And you thought you had to know your hole cards

Okay, this replay that I found on youtube is pretty amazing.  Annette_15 is apparently playing “blind” in this tournament which means that she’s not looking at her hole cards.  Watch her unknowingly fold hands like pocket kings or suited ace six, and raise the action with seven four off suit and bet the flop.  Surprisingly, she does quite well without even knowing which cards she has!

Annette_15 recently took down a Pokerstars Sunday Hundred grand tournament. I watched the replay, and she ran pretty good. I recall that she had pocket AA/KK/and QQ within the first sixty hands. She mostly pushed pocket pairs which held every single time and payed off nearly every time too for a good double up. Other than that she stole a few blinds in position without any significant resistance and won nearly every horse race with high aces vs. smaller stacks pushing with ace rags. Later on, she caught a few crazy suckouts for her tournament life including JK (pair of jacks on flop) vs pocket KK with a jack on river after calling all in on flop. She also won a three way horse race for her tournament life with bottom pocket pair vs two over pocket pairs (all in preflop and flopped a set). Well, you can’t fault her for being lucky, so all the best to her. Maybe we’ll see her on a live table in the near future.

Phil Ivey Loses $534 000 at Full Tilt Poker

Phil Ivey had losing two mosters Omaha pots against Finnish online supernova Ilari Ziigmund Sahamies. Ivey and Sahamies were playing heads-up Pot Limit Omaha at the highest possible level at Full Tilt Poker, $500/$1,000.

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Laak vs. Matusow – Hand to Mouth – Brightcove

Phil “Unabomber” Laak dissects a classic hand from High Stakes Poker Season 3 where he has position on Mike “The Mouth” Matusow. What forces Phil to push-out and show strength?

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Gus Hansen wins $1.4 at Full Tilt Poker.

Gus Hansen is currently on a sick roll. In a 42-hour period starting 2007-11-12 Gus managed to win over $1.4 million, playing $200/$400 PL Omaha on Full Tilt Poker.

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Gus Hansen–amazing luck

Wow, watch Gus Hansen play suited 4/5 vs pocket 8s.  Gus Hansen shows you how to bluff from a pair of fours on the flop to a set on the turn.  I wish that I could do this

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Gus Hansen Poker Strategy, Sit and go

Here’s Gus Hanen’s poker strategy on youtube for sit and go:

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Mike Matusow online replay

Mike Matusow moves all in after flop, out of position on a nut flush draw. Watch to see what he runs into. As an added bonus, along with the replay, you also get some interesting commentary.

Though the commentary is fairly critical of Mike’s play, I’ve seen people make this play all day long during on-line poker tournaments and though he was unlucky, it’s not as bad as the commentator suggests. Often on 5-6 bb raises, both players miss the flop and whoever bets first takes it down.

Mike: AdQd
other player: 44

Mike’s on the BB, and the other player

Flop: 7d4c4d

Mike is first to bet which means has it’s pros and cons. Realistically, unless the other player had pocket fours or sevens, mike would still have possibly up to 15 outs. The advantage to betting first is that if the other player missed the flop and doesn’t have a decent pocket pair, then he can’t call if you bet enough.

Unfortunately for Mike, the player made a 5-6x BB raise on pocket 4′s and got an extremely lucky flop. One thing that is clear is that mike was in a pot vs. a fairly loose-aggressive player who simply got lucky. Preflop, they had nearly a coin toss either way in terms of who would win. After the flop, poor mike was drawing dead. Regardless of how he played it, it would have been pretty hard to put a loose-aggressive player on flopping quads.

What’s worse, is that when you watch the replay, you see that though Mike didn’t catch his flush, he did catch an Ace on the turn. Realistically, the only hand you could really put the guy on that you would have to worry about is maybe pocket sevens, AK, or maybe AA. Even if Mike had checked the flop, the other player would likely have done the same. Then Mike would have paired his ace and probably made a pretty large bet.

Again, when your in a tournament and you are first to bet after the flop, and you’ve got a nutflush draw as well as a few overcards, if you simply check, then the other player regardless of his hand can make a large enough bet that you can’t rationally make the call in terms of pot odds. After all, it’s far different play to be the one moving all in with the hand that mike had than it is to call someone else who goes all in when you only have a flush draw and a few overcards.

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Mike Matusow vs Mike Sexton

Ouch, here Mike Matusow makes a decent bluff and Mike Sexton makes a ‘sick call’

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Mike Matusow

Mike Matusow at 2004 WSOP vs Greg Raimer
How Mike made the call on this, I am not sure. Mike has mid pair with a bad kicker and Greg has two overcards with a nut flush draw giving him 15 outs.

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Mike Matusow Melt Down

Mike Matusow vs Phil Lark

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