Dwan Gives Up

Dwan took this hand to get aggressive with on the Flop and picked up a dream card on the Turn to get aggressive with, the Jack of clubs gave him a straight and flush draw, so he went big again looking for fold-out equity in his opponent’s hands.

When it came to the River though he didn’t feel like going for it, feeling his opponent was a little too sticky to muck once they had called the Turn and he was right to shut down because Daniel’s was giving him rope the whole time with three of kind eights.

Hellmuth gets bluffed out

On these kinds of Flops, we will want to bet very infrequently, but when we do, we can bet big, because we will have hands like two pair, sets, straights and maybe some strong overpairs that could do with protection.

Hellmuth chose a very strange sizing, however, betting around 25%… which doesn’t make a tonne of sense, he can get raised off the best hand by just a draw and he allows worse hands when he is ahead a cheap price to draw out on him.

That’s exactly what happened in this hand, Tom raised with his pair and straight draw and Hellmuth folded the highest equity hand. In general, a good rule of thumb is if you are considering betting in a marginal spot like this, consider whether you will want to call a raise, if the answer is no, then you might want to consider playing small ball and looking check to realise equity.

Fake Small Value Bet

In this pot Hernandez isolated pre-flop and bet all three streets pretty small. He checked his cards on the River and fired out $30,000 into a roughly $100,000 pot. So 30% more or less… Dwan looked fairly happy to call on previous streets, but the River gives him a tough spot.

He can literally only beat hands like AQ, AK and possibly some overplayed TT. The good news with this sizing is that Tom can rule out flushes in his opponent’s hand because surely he would go larger for value, the other strange part of this hand is if Hernandez really has the big overpair he is representing, wouldn’t he size up on previous streets to protect his hand?

Tom getting a good price put all these pieces of the puzzle together and made the call to take down the pot. The headline, in the end, was it just didn’t make too much sense.

King Vs Queens

Jason Koon had been bluffed off the first pot of the night by Daniels who took a similar line in that pot of firing all three streets. Daniels didn’t take his foot off the gas in this one either after flopping top set, Koon had a pretty tough time of it here, blocking hands like AQ in spades.

He talked out his decision that his opponent can only be betting top set, or AK, AA with the Ace of spades here, but even that would be thin. So essentially he thought his opponent had pocket Kings or nothing.

Normally this might be an easy fold, but with his opponent previously showing he is more than capable of three barrel bluffs and having a pretty relevant blocker with the Queen of spades in his hand, he made the call and saw the bad news.

Same 3 Barrels, Different Outcome

Daniels got back in the mix for the last big hand of the night against Dwan… this time 3-Betting the Button with A9o against Hellmuth’s open.

Dwan in no mood to muck anything suited made the call from the straddle, Hellmuth folded and the pair took a flop which gave Dwan a flush draw.

Being pretty deep stacked Dwan went for a large check-raise and Daniel’s came along for the ride with just Ace high. This is a bit of a sole read, but not sure why you would want to bet and call a raise with this combo when you are going to have plenty of better hands to continue for value if you are Daniel’s in this spot. I wouldn’t mind a bet-fold or a check back to replace this line on the Flop.

The Turn plays out of flow, with Tom giving up his betting lead on the Queen.. but with Daniel’s betting fairly small, Tom has no choice but to continue to draw given the odds.

Tom makes his flush on the end and check-called a bet of $90,000 from Daniel’s who later claimed he didn’t even see the flush. An altogether strange hand, with Daniel’s turning the best hand into a bluff unknowingly and then gifting $90,000 to Dwan when the only draw got there.