With ESPN airing two more episodes on Tuesday night we're now in the money and finished with Day 4.
The Day 4 coverage saw two story lines: people playing ridiculously - almost embarrassingly - tight on the money bubble, and the feature table donating chips to Phil Ivey.
In this hand we have the latter, post bubble bust.
The Setup:
With the blinds $3,000/$6,000, Phil Ivey raises it up to $16,000 in the cut-off. Bernhard Perner makes the call in the small blind and David Wickham calls in the big blind.
The flop comes J♣ 7♠ A♣ and both blinds check. Ivey c-bets $35,000 into $56,000 and Perner folds. Wickham makes the call.
The turn comes 8♠ and Wickham check-calls a $70,000 bet from Ivey. The river comes 3♦. Wickham once again checks and Ivey fires $120,000.
Wickham folds this time and Ivey ships the $266,000 pot.
The Breakdown:
It's folded around to Ivey who makes it $16,000 in the cut-off with the A♦ K♥. Obviously AK in late position is an easy raise.
Bernhard Perner makes the call in the small blind with 4♦ 4♣.
Perner obviously thinks that if he hits a four he can win a big pot. But his thinking is off because Ivey is going to be raising a wider than normal range when it's folded to him in the cut-off.
Of that range, very little of it is going to be able to flop a big hand that will give action to a set.
Combine that with the fact that you're going to flop a set so infrequently and that you're going to get action on said set even more infrequently, this hand is better mucked before the flop.
But he calls and so does David Wickham with A♥ T♣ in the big blind.
Luckily for Perner he's not the only one who made a bad call preflop.
A♥ T♣ is not a hand you want to play out of position at the best of times. Factor in you're playing Phil Ivey, who is capable of reading souls, firing multiple barrels and making razor thin value bets, and this hand should be in the muck as soon as Ivey raises.
It's a reverse implied odds hand that is either going to win a very small pot or it's going to lose a monster.
When the flop comes A♣ 7♠ J♣, Ivey bets $35,000 for value. Perner folds his missed-set draw and Wickham calls with his weaker ace.
Now once you've seen the flop with AT you're obviously going to have to peel once you hit your ace.
But that's the thing about AT - you peel the flop, and in your very best-case scenario your opponent shuts down on the turn and you get to see a showdown.
If you call the flop and he fires the turn, are you ever going to be happy calling another street? No. And if you do, there's always the looming river bet you may have to contend with.
The turn comes 8♠ and Ivey bets $70,000 into $126,000. Again with top pair, top kicker another easy value-bet.
Wickham makes his second big mistake in this hand by calling. This just isn't a card that Ivey is going to bet a worse hand at.
Should Ivey have a worse ace he would certainly check behind for pot control. It's also a horrible card to bluff at. Ace-high boards are really bad to double barrel as a rule, especially when the turn doesn't change anything.
So Wickham's pair of aces, average kicker should hit the muck. But they don't; he calls and then check-folds the river, sending his live poker redline plummeting.
Which is why one of the rules for increasing your winnings without showdown is to stop playing dominated hands out of position.
You end up doing exactly what Wickham did: calling the flop and turn and folding to further action.
But poor Wickham didn't get that memo, plays a dominated hand out of position and pays for it. The end result is a ~$260,000 pot for Ivey.
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