Friday
August 27, 2010
The first 1651 hands of durrrr’s new challenge against jungleman12 has just been played, and it is durrrr who has gotten off to the best start and has taken a $130K lead. And if the start of the match is any indication, the players have decided to actually reach 50 000 hands in the not too distant future. They are playing six tables and have agreed to resume play after just an hour’s break, so stay tuned for a lot more action.
This challenge will obviously be a lot different from the one against Patrik Antonius. Apart from the obvious reason that they will be playing hold’em instead of PLO, jungleman12 is an über-specialist at online poker and you would think that durrrr’s edge at playing multiple tables is pretty much negated in this match. Antonius has said himself that durrrr played beter than him in their match, and since I would rate them fairly equal in pure poker skills, my conclusion is that it is the multi-tabling that have made the most difference thus far in that match.
I don’t know jungleman12’s game as well as I know Antonius’, but if I was pressed to make a prediction for this match I would go with durrrr. I think that his experience will be the deciding factor here. They might be equals in terms of the fundamental understanding of poker, but durrrr has been playing high pressure poker for a lot longer than his opponent, and that has to count for something in my opinion.
Durrrr tries a big river bluff at the wrong time. $86K pot.
The players came out swinging right off the bat, and if this hand is representative for the kind of action we will see, the spectators are going to be in for a treat. Durrrr was trying to do something that is very difficult, floating out of position on the flop. The problem with this is obvious since it is your opponent that controls the action, and it usually includes some kind of risky bluff at some point during the hand. In this case he could have chosen to check raise the turn when he made the open ended straight to go with his overcards. I don’t know how jungleman12 would have reacted to that, but it might have been difficult for him to continue with the hand if he thought he was drawing to only a flush draw. We’ll never know, but on this hand it might have been more effective.
Instead, durrrr chose to wait to see what came off on the turn, and when the spade came off he decided to try to represent a flush. It is, however, difficult to get away with a bluff when you represent the hand that your opponent is holding. So this time, the bluff didn’t work out, but durrrr can still profit from his play. It might make jungleman12 think twice about making marginal valuebets on the river in the future, so the result on this one specific hand does not tell the complete story.