A High Stakes Poker hand: Why I Love This Game

Everyone see this week's "High Stakes Poker"? Just in case...

SPOILER ALERT...

So here's a hand that demonstrates why I and anyone who loves poker loves poker. It comes about 25 minutes into the show if you have it Tivo'd and want to see it for yourself.

The blinds are $400/800.

The twerpily Edward Nortonish but somehow still affable Daniel Negreanu gets 9-10 of spades in early position and raises to $3K (his standard 2.5xBB raise).

Grandfatherly old fart Doyle Brunson calls with Q's (hearts and clubs).

Cultured and refreshingly laid-back David Benyamine calls in the SB with 7-5 of spades.

According to my handy odds calculator (DD Poker, folks. It's the best...and it's free!), Doyle is about a 68% favorite at this point.

The flop: 8 of spades, 3 of spades, 9 of clubs.

According to the on-screen graphic, Negreanu (with top pair and the flush draw) is actually now the favorite over Doyle's over-pair, 45 to 43%. Benyamine is a mere 12%.

Negreanu bets $8,500 - about 3/4 of the pot.

Doyle calls instead of raising, which strikes me as kind of a dicey move with the flush draw on the board. Gabe Kaplan sounds surprised as well. (The "Kotter" nostalgia Kaplan's hokey patter provides is one of the main reasons I watch this show.)

Benyamine calls, surely not suspecting anyone else of being on the flush draw.

The turn...and here's where it REALLY gets good...is the Q of spades.

"Wow, what a card," remarks Kaplan, wildly understating the situation.

All three players now have strong reason to think they have the best hands, but Negreanu is the 78% favorite over Doyle, while Benyamine is drawing dead.

Drawing dead, I tell you. Name another game where a player could think they are winning when in fact they literally have no chance of winning. Not the old-fashioned way, anyhow.

Everyone checks.

Did this make sense for everyone?

On the one hand, Negreanu and Benyamine risk another spade coming out, which would leave them vulnerable to (and thus make them nervous about) anyone with a higher spade than them. On the other, they're successfully hiding their flushes from each other and Doyle.

Doyle is thinking, "If I bet and get check-raised, I have to assume at least one of them has the flush, and fold. If they both fold, then they didn't have the flush, and I probably could have made more money with my top set. If they call, I won't know where I stand. Whereas...If I don't bet, I might have a free chance at hitting a full house, and even if I don't hit it, if a non-spade comes, I'm probably good."

The river: Ace of hearts.

So NOW where are we?

Negreanu and Benyamine are feeling pretty good about their flushes, and Doyle LOVES that Ace. The checks on the turn indicated no flushes, but the Ace might have just given someone top pair or two pair. He has practically no reason to think he's not sitting pretty.

Benyamine, playing it safe with his medium-sized flush, checks.

Negreanu, now feeling pretty comfortable, bets $26,200, about 2/3 of the pot.

Doyle calls.

Why not raise? Same sort of problem, is my guess. If Benyamine or Negreanu RE-raises, he'll have to fold. Obviously, Benyamine has the opportunity to raise either way, but a raise by Benyamine (as we'll see) won't force him out, as it could mean a lot of things. A RE-raise would.

Over to Benyamine. Kaplan intones, "I believe David thinks he's got the best hand, that he's the only one with the flush...There's no way Doyle has the flush, and it doesn't look like Daniel has the flush."

Sure enough, Benyamine raises to $101,200. (I'll never get the logistics behind the weird bets on this show.)

Negreanu rubs his eyes, gives off a few bizarre shakes of the head, obviously perplexed. Benyamine is a sphinx.

40 seconds pass...before Negreanu reluctantly pushes his hand in.

Over to Doyle, who mutters in Benyamine's direction, "Checked that hand twice (unintelligible) with that hand...That's hard for me to believe." Pensively shuffles his chips for a few seconds...and calls.

"Flush," says Benyamine.

Doyle accepts defeat silently.

"How big?" asks Daniel.

"Small." says Benyamine, showing down.

"Damnit!" says Daniel, slamming his hand on the table. "Unbelievable!"

Wasn't it, though?

The 2nd-best hand wins by wrongly believing he had the best hand, the worst hand pays off a bundle for wrongly believing that he did, and the best hand, wrongly believing he was beaten, folded.

How cool is that?

We learn from Benyamine in an interview after the commercial break:

"If somebody bets into me (on the turn), I'm probably going to think I'm beat. I probably would have to call one time and then would lay down probably the second time..."

On his raise on the river:

"Now when Daniel bets, I was never going to raise him, but once Doyle calls, I believe that Daniel might be in the middle between Doyle and I. If I raise him and he's capable of laying down, and if he hasn't bet the turn, he doesn't have like a King-high flush or an Ace-high flush, so he can lay down a medium-sized flush..."

Not sure I follow all that, but the point is, checking the turn was both Negreanu's and Brunson's big mistake...and yet, it was arguably a perfectly reasonable move for both of them.

And that's why I love this goddamn game.

Any thoughts?

Worst Beat Ever?

So this happened at my weekly sit-n-go, night before my birthday, a couple weeks ago, but I suspect the memory will linger well into the after-life.

The set-up:

a. I'd already re-bought, having lost my initial buy-in to the guy to my right hitting back-to-back spade flushes on me;

b. Everyone else...I mean, really, EVERYONE else...was scooping huge pots with Big Slick that night.

So to the hand: I had about $9K (out of a buy-in of $20K) (for the uninitiated - these are TOURNAMENT figures; each buy-in is $20). We were approaching the end of the rebuy period, so the villain across the table from me apparently decided he'd rather rebuy and begin the second half with $20K than the shaky $10K he had, so he went all-in with 7-3 off-suit, which - again, for the uninitiated - is probably the second or third worst possible pre-flop hand. Everyone folded except me, with my seemingly unbeatable A-K (arguably among the TOP five hands pre-flop, despite being a notorious loser. My favorite nickname for it is "Anna Kournikova", explained to me by an old gentleman at a Commerce table: "Looks pretty, but never wins.").

So I flip my gold, he flips his garbage, everyone chuckles heartily at the schmattering that was clearly about to ensue...and I'll let the photo take it from here, adding only that this is one of several photos taken, as the final card prompted practically the entire group to leap to their seats and whip out their camera-phones.

Yup. It's that bad.

Enjoy.



Coda:

After this massacre, partly because it was my birthday eve, and partly out of sheer, heartbreaking sympathy, my buds let me bend the rules and do a SECOND rebuy after this hand. Within minutes, my pocket K's were topped by pocket A's, and I was done.

Happy birthday!

So what's YOUR worst beat ever?

Website's up!

Hey, everyone...

Held off on blog posts for the past couple weeks while the official Chip Chap website was being created...but the wait is over!

Check 'er out...

http://thechipchap.com/