The Other King High Hand
I hardly played a single hand of poker last week, due to a combination of illness and feeling pretty burned out, but I did remember a staggering hand I witnessed at the GSOP last week.
I think the intrepid player in question in this hand had read Phil Gordon’s “Little Green Book” (a rather mish-mashed publication, but a still decent read which currently resides in my upstairs bathroom). Gordon profiles the playing style of a number of top players, one of which is a player he refers to as “Biggest Online Winner (BOW)”. He doesn’t actually specify who this player is, but given the book was published in 2005, it seems likely to be Prahlad Freidman.
A summary of BOW strategy is as follows:
- See lots of flops
- Move all in with premium draws
- Move all in with strong hands
Gordon performs an analysis of holding AK on a King high board, where BOW moves all in with either a set or a draw, and illustrates that you wouldn’t win calling every time. In addition, BOW wins tons of $300 pots as people need a strong hand to call, and thus eventually gambles against you with your own money. Of course he suffers huge variance, but Gordon points out he plays completely differently in tournaments due to the limited chip stack.
“Gordon points out he plays completely differently in tournaments due to your limited chip stack.”
Our Gutshotter clearly got half through the analysis, before having a Eureka moment, flinging the book down, and heading off to play the £500 GSOP event (let’s call him Tournament BOW, or T-BOW). And so to the hand:
T-BOW has already nearly doubled up after shoving an open-ended straight flush draw (fair enough) and has 37k in chips.
Blinds 200-400
Player 1 raises to 1200.
Player 2 (T-BOW) calls with .
Player 3 (Big Blind with 35k stack) calls.
Flop comes Ad, 8d, 10s
Players 3 and 1 check
Pot is 3,800. T-BOW moves all in for about 35k.
T-BOW is snap called by Player 3 who has a set of Aces.
Aces hold. T-BOW leaves his 2k remaining stack on the table to be blinded away. Incredible stuff. I’m all for being aggressive, but overbetting the pot by a factor of 10 when so deep stacked was suicide.
Wasn’t just me who got a bit excited about King high it seems.
This week I’m going to try and qualify for the Virgin festival main event. Loose Cannon are running a £10 rebuy on Wednesday which I’ll attend, followed by the League on Thursday. The Virgin event does not allow direct buy ins, so the only way to qualify is online or in a live satelitte.