I was watching some Poker After Dark  (season 4) yesterday and I saw a great call from my hero Eli Elezra which I want to show you. The hand starts at around 2′20″ in the fragment below:

The hand becomes a family pot preflop and Elezra and the amateur Dee Tiller are the only players who really catch something on the flop, with Elezra catching middle pair and Tiller with the OESD. Elezra bets his pair on the flop as well as on the turn and both times Tiller just calls, not raising on his draw. Turn as well as river appear to be blanks and Tiller suddenly leads out with a massive overbet on the river: $25k in a $14k pot! The instincts of a lot of players will tell them here that Tiller missed his draw, but you got to have the guts nevertheless to call such enormous bets. Tiller had to know this play couldn’t succeed against Elezra.

Now this is a move you’ll see a lot when playing tournaments. It’s no coincedence it’s used a lot, because this move has a certain strength (if your stack is still large enough). It’s power is twofold: it can force your opponent to fold his (better) hand right there ánd if you get called you can beat your opponent by making your draw.

This play is perfectly demonstrated by the great Eli Elezra during an episode of Poker After Dark (S02E45). Watch it yourself (first hand):

So Eli flops the nut flushdraw and basically has only two moves left after Allan Cunningham’s continuation bet and Ivey’s raise: going all-in or fold. Now he choses the first option because there was an extra factor involved here: the fact that Phil Ivey was playing fairly aggressive during this tournament. Eli observed this correctly and in that way (with Ivey not even having toppair for example) it would be easier for Ivey to lay down his hand.

That’s something that can only be done by the great Eli Elezra . It was during an episode of High Stakes Poker (S04E10), where Eli is supposed to split the pot with WSOP 08 bracelet-winner (PLO) Phil Galfond. Watch the fragment yourself (first hand of the episode):

Now it’s already a surprise Galfond gets that many callers after he raises it preflop, because he was playing fairly tight during those episodes. So perhaps that’s why everybody checks, thinking Galfond has hit the Ace. Anyway, on the river it’s a showdown and Galfond mucks his hand, which is good enough to split the pot with Eli .

Later on in the episode (30′, you can watch it here ) Eli makes a good play against Sammy Farha. Eli raises preflop with 88 because the loose Farha and Jamie Gold are messing around again. However, they both call and Sammy flops the best hand with his crappy Q7. He bets the hand on the turn and Eli calls, partly because he picked up a flushdraw. But the river misses and Sammy makes a last good value bet. But Eli’s reading Sammy perfectly, knowing Sammy would talk a lot more when he was bluffing. Good play.

Aight, time for a little movie about my great hero: Eli Elezra. I just watched episode 7 of season 4 of High Stakes Poker and I saw a great call there from Eli, resulting in a $271 000  pot. Watch the following movie, the particular hand starts at about 3′:

Now Eli puts in a reraise preflop with his Aces but gets three callers anyway, no wonder with Sammy Farha and wannabe-Sammy Farha Jamie Gold at the table. Now the flop comes relatively unharmful, but HOWEVER: first Sammy moves in with bottom pair and a gutshot and subsequently ‘Silent Mike’  Baxter  goes all-in with two overcards and a gutshot. Normally this isn’t an instant call with Aces, but Eli observed correctly that those guys are messin’ around and that Mike doesn’t necessarily has a hand. Justice on both turns and rivers!