Setup Poker Hand of the Week
This week we analyze the biggest bluff with 72o from the first epiosde of the brand-new Poker After Dark Season by Scott Ball vs. Alex Ding.
The game in question is $100/$200 No-Limit Hold’em with a $200 Big Blind Ante and a $400 straddle with a minimum buy-in of $40,000.
Scott Ball and Alex Ding are two amateurs with a passion for poker, who also have some history from high stakes cash games across the USA.
Both players are fairly deep with the effective stack sizes being 175 big blinds and Scott Ball has Alex Ding covered. Important to note is that they are playing the 72 game, which gives a player who wins a hand with 72 $1,000 from each opponent extra.
Poker Hand of the Week Action
Preflop Action:
Alex straddles to $400 and Scott Ball re-straddles to $800. Ding completes from the straddle with K♦5♦, while Ball picks up 7♥2♠. As they are playing the 72 game and Scott has position on Alex, he decides to go for the bounty and raises it up to $2,500, Ding calls. Pot size: $5,500
Flop:
The flop K♥2♥2♠ clearly favours the preflop raiser as he has much more kings in his range and is therefore perfectly suited for a continuation bet. ThatÄs what Daniel does by betting $2,000 into $8,361.66. However, Doug has picked up a flush draw and can’t fold to a single bet. Pot size: $12,361.66
Turn:
The A♣ on the turn is another great card for the preflop aggressor as it hits his 3-betting range hard. DNegs now sizes up by betting 3/4 pot.
Doug doesn’t gets a great price here, but still has the flush draw and beats all bluffs and draws with Queen-high, so he decides to stick around Pot Size: $30,907,90
River:
The 4♥ on the river is a very interesting card as Doug hits his flush, However, Daniel Negreanu is going for the overbet shove by betting 2.5x pot.
It is a big overbet, but Heads-Up you can’t fold a Queen-high flush and Doug calls pretty quickly, while get shown J4s by Negreanu! Pot size: $146.849
Poker Hand of the Week Analysis
Daniel Negreanu got a lot of criticism especially from online players for this hand, who are claiming it was a massive punt. Let’s take a close look.
Preflop the button raise from Doug with Q6s is absolutely standard. The occasional 3-bet with J4s oop as a resteal is fine, although I would have preferred a call here.
I like Daniel’s small cbet on the K-2-2 flop as it hits his range very hard as he has all the kings. In addition, the flop is pretty dry, so a small cbet wins you the pot in most cases and is therefore a very profitable play. Unfortunately for DNegs, Doug has flopped a flush draw though, that’s why he sticks around.
The Ace on the turn is where things are getting interesting as DNegs fires a big second barrel by betting 75% pot. And I think this is the biggest mistake as Negreanu should be checking here after getting called on the flop. As the small blind/Doug calls the flop with a lot of Ax, such as A5s, A4s, A9, A8, which float the flop.
Moreover, he won’t get a flush draw to fold and now has created a huge pot, while Polk only has 1.3 x pot left.
The overbet shove on the river is fine, as Daniel Negreanu wants to tell a credible story of a big hand such as Pocket Kings or AK. Nevertheless, he could have just checked as he made a pair and hoped to see a cheap showdown and win against the occasional Queen-high or JT.
Doug has made his hand and a Queen-high flush is way too strong to fold heads-up resulting in a snap call.
To conclude, Daniel Negreanu should have checked the turn as it wasn’t a favourable card for a second barrel and he would have controlled the size of the pot. By not doing so he lost one of the biggest pots of the entire Heads-Up Match so far.
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