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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.