You might still have some friends who don’t really get what’s so interesting about poker. Or what poker really differentiates from all other forms of gambling. Those guys really have to watch the greatest players of this game some time. Just like you watch old tapes from Diego Maradona when you want to see some excellent soccer tricks, you watch memorable moments from Phil Ivey when you want to see some excellent texas holdem strategy.

I selected such an historical moment for you when I was watching some more poker of the Monte Carlo Millions. Ivey goes to the flop with Q8 of hearts against Paul Jackson’s 65 off. Let’s watch what happens on the flop:

What you see after the flop, is poker’s best player doing his job. Ivey gets reraised by Jackson TWO times, you got to give the amateur credit for this moves. But in the end, nobody fools around with the greatest player of all time. Ivey has the best nothing, and he plays it like the best nothing. Absolutely awesome. Now I’m gonna join my Aussie friends on the online tables again, trying to make some profit with the Ivey lessons on online poker Australia.

I saw another wonderful poker moment the other day. I don’t write a lot about Tony G (Guoga), because he never appears in High Stakes Poker for example. But during the Monte Carlo Millions this Lithuanian guy gave us a brilliant moment when he played the 97 suited against Fuat Can from Sweden, although T8 is known to be his favorite hand.

Tony goes to the flop against Fuat’s Kings and he hits toppair with his seven. Can leads out on the flop with his overpair and look what happens next:

The best part of this movie is obviously when Tony plays his hand like he has a set. Now how can Fuat make such a mistake by calling that hand with only Kings? Now you can think that Tony misbehaves a little bit after the hand is played, but I think he teaches Fuat a wonderful lesson there, which he can use in his later poker games. Just never overplay an overpair when your opponent could have flopped a set.

This is often performed by people who are bluffing. This way they hope their opponents will get scary and fold the winning hand. However, sometimes people just act strong when they actually HOLD the best hand. Those are the moments you’ll have to figure that this player is able to fool around (with a lot of chips) or that he just plays ABC poker and he can’t hide his strentgh. This happened in the episode of the Main Event (coming closer to the final table over here) I saw yesterday.

It’s a hand between Steve Begleiter and Eric Buchman on the feature table. It’s the last hand on this movie:

So Begleiter opens with a raise with his pocket Queens, and Buchman feels like raising with AJ off. Now concentrate on everything Begleiter does after it’s his turn again. The look, the time he takes, the moves with his hands and the strong voice with which he announces his reraise: this guy has a real hand and Buchman realizes this and folds. Steve Begleiter is still an amateur, he has to learn to hide the strength of his hand according to my opinion. What do you think?

I don’t have that many time anymore to watch some poker, so I’m still in the middle of the WSOP Main Event 2009^^. Now I’ve already heard that Ivey is not going to win the big one, but also he’ll reach the final table. You must live in a cave when you missed that. But when I saw this hand yesterday I was stunned:

So Ivey raises with pocket eights and my favorite Jeff Schulman gets out of the way. Jordan Smith raises Phil with A9 off. Smith doesn’t catch anything on flop and turn but Ivey is surprisingly cautious by checking it towards the river. Smith spikes an ace but Ivey makes a small flush. It’s checked again by Smith so Ivey should know his flush is best here. But Phil didn’t even realize he HAD this flush because he mucks the winning hand after a showdown!! Even the best pros in the world make mistakes now and then, it seems… Do you want to make advantage of Phil Ivey’s mistakes and to save
money through Full Tilt rakeback? As Phil is part of the Full Tilt Poker Team you will need to sign up at this poker room to be able to face him as your opponent.

Have I told you already I love the Main Event? Now I don’t have that much time to watch it at the moment (ánd write a post about it), but I saw the second episode just a couple of minutes ago. And I saw a phenom I simply múst show you.

What makes the Main Event so big? Everybody can win? No, that’s not really true. Sure, everybody can get lucky, but some people are so bad at this game which makes that there’s absolutely no chance for them of winning the whole thing. Some people like John Dodge for example. I mean, what’s the problem of some of these amateurs? OK, you’re playing against some pros in the field (Mike Matusow in this example) and they probably play better than you, but WHY TELL THEM YOUR HAND? Just watch, it begins right from the start:

So Dodge hits Aces up, gives Mike the worst speech in the entire history of poker and then throws in 10k as a really tough guy. How confident can somebody act? I love the Main Event.

Wow I started watching the Main Event ‘09 yesterday and it is indeed THE GREATEST TOURNAMENT OF THE WORLD! I was very happy to see that Eli Elezra, one of my big heros, was immediately at the first feature table. But it happened to be another player who ‘made’ the first episode.

The always pollied Alan Cunningham was also on this table but all my attention went to the dutch player Lex Veldhuis. Let’s warm you guys up with a first fragment (starts around 3′30″):

Now he first makes a modest bluff with 97 against the master himself, but this is still fooling around in comparisation with what follows. With a value-bet bluff with King high he gets Simon Muenz off a hand for the first time. The episode continues here, where Lex (boyfriend of poker pro Evelyn Ng) continues to push around the table by overbetting his rivered straight flush against Can Hua. Even Elezra can’t watch it anymore after Veldhuis bluffs Muenz AGAIN for a big pot and shows him for the second time. And it goes on and on, with Veldhuis kicking out this Muenz AND Allan Cunningham later on. I love the Main Event so much.

I think you’re right when you state that Joe Hachem’s accent is quite irritating. But I also think Hachem is one of the best Main Event winners from the past ten years. If you’re still not convinced on this point, have a look at the following fragment (hand is played after 10 minutes):

No I think this is a very strong play from Hachem, if you consider the extreme tight image of ‘the Nitty Professor’, Howard Lederer. First of all I like his play preflop, just calling with Jacks, a move I also often make. The same action follows on the flop, with Hachem just calling Lederer’s bet on an all spade board. The play from Lederer is horrible on the flop: he checks first and follows that up with an obvious feelerraise. Hachem notices this and has the guts to make a nice reraise here, making Howard throw away his flush. I think Lederer won’t appear in any season of HSP anymore.

Wow, I just saw a huge three way pot on Poker After Dark, on the same table as last time. Before you look at the fragment, remember to watch at the terrible body language from the amateur Dee Tiller. He really has no clue between those pros, who are all kinda laughing with this guy. He doesn’t even know what’s going on when they have to split a pot. Let’s watch, starting around 2′15″:

Eli had a huge winning streak last time, but on this episode he experiences the opposite: he loses almost every pot he’s involved in. But of course he’s not going anywhere in this pot with this typical Eli-hand: low suited connectors. Eli flops the absolute nuts and makes a good check behind Kaplan, because he knows exactly that Tiller made a continuation bet in EACH pot he raised preflop. But it’s Gabe Kaplan who check-raises and Eli + Dee both call. When the turn comes the ten of hearts, everybody knows all the money goes in with Dee and Gabe having the nuts and Eli adding a flush draw to his straight. It’s kinda typical for a losing streak that Eli insta calls here, maybe he knows he’s beat but he just doesn’t wanna believe it. And there’s the flush draw of course. G-r-e-a-t pot.

Last time I showed you one of the best single plays I’d ever seen on television. This time I ‘ve one of the greatest ‘on a roll’ sessions from a single player who’s sitting down and playing with the pros, from Eli Elezra on Poker After Dark.

Eli is ruling the table for about half an hour long in this show, starting after about five minutes in the fragment below, where he busts Lederer’s toppair by spiking a set of fours on the turn. Btw, it’s funny to see how the players (and Elezra and Brunson in specific) are trying to start a round of live straddles each time and Howard Lederer being the only one who constantly resists

After that hand , Eli wins about 80% of the following hands, which you can see in the fragment right here, where the episode continues. What Eli does very well is not showing his big hands (because he’s hitting reasonably good), but showing his bluff with the 86 of diamonds for example. The consternation on the face of Howard Lederer is priceless

I already showed you a good play from Tom ‘Durrrr’ Dwan on Poker After Dark, but after seeing the first episodes of season 5 of High Stakes Poker, I completely understand the fuzz that arised around his person the last couple of months in poker world.

Now this play on episode two is really one of the GREATEST plays I’ve ever seen. Dwan is really in the zone and is pushing the table around like he already plays for ten years with this guys. You obviously see experienced guys like Doyle Brunson, Barry Greenstein and even Daniel Negreanu feeling uncomfortable with the presence of Dwan. A new hand starts (at 2′50″ in the video below) and the very tight playing Greenstein makes a standard early position raise with AA. Because the players to the left of Barry call the pots odds grow and it becomes a family pot:

The raise on the flop from Dwan looks kinda stupid at that point, but after he only gets called by Eastgate and Greenstein, Dwan knows he can take this pot with an enormous bullet on the turn. That’s exactly what he does and with this great and courageous bet he takes this pot in a magnificent way. Notice the relief on Dwan’s face after Eastgate’s fold, as he knows this guy had the best hand, just like he says after the hand. This is poker on another level.