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Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Poker After Dark Cash Game - Spoiler Alert

Since my blog was decreed to be the 21st best poker blog of 2009, and considering that I haven't written about poker in about 9 months, I figured I could finally get something blogworthy out of the first episode of this week's Poker After Dark Cash Game.

For those of you who don't know, Poker After Dark is a generally awful show that's on at 2am on NBC. It's usually a tournament format where 6 players sit down with twenty thousand in chips and play a winner take all tourney. To make it even more irritating for serious poker players, they use "cash and chips" - where each player's $20k includes some $5k bundles of $100 bills... Yes - in a tournament. Completely stupid.

HOWEVER, every once in a while they put on a real live cash game, and this is one of those weeks: Tom "Durrr" Dwan, Kenny Tran, Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Hellmuth and Bob Safai (an amateur high stakes player out of California, I believe) sat down to play $200-$400 no limit hold'em, with $100 antes. Each player bought in for $100k, with Durrr buying $200k.

First off, let's talk about the table talk. Durrr and Antonio make a wager on how Phil Hellmuth will answer the following question, posed to him by Antonio: "Do truly belive that you are the best player at this game in this lineup?" Phil, of course, says "Yes," and Durrr has to pay off Antonio an odd lot of $100.

Of course, this prompts Phil to defend himself, reminding Antonio that Antonio had offered to crossbook Phil's action on High Stakes Poker when Phil won $300k. "I tried, but you didn't take the action," Antonio replies, then adds, "I told you anytime you want to play heads up we can play for $100k and the winner shoots the loser with a taser gun." This made me laugh out loud - a truly impossible to respond to jibe from The Magician. You can see it at around 3:45 in the video below:



I mean seriously - what can you say when you claim you're the best NLHE player in the world, and someone offers to play you heads up for a hundred dimes, with the added stipulation that the winner slams the loser with a TASER gun!!!! Kudos, Antonio - Rocks'n'Rings baby.

In the hand during all this table talk, Durrr ends up paying off a sizable river bet from Laak after Laak flops the nuts with 8-5 after calling a preflop raise from Durrr's JdTd, which made top pair on the turn.

But there was actually MORE interesting poker! In the above video around the 6:08 mark, a triple cooler ensues, where Esfandiari raises in late position with T8, Safai calls in the SB with 99, and Durrr calls in the BB with QT. When the flop comes T-9-T rainbow, all announcer Ali Nejad can say is "UH OH." Trips, trips, full house.

Safai checks, Durrr bets $3800, Antonio calls, and Safai bumps it to $12k. Durrr calls, and Antonio calls, perhaps reluctantly. The turn is a jack, and now Safai fires $30k. Durrr calls again, having picked up an open ended straight draw, and Antonio (who also picked up an OESD) mucks, realizing he can't be good.

When the river bricks off with the 6c, Safai jams all-in for $75k, and Durrr finally eventually mucks, realizing that it's likely Antonio also had a ten, and that he can't really beat any likely ten other than T-8 anyway. Interestingly, while Durrr is contemplating a river call, Kenny Tran tells Lee-Ann Tweeden that Safai has a set of nines, and that Durrr has QT or KT. Nice read, Kenny.

Durrr exacts revenge a few hands later, where Safai raises to $2k with AQ, and Durrr calls in position with 8c6c.



The flop comes 5c 3c Qh, and Safai bets $5k, which Durrr just calls. On the turn, the Ts, Safai again fires: $12k, and Durrr smooth calls again. The river is an offsuit deuce, and Safai checks - probably planning to call any bet from Durrr. Durrr, however, spoils Safai's plans by taking a minute, asking Safai how deep he is, and then announcing "I'm all in," for $133K, into the pot of $39k. Safai tanks for a few minutes before mucking - deciding, I'm sure, that he didn't want to call such a massive overbet with just one pair, when Durrr is capable of having anything there, and look like an idiot on TV if he was wrong.

Obviously, Durrr is pretty sick, but he probably puts Safai on a hand like A-Q, KK or AA, and doesn't expect Safai to call here. Durrr has played his hand like he has a flush draw, but he can also have two pair, a set, or have rivered a straight here. The key point is that I'm guessing Durrr makes this overbet with big hands too - he has to for it to work.

Set your DVR's to record the rest of this week's Poker After Dark Cash Game action.
-KD

1 comment:

BigShow said...

Nice work. I want to hear about your $2-$4 low-stakes blood game!