Wednesday
September 01, 2010
After a short break after the WSOP main event, Phil Galfond was back with his first long session in a while, playing over 3000 hands against UrnotINdanger2. The match was particularly interesting in that the two players played both $100/$200 NLHE and PLO simultaneously. I didn’t see the match live, but seeing how they played for about five hours I would assume they played three tables of each game. And the match was really the tale of two halves. URnotINdanger2 won almost $190K in the NLHE part of the match, but Phil Galfond got that back and a lot more by winning $390K in the PLO section.
Phil Galfond turns a full house and gets URnotINdanger2 to pay him off drawing almost dead. $93K pot.
It is easy to understand why URnotINdanger2 was so giddy about his hand on the turn here. Two strong flush draws that also included a straight flush draw will normally give you a very good chance of winning the pot. You might said he should have been more cautious on a paired board, but heads up play tends to reward aggressiveness, so his play seems perfectly reasonable. On a good day, he might even be a favorite before the river is dealt. On this hand, obviously, he was left regretting his shove on the turn, but such is life sometimes
With a straight on the board Galfond tries to steal the pot, but with no luck. $59K pot
I am not sure if the river cost Galfond some money here, because I suspect he would have called a river bet if a blank came off instead of the jack completing the straight. As it was, he didn’t consider it too likely that URnotINdanger2 held a king so he might as well represent it, hoping that he could steal the whole pot for himself. It didn’t work this time, of course, but Galfond would have called a shove by URnotINdanger2 on that board, so the final result would have been the same.