PFA Radio listener Ari Engel big chip leader with 5 left in $10k O8 WSOP event (and Hellmuth is there, too)

[gimmick]

He did it. Heads up match was something like 6 hours, but he finally did it a few minutes ago.

Great job Ari!

Didn't bother to look more than the last hand. Assuming wsop didn't butcher the hand Ari's opponent misplayed both streets. With only a sub line that didn't work making some sense (that's nearly always a bad idea).

8842ss with less than 4 bets left you have to defend your blind, but you don't have enough to play for any kind of fit. There's 2 lines worth anything here.

If you think very little of your opponent you can call pre with the intention of betting misses (hoping your opponent folds equity) or go for the ck/ck line and betting the turn (with a presumable higher chance of inducing a fold). The ck-line protects your fits, if you think your opponent would be too bet happy, but risks a free card when sub 5% of flops could you afford that.

The second line is when you give your opponent any credit. Just 3 bet pre. Protect your equity that's always murky when it partly consists of middling pair holding for high. Flop play doesn't exist, so stop pretending like it does. Save your pre calls when you can fold flops.

The call pre and ck flop ls bad because it "balances" a range that assumes an opponent who's skitso/incompetent with the added bonus of removing your only cheap bluff that could work against a sane opponent. That bluff is also more about protecting equity that actually having any FE.

edit: the standard i got accustomed to from the WSOP reporting hands "Engel won after an epic heads-up battle against Zachary Milchman that lasted six hours and ended in a hand where Engel's two pair was good against his opponent's pair of eights." <- actually not possible with the action describing the last hand with a running pair.

[tgull]

I don't know this opponent of Ari's heads up. Zachary Milchman. Never heard of him.

Anyway, the guy is really hanging tough. Ari had over 60% of chips on the table 4-handed, and then Milchman parlayed it into a 2-1 lead heads up. Now they're very close to even.

I really hope Ari pulls this off.

Something you may not know about Ari is that he's homeless. I'm not kidding you. But he's voluntarily homeless, and he doesn't sleep under bridges. He travels around the world playing poker, and staying in hotels. I could never do this, even if I were his age (mid-30s). Anyway, he seems to enjoy it.

Ari is a very mild-mannered, nice guy. He listens to every single PFA Radio episode, and when I see him, he makes a point to tell me that he really enjoys the show. I know he especially liked those Sherif segments (the Nigerian scammer). We need to bring those back.

Anyway, I really want him to win here.

That was the Brad Booth lifestyle, where he claimed he played poker every single day since he was 21. He was boasting about living full time for months at the Bellagio. That turned out to be a total train wreck.

[TheXFactor]

The poker lifestyle takes a heavy toll on you.

Brad Booth was doing incredible with live poker cash games at Bellagio but he decided to give it up to lose millions on UltimateBet.

Even I knew at the time you shouldn't play on UB for any significant money.

Phil Hellmuth didn't have that much credibility back then either.

Brad's losses on UB really fucked him up in the head.

[Dan Druff]

He did it. Heads up match was something like 6 hours, but he finally did it a few minutes ago.

Great job Ari!

Didn't bother to look more than the last hand. Assuming wsop didn't butcher the hand Ari's opponent misplayed both streets. With only a sub line that didn't work making some sense (that's nearly always a bad idea).

8842ss with less than 4 bets left you have to defend your blind, but you don't have enough to play for any kind of fit. There's 2 lines worth anything here.

If you think very little of your opponent you can call pre with the intention of betting misses (hoping your opponent folds equity) or go for the ck/ck line and betting the turn (with a presumable higher chance of inducing a fold). The ck-line protects your fits, if you think your opponent would be too bet happy, but risks a free card when sub 5% of flops could you afford that.

The second line is when you give your opponent any credit. Just 3 bet pre. Protect your equity that's always murky when it partly consists of middling pair holding for high. Flop play doesn't exist, so stop pretending like it does. Save your pre calls when you can fold flops.

The call pre and ck flop ls bad because it "balances" a range that assumes an opponent who's skitso/incompetent with the added bonus of removing your only cheap bluff that could work against a sane opponent. That bluff is also more about protecting equity that actually having any FE.

edit: the standard i got accustomed to from the WSOP reporting hands "Engel won after an epic heads-up battle against Zachary Milchman that lasted six hours and ended in a hand where Engel's two pair was good against his opponent's pair of eights." <- actually not possible with the action describing the last hand with a running pair.

This is correct but in the guy's defense, this was a grueling heads up battle for several hours and over $100k difference in prize money and a bracelet, and he was probably worn out. I'm sure it was also in his head that he finished 2nd in a previous WSOP O8 event ($3k O8 in 2014, which is now gone from the schedule). He also finished 6th in the 2016 $1500 O8. So the guy is obviously a very good O8 player, but is probably frustrated that he can never quite get it done and win that bracelet.

I agree that you just have to go for it with the 884d2d heads up when that short. That's actually a pretty good hand to go in with, as it will win the low fairly often heads up when a low qualifies, plus it has a pair, plus it has a baby flush draw. So there's lots of ways you at least split the pot when running out the board against a button-raising HU hand.

However, I don't like being the guy who bashes individual poorly played hands at final tables, as it's a hell of a lot easier for us to cooly analyze the correct line from home, than it is when in the action. At least Milchman can rest on the fact that he would have lost all his chips on that one no matter what he did.

Similarly, when I broadcasted the 2009 $10k Limit Holdem final table -- the one won by Greg Mueller -- there were no hole cards, so I was operating on the same info as the players. However, I was tremendously good at analyzing what I felt each player had (and stated it out loud), better than I ever was playing at the table. It was then when I realized that it's so much easier to hand-read and strategize when you have zero emotion attached to what's going on.

[gimmick]

Didn't bother to look more than the last hand. Assuming wsop didn't butcher the hand Ari's opponent misplayed both streets. With only a sub line that didn't work making some sense (that's nearly always a bad idea).

8842ss with less than 4 bets left you have to defend your blind, but you don't have enough to play for any kind of fit. There's 2 lines worth anything here.

If you think very little of your opponent you can call pre with the intention of betting misses (hoping your opponent folds equity) or go for the ck/ck line and betting the turn (with a presumable higher chance of inducing a fold). The ck-line protects your fits, if you think your opponent would be too bet happy, but risks a free card when sub 5% of flops could you afford that.

The second line is when you give your opponent any credit. Just 3 bet pre. Protect your equity that's always murky when it partly consists of middling pair holding for high. Flop play doesn't exist, so stop pretending like it does. Save your pre calls when you can fold flops.

The call pre and ck flop ls bad because it "balances" a range that assumes an opponent who's skitso/incompetent with the added bonus of removing your only cheap bluff that could work against a sane opponent. That bluff is also more about protecting equity that actually having any FE.

edit: the standard i got accustomed to from the WSOP reporting hands "Engel won after an epic heads-up battle against Zachary Milchman that lasted six hours and ended in a hand where Engel's two pair was good against his opponent's pair of eights." <- actually not possible with the action describing the last hand with a running pair.

This is correct but in the guy's defense, this was a grueling heads up battle for several hours and over $100k difference in prize money and a bracelet, and he was probably worn out. I'm sure it was also in his head that he finished 2nd in a previous WSOP O8 event ($3k O8 in 2014, which is now gone from the schedule). He also finished 6th in the 2016 $1500 O8. So the guy is obviously a very good O8 player, but is probably frustrated that he can never quite get it done and win that bracelet.

I agree that you just have to go for it with the 884d2d heads up when that short. That's actually a pretty good hand to go in with, as it will win the low fairly often heads up when a low qualifies, plus it has a pair, plus it has a baby flush draw. So there's lots of ways you at least split the pot when running out the board against a button-raising HU hand.

However, I don't like being the guy who bashes individual poorly played hands at final tables, as it's a hell of a lot easier for us to cooly analyze the correct line from home, than it is when in the action. At least Milchman can rest on the fact that he would have lost all his chips on that one no matter what he did.

Similarly, when I broadcasted the 2009 $10k Limit Holdem final table -- the one won by Greg Mueller -- there were no hole cards, so I was operating on the same info as the players. However, I was tremendously good at analyzing what I felt each player had (and stated it out loud), better than I ever was playing at the table. It was then when I realized that it's so much easier to hand-read and strategize when you have zero emotion attached to what's going on.

Fair. I didn't mention fatigue mostly because with the current state of the site i assumed there was already too many words related to something ghey like poker.

I glanced at few previous hands later and it did seem from a very small sample size that the guy was more on the passive side. Not a horrible attribute for tourny O8 in most stages. Dunno how specialized the field is today, but in the past a very good idea was to just let your opponents hang themselves.

When it comes to limit games 08 has more opportunities for optimal passive play.

I don't generally assume that there's any clairvoyance when looking at hands. I do assume that after play analysis has a sizable edge related to additional analytic tools and lack of psychological/endurance related things. The latter being a sizable part why certain players perform better especially at final tables. That's kinda given and mostly a waste of words with any analysis.

Even with a half-assed analysis i'm looking at ranges. With full acknowledgement that in certain situations live reads can deduct that range for the other player and that there could be range related balancing issues for some plays. I don't really mention it when it doesn't matter.

Criticizing any play has very little to do with criticizing the player. When i used to grind, out of a 1000 plays 100 were suboptimal and 10 were mildly retarded. It's whatever. I gave myself even less leeway than i give others when it comes to out of table analysis.

8824ss was a semi interesting hand because the correct play of essentially shipping it only comes up with tourny play, short stacks and HU. For ring games you do defend your blind with it but it's extremely opponent dependent and stack size dependent how you play it. For tournaments it has a weird attribute at being a -EV hand against 80% range, but it doesn't degrade too much going to 10% range. And the running theme is that half the flops you have no idea where you're.

In ring games (6max mostly) you 3 bet it mostly to balance your range against an raise happy SB. It's mildly suicidal to 3 bet in any other situation.

[Dan Druff]

I'm not giving you a hard time for criticizing. Obviously we can analyze hands here and discuss where people did things wrong, and nobody should be insulted. Just mentioning that it's gonna be hard to play optimally after 6 hours heads up for a bracelet, when you see your dreams are about to be shattered once again.

When I learned O8, the biggest adjustment for me as a holdem player was to learn to play passively -- to limp more, to cold call, to 3-bet less, and to check behind in position way more. Also a lot less bluffing in the game compared to limit holdem.

Anyway, good for Ari, glad to see he did it. When he fell to a 2:1 chip deficit, after seemingly being in the driver's seat 4-handed, I felt bad for him.

[gimmick]

I'm not giving you a hard time for criticizing. Obviously we can analyze hands here and discuss where people did things wrong, and nobody should be insulted. Just mentioning that it's gonna be hard to play optimally after 6 hours heads up for a bracelet, when you see your dreams are about to be shattered once again.

When I learned O8, the biggest adjustment for me as a holdem player was to learn to play passively -- to limp more, to cold call, to 3-bet less, and to check behind in position way more. Also a lot less bluffing in the game compared to limit holdem.

Anyway, good for Ari, glad to see he did it. When he fell to a 2:1 chip deficit, after seemingly being in the driver's seat 4-handed, I felt bad for him.

Yea nothing to it. I just reverted to "analyzing plays mode" where the play only exists in relative isolation. From a place where these are talked about daily and anything extra is just clutter. Here it's obv more like every other year.

GJ Ari. Wouldn't mind any extra info on O8 tournaments in 2021.

The last hand was partly noticeable because it's a reversal of common O8 adjustments. There used to be 2 recognizable backgrounds for O8 players based on what game they came from and mistakes associated with it. LHE or PLO. You covered most of the LHE mistakes. Omaha high mistakes were mostly over valuing high only hands and middling wraps. They were better at losing less with sets and getting freerolled.