High Stakes Poker Recap, Season 5 Episode 12

I don't know if it's the stakes or the players at the table, but Phil Laak is definitely intimidated at this table. He's limp/calling $15k to set mine. He's flatting 99 in position preflop and then folding to a Tom Dwan donk bet on a T-high board. He's getting one street of value with JJ vs. durrrr's 88 on a 992 frop. He's checking the nut frush draw (crubs!) three times and folding to a river bluff. He's practically open shoving AA preflop. It's been ugly. I hope Esfandiari gives him hell. 

Anyway, there's at least one player at the table who didn't get the memo that Doyle Brunson has been a huge nit on HSP. David "Viffer" Peat opened from early position (I think maybe even UTG?) with Jd9d. Doyle makes it $10.5k total with AA on the button. To me, this should just be an easy easy instafold in Viffer's spot. You raised UTG and a good, tight player has made a big re-raise. Your J-high is crushed and you aren't likely to be able to outplay him post-flop from out of position. Even 200 bbs deep, Viffer won't frop huge enough to make it worth the $8k call prefrop, especially when you consider all the times he'll get pwnd semi-bluffing (foreshadowing alert!).

The frop comes AdTc2d, giving Doyle top set and Viffer a frush draw and a three-straight, for a couple of ways of backing into a straight. Viffer checks and Doyle bets $20k into the nearly $24k pot. From what I've seen of Doyle's play, his range for betting $20k there is heavily weighted towards absolute monster hands. AA, TT, AK...I think he checks back AQ, KK, etc.. The only "bluff" he could have is KdQd, which he's not folding and pwns Viffer anyway. Viffer is thinking that Doyle slowplays huge preflop hands so often that he wouldn't 3b AA preflop? Or that he'd fold AK to a monster check-raise? I don't know, but for whatever reason, Viffer decides to make a huge committing check-raise to $125k, which to me is just blind and dumb aggression, because Doyle just doesn't bet/fold there very often. If it were 8d7d4c or something, it would be a much more effective play. Of course Doyle shoves over the check-raise and Viffer has to call off the last $46k in pretty rough shape. They agree to run it twice, but the Doyle wins both times despite a Q turning in each run.

Apparently Viffer kills the live LA and Vegas high-stakes games pretty hard, but I don't know if he's a really top player or just has great table selection. Given that he loves doing things like limping Q9s UTG (like vs. Dario in an earlier episode) and limp/re-raise KK (vs. durrrr this episode), I don't know how well he'd do against the cream of the crop online. But hey, if he can cash in big playing live games vs. donks, why should he care whether he could beat Benyamine HU online? In any case, I personally have come away from his earlier PAD appearance and these HSP episodes fairly unimpressed with his game.

Another interesting hand from the episode might be called 'Don't Call 3-bets out of position, Part 2'. Eli Elezra opened the betting with a min-raise holding KTo. Dario Minieri makes a monster 3-b to more than $9k with 64o. This definitely takes some guts since, as we have noted before, Eli Elezra hates folding. But the poker gods approved of Dario's aggressive play, endowing him with bottom two pair on the rainbow frop vs. Eli's top pair. Eli quickly check/calls the $14k frop bet, and the turn brings an unfortunate Ac. Eli quickly checks again. The Ac is bad for Dario not so much because it makes his hand less likely to be good, although it's certainly possible Eli has A6 or AT or something, but more because it just kills his action when Eli has a T or 99-77 or something. But I do like Dario betting instead of checking on the turn, for a couple of reasons: first, it balances his range, since I'd imagine he'd be barreling the A on the turn with most of his bluff-type hands, so he needs to protect those bluffs by value-betting his good hands, and second, bottom two pair is a very vulnerable hand...any T, K, or A on the river destroys him. And of course, betting is good because Eli Elezra hates folding. Eli hems and haws for a bit, as folding second pair for $37k is pretty much a monster laydown by his standards, and finally gives up his cards. 

-BRUECHIPS