Antonio Esfandiari Blog - Biggest cash game on television

Recently I played a hand on High Stakes Poker that, more than any other hand for me illustrates the difference between big and small stack poker. It makes a world of a difference when you have an abundant amount of chips in front of you and so does your opponent. You never want to risk your entire stack, especially in a cash game, unless you pretty much have the nuts. A very interesting hand recently came up on High Stakes Poker that I would like to discuss.

The game had a 500k buy in; yes, FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS just to sit down, no limit holdem. That’s a lot of cheese so of course so I will be playing very carefully. I had aces in the one hole and decided to limp. There was a lot of raising going on and I wanted to put in the reraise and just get it over with before the flop, but ultimately no one did raise. I hate aces in a multi-way pot especially when everyone is super deep. More big pots are lost with Aces in my opinion than any other hand. A few limpers, no raise, flop comes A 4 8, all spades. Berry Greenstein, a very good player whose game I respect tremendously, leads right out. For him to lead out into multiple players tells me he, for sure, has a hand. There is no way in the world he is bluffing. He might be betting with the king of spades, but that is highly unlikely. It was just obvious he had something. I cannot raise here because there are players behind me and I certainly wouldn’t want to get reraised and possibly have to throw my hand away, so I call. Everyone folds (which I don’t mind btw). The turn, I think, was a red queen. I haven’t seen the show yet so I am going off of memory, though the card was insignificant. He leads again. Here is where it gets interesting. He led on the flop, I called and now he is leading right out into me again. Now I am 100% sure he has a hand. He either has a flush, two pair or a smaller set. That’s it. He can’t have anything else. If he has a flush then I certainly don’t want to raise. If he has 2 pair, raising is not the best move either because he will more than likely realize that his hand is no good and muck. Remember Barry is a wizard. He would know his hand was no good here. The only thing that I would hope for would be for him to have a smaller set and even then if I do raise and he calls, if and when the board doesn’t pair, he will probably not pay off the river anyway. So with all that said I think calling was, in fact, the best option. The river brought a red king. He led again. At this point I didn’t think he had the 2 pair. If he had a 2 pair it would be any variation of the flop 2 pair…I didn’t think he had this hand because I was early position limper here I could easily have had the A Q or the A K. It was either a set or the flush and I thought the flush was way more likely than the set, although his bet on the river was more on the weak side I still saw no benefit in raising here. If I raise the river for sure 100 % he mucks. So with all those factors considered I think I played the hand correctly. If I thought there was any chance of a call on the river a value raise would have been correct and against your average player I might have done so, but against a wizard I see no value. I made the call and a crying one at that (I really did put him on the flush) and he showed me the 8 -4 for a two pair.

Maybe one day I will learn this game.

Antonio

3 responses to Antonio Esfandiari Blog - Biggest cash game on television

Zack
Sunday, March 09, 2008

Antonio. Well played. I love limping in with aces UTG. I can't even count how many times this play throws weak players off. Anyways, what I really wanted to say is your book you wrote is by far the best poker book I've ever read. Other books don't even deserve to be on the same shelf as yours. It's like they were all written by the same author. I just read Phil Gordon little green book and it almost put me to sleep. I had to struggle just to get through it. Yours I couldn't put down. I don't know what you do differently exactly, but it's the only one of it's kind. All others seem the same, as yours no one can duplicate. Have you written anything else? By the way, your book was the key component in making me a winning player both online and live. (your book was so good I wouldn't even let my friends borrow it because i didn't want them accessing that information, hahaha)

Ryan
Monday, February 25, 2008

i'm sure you know more about how greenstien plays that i do. However, my amateur read is this: i think i would have to be suspicious of the 2 pair. Especially after he limped. After the flop he has to lead the betting from an early position with 2 pair or he'll have a really tough time figuring out where he's at in the hand. Also, if he thinks he has the best hand he needs value against anyone drawing with a high spade. He actually may be less likely to lead out from early position if he has the flush, hoping to keep some more people in the pot. Especially if he has the king of spades. After 4th street he would still have to bet into you again for similar reasons to the first bet. What if he did put you on AK? He has to bet into you especially if the K is a spade. AQ is a worry after the turn but not enough to check. I guess I'm unclear why you convinced yourself he had a flush. To me, nothing really screams flush about the way the hand played. He might even play AK the same way. In terms of extracting more money from him it would have been tough to know he didn't have the flush. The only real reason to raise is if you think you think you should bluff him off a weak flush. Especially if a fourth spade had come up.

Mark
Wednesday, November 07, 2007

I think after you called the flop theres not other way to play the hand. A raise on the flop could be the best play, but its definitely close.

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