Aces against Dwan and Eastgate on HSP Season 5

[Justin Bonomo]

It felt to me, watching the video, that Durrr was plotting, rather than thinking about how to extract max value.

That's really just what Durrrr looks like every time before he puts a lot of money in the pot.

[Isaac Baron]

I have a buncha thoughts on this awesome hand, but I am in a rush right now and a lot of my thoughts Justin has already brought up. One thing that I don't think anyone has mentioned is... Barry, you keep insisting that if Peter had folded you would have reraised Tom and gotten it in on the flop. Why? Tom is insane and crazy and sick, but he is also very smart and very good, his range on the flop is bluffs and hands that are beating you, I just can not fathom it being anything else. If this is the case why would you 3-bet the flop against him? Clearly Tom is more than capable of trying to get you off an overpair and firing at least one more big bullet to try and do so in which case you make more money if you are never folding your hand in a heads-up pot vs him.

[Barry Greenstein]

Originally Posted by Isaac Baron

I have a buncha thoughts on this awesome hand, but I am in a rush right now and a lot of my thoughts Justin has already brought up. One thing that I don't think anyone has mentioned is... Barry, you keep insisting that if Peter had folded you would have reraised Tom and gotten it in on the flop. Why? Tom is insane and crazy and sick, but he is also very smart and very good, his range on the flop is bluffs and hands that are beating you, I just can not fathom it being anything else. If this is the case why would you 3-bet the flop against him? Clearly Tom is more than capable of trying to get you off an overpair and firing at least one more big bullet to try and do so in which case you make more money if you are never folding your hand in a heads-up pot vs him.

You are in agreement with the majority on here. I thought that if he had a Ten, Tom would not fire again if I called, so it is better for me to reraise and deprive him of a free card. People on here seem to think he was planning on bluffing from the start. I disagree and just think the hand unfolded for him in a way that he thought it was worth going forward.

You can make a case that if I am right, then if Tom 4-bets me on the flop I must be beat. But I just figured I would have over half my stack in there at that point and it would probably be right to cater to his possible craziness combined with the slim chance that he slowplayed something like KK.

At some point Tom will post on here and tell us what he thinks he would have done if everyone folded and I called on the flop.

Barry

[Jimmy Fricke]

Barry, if you think that Tom is not firing again if you just call and check to him, why don't you just call and check/fold to a bet rather than shove? The extra money you lose far outweighs the money lost when he hits a 2 outer.

[Barry Greenstein]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Fricke

Barry, if you think that Tom is not firing again if you just call and check to him, why don't you just call and check/fold to a bet rather than shove? The extra money you lose far outweighs the money lost when he hits a 2 outer.

Jimmy,

Do you really think poker is that hot and cold? When you say, "You think," it's never 100% in poker. My first thought when he raised is that I'm going to have to go with this against Tom. You never know what will happen and change things. I obviously didn't go with my first plan against Tom, although admittedly a third person getting in the way is a very big thing that happened. Also, I raise when I am bluffing with a high enough percentage that I sometimes have to call good players when I am afraid they don't think I am as strong as I represented

Another part of my problem was that I thought my hand was almost face up as an overpair from the point that I bet on the flop, even thought a lot of people have commented that I could have just been making a continuation bet because the flop was so dry. I didn't realize until after the hand was over how different Aces is than Kings when a pair of a small card comes on the flop.

One thing I haven't mentioned that is in agreement with most of the sentiment on here (yours, Justin's, Isaac Baron's, Paul's), even though I haven't watched Durrrr at all on Full Tilt and I only played with him a little when he was under 21, I did see a few hands of him against Victor Ramdin in the PokerStars 25K heads up. On several hands, Victor checked and Tom bet and then Victor called with third pair or even bottom pair, which was of course good, and this went on until Victor won the match. That strategy worked so well because Tom never had anything. I had planned on using some of this against Tom, but three things were different: it wasn't head up, and Tom was showing the best hand almost all the time in the hands he had played up to this point, and our stacks were deeper.

Barry

[Jimmy Fricke]

I'm not saying it's cut and dry, there's going to be lots of variance in the situation because we may only deduce he's bluffing here 3/10 times or whatever, but it just seems like there are lapses in logic.

I don't really get what your example between Victor and Tom is supposed to say. You think you should just never fold against Tom because he never seems to have it? Really? That seems absolutely crazy. No wonder he does so well in the high stakes games against you guys, you seem to think that he goes absolutely bat**** insane in the biggest pots ever when he's putting you in terrible spots reverse implied odds wise. He leans on you in such a way and then you decide your hand is best and risk an absurd amount of money more than you really need to do.

To me in my head, yes, I guess it is a little cut and dry. If you think he's going to bluff you off your 80k stack or whatever it is if you just call 105k on the turn, then calling is best because you get a ton of extra value from your hand from his bluffs. If you don't think he's going to bluff the river, then calling is best because when he shoves the river you will know you're beat enough of the time that calling isn't profitable when he's only going to call the extra 80k on the turn if you're behind anyway. We are not talking about a trivial portion of the pot, we're talking about 80k when there's 280k in the pot or so.

Also, in an 8 way pot when you represent supreme strength and the very next person to act raises almost 4x your bet on a very dry board, the first thought for me would not be 'to go with it.' This is the supreme spot to 'play poker' as a lot of older players tend to say. If Peter had folded, doing anything but calling or folding would be awful. If you were to reraise here, you'd make it what? 100k more? 80k more? Then you would be pot committed to calling the rest of it off too I suppose. So by putting in 37k in a spot where he will easily pick up the pot most of the time, he is essentially making you risk almost a quarter million dollars or more in a spot where he will only put in anywhere close to that amount of money if you are going to lose the pot. His bluffing frequency is nowhere near that amount of the time, even if it is Durr. He did not get to where he is today by turning over garbage in all the big pots he plays.

[Peter Eastgate]

I will go through some of the points people have made regarding the way the hand unfolded and the way I played the hand.

1. My pre-flop call might be viewed as a loose call. I personally think that with 6 players already in the hand, and me being in the Small Blind, it was a standard call for me.
2. My flop play is probably the time I feel I could have played the hand differently. The first mistake is not taking my time on the flop, by thinking through the options I would face by checking. The opening check, kind of made me play my hand face up. If I check raise, either Barry’s original bet or Tom’s re-raise, I am pretty much playing the hand face up. It would be highly unlikely that I would bluff re-raise as I was only in the hand for $2,5k. I should probably have lead out and taken control of the hand. That would have put my range very wide, like AT or something similar and depending on whether Barry flat calls or raises, Tom will be less likely to make the same play and it will make my future decision much easier.
3. As I checked, Barry bet and Tom Re-raised, I felt that 3 betting will only induce action from a hand that has me beat and the flat call was also an attempt to control the size of the pot.
4. What really threw me off was Barry’s quick call, which left me quite puzzled. I was certain that my call (or Toms raise) signaled to Barry, that either one of our hands contained a deuce, and if I were in Barrys shoes I would not be calling for implied odds hoping to spike a two outer.... where if it gets checked around to river, he would probably only get action from one of us. I have heard Barry might have thought I could have a hand like JJ and that my call was to slow Tom down if Barry folded, as I represented a very strong hand. The problem with that is that it makes it more likely that Tom has a deuce if I have JJ and calling a re-raise with two people still to act with JJ in that situation is not very likely (especially given my pf-call as well. When he called I did think that Barry might possibly be sitting sandbagging TT.
5. I think that the fact that Barry calls the flop is what makes Tom fire out a second barrel. His quick call on the flop made him look like he wasn’t , which makes Tom’s bet on the turn look even stronger. It would be interesting to know who Tom felt he had the greatest fold equity against. Especially if you keep episode 4in mind. How lightly does Barry stack off? Even though this is very broad question and each situation is different from the other given all the factors professional players base their decision on.
6. Next is the turn. If I call the turn, I face the possibility of Barry coming over the top and if Tom then folded, I would have to call as Barry did not have enough to push me off my hand in that situation. If Barry folded or just called, I would likely have to face a third bullet, and I could likely have been beaten.
7. As for whether I would be the only one Tom could have pushed off this hand. That might be true. Tom is a smart guy though. He knows how to exploit different players’ tendencies. He knows how to valuetown some players hard and he knows that other players might not auto stackoff with trips no kicker 500bbs deep, when 8 players see the flop.
8. I have ended up (in the first two episodes) in two situations that required some difficult decision from my side against Tom. I made a huge tactical error going into the game. I bought in for $500k, and the only other player who bought in for the same amount is the arguably best no-limit holdem cash game player in the world, Tom Dwan. Both the 42 and the A6 hand would have been a lot easier to play and likely more rewarding had I only bought in for $200k. On the contrary, If I held full houses (or quads ) on those spots, my 500 k stack would have been more rewarding as well. On a sidenote I think I played the A6 perfectly. I also think it is quite funny how Tom’s advertising after that hand affects people’s opinions of it.
9. Finally, as Barry mentions, Tom did not play as loose and aggressive as people might think from watching the episodes. Until this hand he had had a good hand everytime he made a big bet. Of course this doesn’t rule out the possibility of him running a huge bluff. But just as it is extremely unlikely that anyone else in the world would turn toppair into a huge bluff in an 8-way pot – I also thought it was pretty unlikely that Tom would do that in this situation.
   

I hope this gave you an idea of what I think about the play of the hand. I think the play Tom made was out of this world, and it worked because both Barry and I got in the way of each other and created the opening that Tom took advantage of. Well played Tom.


Peter

[Tom Dwan]

im tired after a long session, so ill just stick to things im pretty sure of- not sure how much of the rest i want to get into anyway.

1) i could have tt in this spot some non-negligible amount of the time.
2) i think peter's call preflop is fine
3) i think barry's flop call is 'sketchy' but ok. Any logic like 'if he calls the flop he must call the turn' is obviously terrible.
4) i think a reraise by barry on the flop if peter folded would be quite illogical, and i don't believe barry would actually do it
5) i may giveup a bunch of info, but anyone who hasnt played with me much and is claiming to have some live read is obviously nuts and results oriented. (this isnt a shot at devo, as hes played with me a bit- so while i still think his logic is flawed, theres definitely a good chance im wrong).

as far as my thought process... i just throw chips in the pot and hope to win, or something like that. Also i only read about 1/2 the thread because my planes landing and i wanted to get this post off before i fell asleep and forgot.

-tom

[Justin Bonomo]

as far as my thought process... i just throw chips in the pot and hope to win, or something like that.

Thanks Tom. This insight into your thought process might elevate my game to the next level.

[Bryan Devonshire]

Great post Peter, welcome and TY.

Tom, you're a sicko . I also would love to hear some of that thought process too, I mean, why the raise? What was the plan?