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.