Jaime Staples tops his biggest ever Poker win this weekend by taking 5th in the $2,100 Knockout Series Event on PartyPoker.
The young Canadian, currently playing from Scotland in the UK won his seat in the event from a $215 qualifier and ended up cashing for $35,276.88!
Not a bad spin up from $215 and a good start to the KO Series on Party Poker for this Team Online Pro, who I’m sure we will see a lot more big results from during this series running alongside the SCOOP on PokerStars.
We are going to look at some key late-game hands to see how he built his stack for placing 5th…
Blind Defence
In this pot we see Jaime defend as wide as 45o from the Big Blind versus a Button raise, whilst choosing to fold other better holdings to earlier position raises Jamie decides this offsuit connector is good enough to battle against a button raise and we agree…
A good flop for Jaime’s holding he flops a pair and open-ender, pretty much as good as it gets without flopping three of a kind or a full house here.
Jaime’s line on the flop is just to check call and I like this line, he has good showdown value with second pair and a hand that is going places with the straight draw too, but there is no need to play a huge pot here and play for stacks against over-pairs, we want to realise our equity and get to rivers with holdings like this, so check calling flop is a good way to start executing this plan.
Leading the Turn card
Jaime chooses to lead the turn and again I really like this play, we aim to take control of the pot, we will have way more 6x combinations than the Big Blind as our range is wider in defending from the Big Blind, this is called having the Nut Advantage, meaning we have more combinations of nutted hands in our range including hands like 63s 64o 57o.
By leading here we control the size of the betting as its hard for us to get raised here, we also deny equity from hands that might want to check back the turn and take a free card. We also keep any spade draws in the pot and charge them to draw with a bet like this.
Rivering a Straight
Jaime rivers a straight with the offsuit deuce hitting on the end and he leads out again for a bet on the smaller side, I don’t mind this play, we can try and get calls from a stubborn two pair type hand, however I would like to see us check here sometimes and try and pick up some bluffs from the Button who might then want to represent having a five in their hand making them a straight.
Betting here is often going to get folds from a huge percentage of our opponent’s range, so checking to induce a bluff or betting very small to get calls from very weak hands or in turn induce more action would be my preferred line in this spot.
Flipping Coins for Bounties
The idea of playing one of these progressive knockout games is to play to win the bounties by eliminating players, a huge portion of the prize pool is set aside just for these knockouts so the math means we need to be widening our range significantly to play correctly with this new dynamic in play…
This is what Jaime does in this hand, normally against a UTG all in of around 14.5BBs 6♥ 6♠ may well hit the muck, as our opponent will often have holdings like 55–AA or AQo+ and we don’t rate to fair too well against this range with our pair, however with the added incentive of the bounty on the players head Jaime goes for the win here and isolates LAP1293 and ends up winning the flip Vs his AQo.
Widening our ranges in these spots is a huge part of the Knockout format gameplan, we want to have holdings that will fair well against our opponents’ ranges without being easily dominated, so hands like T9s JTs QTs that will have good equity against our opponents’ whole range become good gambling hands to scoop up bounties.
Slow Playing A Monster
Jaime mixes up his play here against an aggressive opponent whilst in position with pocket rockets, facing a large 3-bet he chooses to smooth call and see a flop and allow his opponent to keep bluffing.
Flat calling like this pre-flop with a short SPR is a good plan against aggressive players as when they are 3-Bet bluffing we will win no more chips from them with a 4-Bet all in.
A good flop for the Aces, not many hands caught up only a holding like QQ now have his Aces in bad shape as its hard to think his opponent would 3-Bet 44 or 77 preflop, most players are going to flat call with hands like that to try and flop a set and win a huge pot.
Jaime continues the slow play on this flop as he explains that he only really wants to protect his hand from a flush draw and his opponent is not likely to fold a flush draw to a raise anyway, so keeping his opponent’s bluffs in the pot he opts to just call.
Nuts on the Turn
His opponent puts him all-in on the turn card of an Ace meaning Jaime has the nuts on the turn and its a good card for him getting action as his opponent has an Ace himself.
Jaime ends up getting a full double up with AA vs A5o a great result!
Sad ending with Kings
Sadly Jaime’s run ends with heartache, his opponent makes a huge all in from the button with A8o with effective stacks at 27BBs this way too wide…
But his opponent ends up rivering a straight to win Jaime’s huge bounty and take a huge chip lead moving into 4 handed play. A disappointing ending for the Pro but his opponent did have equity and was applying good ICM pressure on Jaime with 5th place stack having just 10BBs in the Big Blind, Jaime literally needed a monster to find the call here as he is risking 2 pay jumps of around $20,000 in total when he calls off risking his tournament life in this spot, however with pocket kings the second-best hand in Hold-em its just one of those things, you have to go for the win but you just hate it when your opponents equity gets there in such a big spot!
Jump in the Huge KO Series Games
There were huge over-lays in some of these KO series events on PartyPoker last night, so if you aren’t playing there already I would strongly recommend jumping in these games and picking up that extra value!
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