Fedor Holz Talks Final Tables and More!

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In this episode of Run it Back, Fedor Holz walks us through his $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop, Final Table.

Weighting your aggression on payouts

Fedor makes a good point pretty early on here when Remko asks what it’s like to play for $10,000,000 Fedor just says you have to put it in terms of buy-ins, so this was a $1M tournament, so they are only playing for a top prize of 10 Buyins actually.

This is a fairly flat payout structure, so in this type of game, we will want to be playing fairly tight as the payout jumps are shallow. If this was a huge field tournament where all the money was at the top we want to play more aggressively and really push for the win, because the difference in buy-ins between 6th and 1st might be hundreds of buy-ins rather than just a couple.

Card Exposed from Rick Solomon

There was a strange pot that went down where a short stack moved all-in, Fedor then called that roughly 12BB jam with his pocket Tens, leaving himself a possible fold in case someone found a huge hand behind.

What happened next was pretty strange, Rick Solomon picked up his cards, expecting to never have a calling hand, but then once he saw his cards, immediately moved all-in himself, for an extra 18.8 Million in chips.

However Fedor saw that he flashed a Red Ace… the floor ruled that the card must be exposed… so then there are even more mind games at play, Rick either has Ace-King or two Aces.

Fedor explained that because the Ace is now exposed, the call is a pretty easy one to make because there are many more combinations of Ace-King than there are of Aces and he knows now that his opponent doesn’t have JJ, QQ or KK.

I guess the other thing that Fedor didn’t mention is that, if his opponent woke up with two Aces, would he just immediately move all-in?! Surely he would want to milk it a little and act like he has a tough decision to try and get some more action.

Fedor made the tough call and saw the good news that his opponent had Ace-King, however, he went on a rollercoaster ride, initially falling way behind in the pot when Rick flopped top two pair, the upswing kid Fedor binked the River though, hitting his Ten to make three of a kind and knock two players out!

All-in with 44

Fedor almost just stormed through the whole table, picking up pocket fours, early in the heads up match against Bonomo the Pro raise called 26BBs, which I personally think is a little aggressive to call off with 44, however, if Fedor says its an easy call, then I like it.

I personally would like to see a limp, re-raise, closing the action and making our opponent call off, because after all, when you call you have to see all five cards and win at showdown.

Fedor was sitting pretty after a blank flop against Justin’s A8o, however, his opponent hit the Turn and then the pair were going to play out a deep stacked battle.

Zero Equity Bluff

Bonomo 3Bet this suited combo pre-flop, bet small on the flop and then checked the Turn to Fedor… not one to shy away from trying to win a pot, Fedor blasted the Turn and bet huge on the River and got snap-called by the slow played two pair of his witty opponent.

Most of us would look at this as a bit of a blow-up, he has the lead and is playing for a difference in $4M, however, he risked it all with a huge bluff with no equity.

However Fedor explains he needs to have some bluffs here, he has great blockers too because he blocks hands like JJ, KK, KQ, AQ and doesn’t block any of the flush draws for instance. If he was continuing to semi-bluff here with a hand suited in clubs he would not have such a good bluffing candidate for the River bet.

Bonomo had the perfect hand to look him up in this instance, balancing perfectly with a strong hand in his range of other much weaker hands that couldn’t call this bet and after taking a huge lead in the match he would go on to knock Fedor out shortly after.