Tuesday
July 13, 2010
An interesting $100/$200 NLHE match took place yesterday when Zick123 took on Observer84 over 1704 hands. Zick123 came out of the gates strong and never gave up his lead, and in the end peaked at $166K which also was the end result.
As you can see from the graph, the match was fairly smooth sailing for Zick123. In poker, this is obviously a relative turn, because in this match Observer84 won four of the five largest pots, but apart from that, things were looking up for Zick123 most of the way.
Zick123 flops an ace to his AK and fades Observer24’s flush draw twice. $92K total
This hand was a great contributor to the result of the match, and it was one of the last that was played. I am not sure which player decided to pack up and leave, but it would be understandable if Observer84 got fed up after losing both end of this run it twice procedure.
The play of the hand itself does not have a lot of mystique to it once the flop comes down the way it does. For Zick123, a pair of aces plus the top kicker is more than enough to commit the full stack, while his opponent with second pair and a flush draw knows that he normally has about 50% equity against a hand like the one Zick123 is holding. In addition, it is possible that Observer84 can make Zick123 fold a hand like 99-KK in this spot, so his shove on the flop is fairly clear cut. As you can see, it didn’t help Observer84 much to run the turn and the river twice this time, so he ended up losing a large chunk of change.
Observer84 induces a bluff from Zick123 to get paid off in full. $58K pot.
As we have seen before, sometimes the best way to get paid off is to let your opponent bet the hand for you. The eight that fell on the river is a scary card for Observer84 since Zick123 could very well have an eight in his the way he has played the hand up to that point. On the other hand, the eight could also be a card that would encourage Zick123 to make a bluff with, so it is not all bad news for Observer84.
In the end, this hand boils down to the fact that Observer84 will not fold his hand to any bet on the river, so for him he needs to maximize his profit in case he is ahead. The board is very draw heavy, so if Zick123 has missed a draw, he will surely fold if Observer84 fires on the river. Therefore it seems like trying to induce a bluff, like Observer84 decided to do, is the best play. On this hand, at least, it worked out perfectly.