High Stakes Poker Recap, S5Ep3

Since my last recap seemed to generate some interest, I figured I'd keep going until somebody tells me "Stop!" The show this week didn't feature anything quite as spectacular as durrrr's performance in episode 2, but there were still some interesting hands.

But first, as a completely irrelevant aside, can I say that I'm confused by all the concern about money given to AIG being paid to other banks? The whole reason to bail out AIG was concern of "contaigon", i.e., they can't pay off obligations, which bankrupts other important players in the financial system. Now that they are indeed using the money to pay off their obligations to other important players in the financial system that's....shocking? bad? I don't get it. If you want to get mad about the money going out the door in the form of bonuses, fine. But some of the money had Goldman's name on it the minute the government started writing checks.

OK, moving on...I was hoping Negreanu might step up his game a little bit as the session went along. Ehh...I think we can so far say:

[ ] Negreanu pwns HSP

I mean...when you're first doing leakfinding with a friend who's new to NLHE, what's like the first thing you explain to them to improve profitability? Probably something like...stop open limp-calling marginal hands? Stop check/calling the flop with marginal hands? Especially vs. good players? Who is Daniel trying to pwn post-frop by open limping As8s? Anyway, that's what he decides to do, and Barry raises him from the button with JTo. Of course the flop comes Q98 with two diamonds and one spade, giving Barry the nut straight.

Daniel check/calls a heftily sized c-bet. I think he would probably be folding this if it weren't for the one spade on board. If he were in position, so that he'd have much more freedom to operate on the turn and river, it's a more defensible call. But here, even if Barry does have AK/AJ or an underpair so that Daniel is ahead...how often is Daniel going to get to showdown? If Daniel does nail the turn with an 8 or an A, how often does he have the best hand when a bunch of money goes in?

Well, we're about to find out because an offsuit A peels off on the turn. This gives Daniel aces up and pretty much guarantees that he's going to lose a bunch of money in the hand. His check/call on the turn is pretty standard. He might consider raising to protect his hands against diamonds, but given their stack sizes, he can't really raise enough to protect his hands without committing himself vs. all the hands that pwn him, like AQ, QQ, 99, JT, etc...and I don't think Barry is going to go nutso and lose a whole bunch of money with AK on that board.

The river comes an offsuit K, a bad card for Daniel. He now loses to AK and KK, which he was beating before. He makes kind of a crying call of a very hefty river value bet from Barry. Maybe he thinks Barry would value bet KQ that strong, hoping that Daniel had an A-high flush draw that ended up with just a pair of aces? Or Barry could turn QJ into a bluff on the river? Daniel played the hand so passively that he does induce some 3-barrel bluffs from Barry on a gross board like this, but in this hand he got pwnd pretty hard. And those are just the kind of tough situations you get yourself into when you limp/call and then check/call twice.

The other big hand of the night also involved Negreanu. He opened with a 2.8x raise holding JJ, and got called by Eastgate holding 33 on the button, Benyamine holding 44 in the SB, and Eli Elezra with 32ss from the BB. The flop comes 742 with two diamonds. Looks safe enough for JJ, so Daniel fires out 8k when checked to. Eastgate floats him with 33, and Benyamine raises to 41k with his set, prompting an instafold from Elezra.

I think Eastgate's call really pwns Daniel here. He's thinking that Benyamine is reading Eastgate's hand well, and hoping that Daniel is c-betting with air as he normally would, and hoping to take it down (as he did with 9h6h on a dry paired board earlier in the show...he got called by Doyle slowplaying KK and Elezra raised and lost a bunch of money bluffing with A-high). Benyamine is definitely capable of making such a play with even a marginal draw such as 86 or A3. Certainly he would be doing it with big diamond draws and straight flush draws quite often. It's also unlikely that Benyamine would flat call a smallish raise preflop with AA-QQ this deep, with Eastgate having called already and Elezra virtually guaranteed to call in the BB. So the only hands Daniel needs to worry about are sets and maybe 24s or 74s. He decides to call, making the pot just over 100k going to the turn.

The turn is an offsuit 4, a very bad card for Daniel. None of the hands Daniel beat on the frop are helped by that card, unless Benyamine were making a move with 45 or A4. Moreover, it reduces the number of 44 combinations DB could have from 3 to 1, and the number of 42s combinations from 3 to 2. That makes 11 combos total that now make a full house or better. Not very many compared to the flush and straight draw combos. If Daniel liked his hand on the frop, he can only like it more on the turn.

Benyamine leads on the turn with quads with a small bet of $35k. He probably thinks Daniel has either an overpair or a flush draw, and wants to extract value from both. The pairing of the board means that Daniel would be more reluctant to try and see the river with a draw. Benyamine also might think he can represent a draw that doesn't want to put the rest of the money in because the board pairs, and therefore get Daniel to shove some weak draws, or overpairs that wouldn't want any draws to see the river given how big the pot has now gotten.

At first I thought a bigger bet would work better since Daniel won't call a small bet with draws anyway, and a big bet is probably how Benyamine would play a draw himself (and therefore be more likely to action from Daniel with an overpair). But actually I think that the small bet works well because it would give Daniel the idea that he could shove and get a fold if he himself had a draw. With about $156k left in Daniel's stack, if DB bets $80k or more, Daniel will realize that he has no fold equity. But if DB bets $35k and Daniel is sitting on Ad8d or 8d6d, he might think, "paired board, I have reverse implied odds, so I can't really call this bet. But since the board is paired and I can force DB to call off another $121k with a shove, I can shove my draw and win the pot that way unless DB has a boat. Since there are only 11 possible boat-or-better combos and many plausible draws, I should ship it in."

Benyamine should realize that his own range is polarized to draws/complete air and boats (or maybe I'm way off and he would play A7 like this, but I kinda doubt it). I don't know his game well enough to know how he would play an A-high diamond draw in this situation. If he does something other than bet $35k, he sets himself up to be exploited a bit, but Daniel might have been tilted enough at this point to not realize that the small bet was designed to induce action and that Benyamine wouldn't have a draw in that spot.

In the end, Daniel looks pretty bad stuffing in 200bbs drawing stone cold dead with an overpair. But I think this hand is a little more excusable than the As8s hand, because the range Benyamine is betting for value is so narrow, and Eastgate's flop call put Benyamine in a perfect bluffing spot.

In other tidbits from the show, it looks like Doyle is determined to slowplay all his monsters and make big bets with his bluffs and semi-bluffs. This is pretty much the same pattern he showed at the Poker After Dark cash game. The other players are definitely starting to notice, so he probably needs to change gears soon. This does make David Benefield's fold of trip sixes on PAD look a lot better, if you thought it was a bad play the first time you saw it.

From the clips at the end of the show, it looked like durrrr and Barry will play another big pot next episode...can't wait to see that one!

-BRUECHIPS