same size regardless of the line he goes for.
Obviously, there are drawbacks to this play as well. In most cases you want to stick as much money in before the flop with a hand like this. Additionally it will be difficult to judge if the coming flop is good for you or not. But then again, it is always useful to add a bit of deception to your game, so from that point of view this line seems to have a lot going for it.