Covering live poker tournaments for a living affords me the opportunity to see countless thousands of hands played out, many of which offer interesting and potentially valuable insights into how players â both amateurs and professionals â play the game. In this ongoing series, Iâll highlight hands Iâve seen at the tournaments Iâve covered and see if we can glean anything useful from them.
The Scene
A few months back, I got the assignment to drive a few hours into Iowa to cover
As it happened, my good friend
Nick Pupillo would make a deep run to the final table and was still in it when six players remained. He d already locked up $31,716 and was playing for $162K up top, so the stakes were getting big for everyone involved.
High Stakes Poker. Some called it the greatest fold in the history of the show.
At their essence, many folds are exercises in great discipline and hand reading skills. This one, however, was a bit different. This one came down to one thing: table talk. And it wasn t the experienced live pro talking his way into the correct play. Instead, the tables turned as the online legend used table talk to outwit the man ostensibly far more comfortable live.
Here, we ll take a look at how that happened and what lessons can perhaps be learned.
The Hand
The whole thing is just really great theater, so rather than describe the hand in full detail, I ll just leave this video, which comes courtesy of the PokerGO YouTube channel.
Hand Review: How Hellmuth Talked Polk Out of Paying Him $90,000 pokernews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from pokernews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Doug Polk and
Daniel Negreanu has captured the attention of the poker world, particularly with the dearth of other action of interest out there.
Two legends of poker battling back and forth for pots worth sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars has naturally produced some interesting hands that merit a closer look from a strategic point of view.
Getting an expert s perspective on such a hand isn t easy considering how few HUNL specialists are out there and qualified to comment critically on these stakes, but
PokerNews did manage to get hold of one:
Kevin Rabichow. The high-stakes pro and
Run It Once Poker ambassador graciously agreed to help break down a pot I found fascinating while covering the action.