blonde poker forum

I've just read about Dave's exit on the Blonde Home Page. 

http://www.blondepoker.com/index.php?q=node/3035


Now i am not criticising play here at all, I happen to think Dave is an excellent player.  I am just trying to start a debate.  Although Dave has made a great read and a ballsy (correct, once the cards are flipped) call.  I want to know, given the situation (blinds, chip stacks, the tourney)......Who else calls here? I personally would fold up quicker than a cheap deck chair in a stiff breeze.

thoughts........................

what a call! one I could never have made.....


hard luck DC.

 A great read and a great call by Dave, very unlucky,......but like Junior and Tighty I would have folded.

 I wouldn't know where I was with such a massive overbet , and given the tourney situation , I would let him have it......but hey, thats why I might scrape in the money, and Dave might win it !!

I would also have folded and will be interested to hear DC's thinking for going all in at this stage when he in most cases at best he will be a 60% favourite.

Does DC also say in his piece though that he could see that his opponent appeared uneasy while he was contemplating his actions.

Yes, its easy for us to say that we would fold in this situation - and in most cases i would too but then if i see something that would change my opinion for that specific situation then i may not always take my usual course of action.

As DC was the only one who saw how Max was acting and therefore it's a lot harder for anyone else to come to the same conclusion as we dont have all the facts to hand.

True - I guess he is prepared to take this gamble in order to position himself to win the tourney.  I witnessed a similar play from Julian Thew last year in Amsterdam - we were approaching the money and he raised from the button and the big blind went all in and had Julian covered.  Julian did not think very long and called with KJ which beat the BB's Q4.  An amazing play which sent the BB into a bit of a fit, lol.  I can still hear the words "KJ, KJ......how can you call with KJ?"

Exactly, they had already made the money so DC knew he was going to show a profit for the tournament regardless but he then wanted to put himself in a position to make the Final Table and get as close to the bracelet as possible.

1 Final Table will probably make more profit that 10 "also ran" cashes and even more importantly 1 bracelet means countless additional "bonus" opportunities away from the green felt tables!!

As our friend Mr. Wilson always makes the point of mentioning "PLAY TO WIN BABY!!"

If you think your opponent is "at it" then have the courage of your convictions to follow your instincts :)

The key to this hand is that he only made up the SB... so was probably hoping that Max would make some kind of move if he had been playing very aggressively.

Conventional play with A9 from the SB would be to raise the BB. So when Max moved all in after dave showed "weakness" by limping, it would be very tempting to call.

Making calls like that is what can make you a WSOP bracelet holder.  I can't say I'd have called with that but then it's easy to say sitting here. 

Good call and a little unfortunate to lose out there.

Even if the guy has 2 live rags DC is a 2/1 favourite at most (I think).  If he has a small PP he is a slight dog but if his opponent has called with a small PP he may very well be showing weakness hence DC's read.  The fact that his opponent was dominated was a bonus but it would be an amazing read to put him on A rag.  This is normally where the donkey in me comes out and I make a F**K YOU call (and usually regret it afterwards).

I guess it boils down to whether you can put your opponent on an unpaired rag hand and if 2/1 is good enough to call for all of your chips.  Would a coinflip be enough to call in this spot ?

Given that DC had around 20BB left I would be interested to know what hands anyone else would call with in this spot.  How low would your stack have to be to make it a call ?  How high for a fold ?

To all the people who said pass, would you pass that online or down the notts gala (for example). In my regular game, i would probably call in a flash but at the WSOP i would probably talk myself out of calling (i.e. got enough chips, don't need to make this call etc.)

i think the main drive behind the call is the perception of your opponents unease at the call. I saw the milkybarkid do it in monte carlo against dustin derksen. It's why the vast majority of us will never be big winners, you need to trust yourself sometimes and make an instinct call.

Wow. Hi Guys.
I didn't realise how much interest this had stirred up.

Firstly, I think A9 v A4 is more than a 60% favourite but that's sort of irrelevant.

The easy bit. We had just made the money. I would not have made this call half an hour earlier just outside the money and I probably would not have made it at a later stage where the money jumps were of greater value.

There was a little bit of history from about an hour earlier when Max had doubled me up trying to bully me on the flop. I check called him on the flop and turn for all my chips with second pair and he didnt like it. He has a big ego and he had a big stack, I was kindov expecting him to 'try and intimidate me' in some way or other. I may not have called most other opponents.

As soon as I started talking to him and counting his chips I was pretty sure he was very uneasy with the situation. He realised that I had limped with some sort of hand and I could tell he wasn't happy.
I went through the possible hands he could have like so....
AK, AQ, AJ and all major pairs....he will probably make an average raise of say 4k giving me opportunity to hang myself by re-raising up to 20k
small pairs....he may well like to see a flop and try and make a set and get paid with me dead...although I was unsure about this
I came to the conclusion that the only hands he could have that I need worry about were A10 and possible AJ, 99
I really fancied him for being unhappy with the situation...and he generally talks too much during a hand... I was sure he didn't like me thinking about a call and he didn't like me counting out 23k in chips. I think he may have though I had only 15 or so.

The other train of thought was...
23k is just below the average which was approx 30k at the time, not in trouble but not comfortable...just one coin flip AK v QQ away from an exit or somethings imlar
However 48k in chips would have put me right up in about 10th to 15th spot, made me chip leader at my table ...... and given me a real shot at $850,000
Yes that's $850,000.... less than 150 players left where i was chip leader at my table with an opportunity to win $850,000 !!!!

I could have waited for later opportunities, yes. But who knows maybe the later opportunities would not have come along. They usually don't.
I am pretty sure I would make this decison every time and have no regrets.


 :)up

 well id say its a jolly good call old chap.

 its a call that seperates a player of daves class from most of us mere mortals.

 unlucky dave, im sure if you carry on to play the way you are and with reads like that you could do very well in other tourneys of the wsop. good luck.

  ;goodluck;

ditto, good luck for the rest of the wsop.  I see from your P&L account that the old omaha cash games are going well :D

I am not so sure about this call. I read before in a similar spot where Dave called all in pre flop in the Vic with KJ, i believe they were short handed and it was him and the other big stack with 2 short stacks clinging on. I don't really understand why in a field like that (pretty weak i imagine) you would want to call off 20bb's pre flop with A9! Re-raise against a button raise sure, but call all in, not for me!

All i know is next time i am playing Dave and we are blind vs blind i am just going to ship it in with a big hand, sigh a bit, then recieve the call :D

Ul still though DC, gl in the next comps!

you want to call because you have betrayed your hand strength.. you want to call here because its Max Pescatori doing this.. and he needs very little reason to get his stack in the middle. Put yourself in Max spot, a good player has limped your BB, how often is he doing this with a hand that can call an all-in? estimate a percentage. If its around 20% then Max is correct to pretty much stack off with any two cards here... as he picks up the pot 80% of the time, and has reasonable equity the other 20% of the time.

A9 is going to have about 60% equity in this spot vs Max' range, yet people are focusing too much on the fact that he got X blinds in with a weakish ace. In poker, your hand strength is always relative to that of your opponents.. and Daves hand has about as much equity here as QQ does facing a UTG raise from someone who hasn't played a hand in two hours, yet not many people would even consider throwing QQ away, rather.. they would walk into KK and say "well, thats poker, what can I do"

The interesting thing for me in this hand isn't whether to call or not. I think if you are limping into an aggressive players BB with a hand like A9, you are doing it to induce the BB to try and take it away, so the call is getting close to automatic.. the interesting thing is whether to limp or not in the first place

Flushy states thus:


I think thats pretty dismissive, its into the money, and its a reasonably high buyin tourney.. .what kind of edge do you think you have over the table to be throwing away spots where you are getting laid odds against when you are a strongish odds on fav against a good players range? One thing that is always over-estimated by players is their edge over other people, and if you think your edge is bigger then 60% against the field when you have 20bb's.. you are most likely wrong. Lets not forget the great spot he is in if he calls and wins, he cripples a dangerous player, gets a commanding chip stack, and has liscense to accumulate. The benefits of calling and winning here are immense.

I agree with you that most people over estimate which edges they should fold. I have posted many times that a good players edge is made up, partly, in knowing when to make these close gambles.

However, i still feel this hand is not right, the edge in a comp like this for a player who adapts is HUGE! The strucutre here is very similar to the afternoon comps on tribeca, your average stack is about the same on this blind level and i have played this situation 100 times before. I know from experience that it becomes very easy to pick up steals, people start panicking trying to nick blinds and you can re-steal. That is where the good players edge is in a comp like this.

As for Daves limping range, i would say into an aggresive player it would be quite tight. He is more often than not doing it with a big hand to induce a play.

I limped expecting a pot size raise...which I would have moved over the top of....maybe Max foresaw this, and that was why he moved all-in.

errrr, and since when has A9 v A4 been only a 60% fav ? i need to look these up again...it's been 20 years or so  ;tk;

A 9 v A 4  Off suit

A9 wins 59.69% of the time

That is true, however the A 4 only wins 24% of the time, the rest its a tie.

Thats what i fancied.

the 60% is in reference to the range of hands you would expect him to have in this spot, not specifically A9's equity vs A4

DC is limping to induce a move from an aggressive bully type player whose average hand will be J3. The decison to call was already made when DC limped. 60 : 40 is better than AK v 22 so why not take your chances?

 i feel 2 to 1 odds is good enough to commit all your chips pre flop, maybe not 3 to 2 but if he had a solid read then why not?

Its the size of the move that puts me off, i dont know how its 60-40 he can be behind.

Some decent arguements for the calla nd the pass on this thread, for me I have chnaged my mind each time I have read a different post.  Seems to be Daves read was spot on and he just got unlucky, however I think in this situation I am making a raise pre-flop, and if the fella comes over the top then I am getting away from it.  I like Dave's rational behind it all though and Monkey has the same train of thought, some times you have to stick the lot in and believe that your read on your oppo was spot on.  It was clear that when Dave started counting out the chips he can see Max is uneasy and doesn'tw ant the call, I think thought that Dave has justified his play by the reaction he got from Max.

Unlucky Dave, and Dave I got £25 on you final tabling in the big ine so you better do it!  :D

I say it's a brilliant call...and it's a call way out of my league. IOW, I completely understand why Dave made it and I completely agree with his reasoning but I would probably not be good enough to make it.

That's the difference between amateurs, good amateurs and pro's..(and if you are not unlucky enough to get sunk by a straight on the river...bracelet winners).

I hope that one day I'll be good enough to call that raise....especially at a WSOP :)