Published April 19, 2010There were only four tourneys to go and I’m not running that good in my series of ‘deepstack’ tournaments. So from that point of view, I was happy to at least cash in tourney 15 ($2+.2), but my prize had to be much bigger, if it wasn’t for the joking PokerStars dealer. I finished 12th, winning $4.41 .
After all, I played a véry solid tournament. I won my first big pot with A8 suited, which I played reasonably good I think:
I really like these kinda hands so I decide to let my opponents pay some limper’s tax. They do and I hit the flop very well with the nut flushdraw and a gutshot straightdraw. But I don’t bet the flop because you can easily be reraised on such mediocre boards against some original limpers. My free card gives me the nuts and when laguna 856 reraises the 60 bet, I suspect him of also holding a flush and decide to keep slowplaying my hand. Board pairs, but I’m not really scared of this and place a value bet, not too big because he might suspect me of slowplaying JJ: excellent result. Then I missed some flops completely with premiums like TT and AK before the next important hand was played:
I flop a set in a limper’s pot and I bet because at least one player must have picked something up on this board. My only caller leads out on the river (which happens to be a great blocking bet) and I only call here for two reasons. First one is that my opponent can easily have TQ in this hand and I don’t want to make a very big pot against the other big stack of the table. Secundo, if he was as weak as he happened to be, he wouldn’t have called a bigger bet anyway.
In the period that followed I even became chipleader, but I lost a big pot with JJ which brought me at fifth place during the period towards the bubble. It took a VERY long time before the bubbleboy was eliminated and I’d become a shortstack. However, if everything would have gone normal, I would have doubled up in this hand:
Instead, I got eliminated…
Published June 27, 2009That’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.
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