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.

Last time I showed you the results of Phil Hellmuth and Eli Elezra, today it’s Daniel Negreanu’s and Antonio Esfandiari’s turn. Well, especially Daniel’s turn .

That’s because Antonio only cashed one time, while Daniel made it EIGHT times to the money! But hey, the one cash-out the Magician made was in a very special tournament, finishing 24th (in a field of 854) in Event 52: Triple Chance NLHE (3k), cashing $14.967. What does triple chance mean? It means you get three stacks from each 3000 chips. You can play with those 9000 chips alltogether from the start or start with one and use the other two as rebuys.

So Daniel cashed eight times, and there were some serious ones among them. Daniel had a GREAT run this year, resulting in a total prize money of $331.860! Daniel cashed playing a wide arrange of games:

- Event 6 (World Championship 7 Card Stud, 10k buy-in): 10/142

-Event 10 (PL HE/O, 2,5k): 43/453

-Event 14 (LHE (6-handed), 2,5k): 2/367

-Event 18 (World Championship PLO H/L 8 or better, 10k): 4/179 (Daniel Alaei won this event, cashing $445.898, Annie Duke finished 8th)

-Event 38 (LHE, 2k): 26/446

-Event 47 (Mixed Hold’em (L/NL), 2,5k): 37/527

-Event 53 (7 card stud H/L 8-or-better, 1,5k): 47/467 (Chad Brown finished 4th in this event, cashing $44.589)

-Event 55 (2-7 Triple Draw Lowball (Limit), 2,5k): 16/258

Look here for a definition of 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball. Looking forward to the results of the pros in the Main Event!

The last hands of the biggest poker tournament of the world, the World Series of Poker, still have to be played in November, during the final table of the Main Event. But all the other events are behind us now, good moment for a round-up of the results of my four favorite players. Starting today with Phil Hellmuth and Eli Elezra.

First of all, Phil didn’t manage to win his 12th bracelet and that will be a great dissapointment to him. However he cashed five times this year, four times playing Hold’em, resulting in $62.181 prize-money. The events where Phil finished in the money:

-Event 11 (NLHE, 2k buy-in): 29/1646

-Event 34 (NLHE, 1,5k): 113/2095 (Roland De Wolfe finished 5th in this event, cashing $112.957)

-Event 38 (LHE, 2k): 17/446

-Event 48 (PLO H/L Split 8 or Better, 1,5k): 14/762 (Brandon Cantu won this event, cashing $228.867)

-Event 56 (NLHE 6-handed, 5k): 24/928

However, Phil biggest victory might be his entrance at the World Series. After arriving in a sports car (2007) and accompanied by an army (2008), he made his entrance this year as a Roman Emperor. Great TV .

What about Eli Elezra. This guy is best known for his cash game appearances, but he also cashed three times during the WSOP this year, playing three unusual types of poker. He cashed $18.664 total in the following events:

- Event 3 (PLO H/L Split-8 or Better, 1,5k): 20/918 (Freddy Deeb finished 8th in this event, cashing $27.028)

-Event 30 (PLO, 2,5k): 33/436 (Ross Boatman (4), Theo Jorgensen (8) and John Juanda (9) were all at the final table in this event)

-Event 47 (Mixed HE (L/NL), 2,5k): 46/527 (Barry Greenstein finished 5th in this event, cashing $57.671)

Next time we’ll look at the results of Antonio Esfandiari and Daniel Negreanu.