Saturday
August 28, 2010
There is a lot of other action than the durrrr challenge going on these days. As we mentioned the other day, Brian Townsend has picked up the activity of late, and yesterday he played two short but very profitable sessions of $300/$600 PLO and $2K/$4K 08. In all, he won about $85K in each for a total of $171K. Speaking of the O8 game, Gus Hansen had a really bad time of it, losing $232K, but he managed to get most of it back in the seven game. Patrik Antonius, on the other hand won $139K playing O8 but ended the day basically even after running bad in the seven game.
Townsend flops a set and gets paid off to win a $114K pot.
Another hand that shows the power of position when playing PLO. It would have been a lot harder for Townsend to get full value from his hand if he was first to act after the flop. A check raise on the flop would have made Antonius lay down his hand, while check calling the flop followed by a check on the turn would run the risk of his opponent checking behind and only calling a river bet if he run into a better hand along the way. The way it was on this hand, it was fairly risk free to just call Antonius’ cbet. This also put Antonius in a tough spot on the turn since he had little clue where he is at and will have to make a more or less blind decision on whether or not to bet the turn. Of course, in PLO there is almost never such a thing as drawing dead, so Townsend’s slowplay does carry some risk. But every time you get your opponent to stack off as a 4-1 underdog, you should be very happy about your situation.
Townsend flops top set and fades Niki Jedlicka straight draws twice.
On this hand, position had little to do with how the hand was played. Top set vs a 13-wrapper will usually induce both players to get their chips in. Particularly when the player on the draw feels he has some fold equity when he makes his big move. When the money went in on the flop, Townsend was only an 11-9 favorite which is basically what we consider being a coinflip situation, but this time Jedlicka couldn’t hit one of his 13 winners even if he got four tries to do so.