High Stakes Poker Recap, Season 5 Episode 10

By my count, between his two hands with durrrr on this episode and his hand with Barry Greenstein on an earlier episode, Daniel Negreanu has now lost about $200k calling pre-flop out of position with ace-rag.

In the first hand vs. durrrr, Dwan opens from the cutoff with KhQc. Daniel decides to call from the SB with A6o. I couldn't be more against this call. Up against a great player, even a very loose one, A6o out of position, with so little money in the pot already, is just a fold. There are so many ways for Daniel to get pwnd...and here's one of them:

The frop comes Ac9cJs, giving Daniel top pair and durrrr an inside straight draw and backdoor crubs. Daniel check/calls a $5700 c-bet (this part is standard for both players I think). The turn comes a Qs, giving durrrr a pair to go with his straight draw. Daniel leads for $11k into the $19k pot. I'm not really sure what Daniel's plan is here if he gets raised. I would assume he'd fold as this is a pretty terrible board for top pair no kicker...but who knows. I don't know if he's trying to rep KT or QJ or if he's trying to rep the hand he has and just hopes durrrr won't decide to try and bluff him off of it. It's a tough spot for Daniel no matter what he does. Check/fold seems bad since durrrr will fire second barrels with air a lot. Check/raise is even worse as there are a lot of very good hands durrrr could have, and he could also 3b semi-bluff with a huge draw. Check/call is probably the best of the three, although it allows durrrr to take a free card, and there are quite a few draws out. I think this is better than bet/fold too, since Daniel will get bluffed either on the turn or the river a fair amount if he bets, and he's very unlikely to fold out any better hands. He does charge the draws, but with one street to come and so many river cards that look gross, I'd prefer to just keep the pot small as possible.

The river does in fact come a Tc to give durrrr the best hand. As Daniel says, this is pretty much the worst card in the deck, forcing him to check/fold, but it's not close to the only river he'd check/fold to. Besides the 4 tens and 3 kings which give durrrr the best hand, there's also any 8, any spade, and any crub. All told that's 34 cards, at least 32 of which are still in the deck (at most two can be in durrrr's hand). And that doesn't even include the three queens which also give durrrr the best hand in a more deceptive way, which would probably induce a check/call from Daniel, losing him even more money. If the hand works out this poorly for Daniel when he flops top pair, gets in bets on the frop and turn when ahead and then check/folds the river when durrrr catches up, you can see how calling with A6o pre-flop out of position vs. Tom Dwan is just lighting money on fire.

Yet that doesn't stop Daniel from getting caught in a similar spot later on. Phil Laak limps up front with KQo, Howard Lederer limps 66 up front (go back to 2006, guys!!), and Tom Dwan finds AQo on the button...I think you know what happens next. Durrrr sends it up to $5400, getting calls from Daniel in the big blind with Ah8h, and the two limpers. The frop comes AdQd2c, once again putting Daniel in a tough spot of having top pair on a drawy board, out of position against Tom Dwan. It checks to durrrr, who bets $14k into the $24k pot. Of course Daniel calls, since he does have top pair and it's Tom Dwan who is betting.

Pots get big pretty fast when the pre-flop raise is 8 bbs...once Daniel calls and the 2h turns, there's already $52k in the pot. Daniel checks to Dwan, who bets ~$35k. Daniel check/raises for $50k more. It's another spot where he's taking what might be the worst of many bad options. The options are bad because he's out of position with a medium strength hand vs. a great player. He might get durrrr to lay down a hand with a lot of equity, like JdTd, because of the paired board, since Daniel could have 22, A2, or at least an A, which takes away the 2d as an out.

But the main goal, as Gabe Kaplan says, is to make durrrr fold an ace with no kicker, so that Daniel gets all of the pot instead of half of it. This strategy suffers from two problems. First, As far as what Daniel is repping that might make durrrr want to fold an ace, A2s is a little thin since it can ONLY be As2s. Even though Daniel did call a pre-flop raise earlier with A6o, I don't think he'd calling this big a pre-flop raise with A2o. A more likely hand would be some kind of suited diamond hand with a deuce in it. 3d2d, 4d2d, 5d2d....Daniel likes low suited hands a lot, and might gamble with these hands pre-flop, knowing that Laak and Lederer would call behind him. You'd think Daniel would be re-raising preflop with QQ or AA, so it's really 5 hands (As2s, 2s2d, 5d2d, 4d2d, 3d2d) that durrrr could be worried about. That's just not very many hands, especially when Daniel had just check/raised the turn with KJo on a K-high board against Phil Laak in a hand earlier, so durrrr knows that Daniel can do that with a weak one pair. If it the frop were AdQc2d, and then the frop came out the 2h, it would be even worse by Daniel, since he couldn't rep thet 2dxd hands. The second problem Daniel has is that durrrr might be checking back an ace with no kicker. He checked back top pair medium kicker against Cassavetes earlier, earning some money off a Cassavetes turn and river bluff. I think he'd often check back here, too, hoping to pick off a river bluff from a missed diamond draw.

Durrrr has an interesting decision as well, as he could either call or raise (I don't think he's considering folding). Raising protects his hand vs. the diamond draw but I doubt he's ever getting called by worse. He decides to call. The river is an innocent 4h and Daniel checks. Like Gabe Kaplan, I'm kind of surprised that Dwan didn't value bet here...maybe like $80k. Daniel probably folds anyway, but it would be interesting to see. I think durrrr might be worried about Daniel checking his best hands on the river because of the missed diamond draw, hoping that Dwan would bluff at it (remembering the rivered flush that Daniel checked vs. Antonius). It would have been interesting to see the 4d come off too. I guess it goes check/check, but maybe Daniel tries to steal it with a big river bet. Interestingly, a river diamond would allow Daniel to represent a full house with a big bet, but not a flush. In both cases (river diamond or river non-diamond), he's playing as if durrrr has the diamonds, betting big to extract value in the first case, and checking to induce a bluff in the second case.

This episode also featured some nice play from Patrik Antonius, getting two streets of value from Antonio Esfandiari's third pair with top pair and a flush draw (apparently Antonio has caught the limp/calling bug as well), and bluffing durrrr off the best hand with T-high (proving that durrrr is human). Apparently the next episode will feature Eli Elezra pwning durrrr pretty hard, so we'll have to wait and see how that unfolds.

-BRUECHIPS