Freddy Deeb pulled off an astonishing comeback this morning
This morning I overheard a conversation between Chau Giang and Melissa Hayden, both of whom were glad Freddy won. "I know he was gonna win.  Freddy play a lot of hands, more than anybody at table.  I play with Freddy for twenty years.  He deserve to win," said Chau.  Melissa agreed with Chau that Freddy winning was good for the game.  They felt like he was the best player at the final table because, "It all comes down to Razz," declared Melissa.  "You have to know when they pair and when they are counterfeited.  John Hanson is a very good player, but Freddy's been playing forever." Bruno Fitoussi had 10.5m of the 14.8m chips in play when they were three-handed. But in the end, I think Freddy had to stand on a chair to be seen over the pile of money he won ($2.28m). I'm glad ESPN stayed until 4 AM so I didn't have to.

Eugene Todd loves Phil Hellmuth, bro
I heard some obnoxious railbird yelling, "Let's go, Phil!  GO GET 'EM, PHIL!" The voice sounded familiar and when I turned around I saw none other than Eugene Todd, bro, cheering on Hellmuth as he was deep in the $5K six-handed event.  "I got money on him, bro.  Phil's amazing.  You can't say nuthin' 'bout him, bro.  The guy's got concentration....like nobody in the game, bro.  He's got the three D's: drive, determination, and devotion."  My mouth may have dropped open a bit because I didn't quite know what to make of Gene whipping out an alliteration to describe someone's poker game.

Eugene Todd has been strutting around the Rio
I was going to try to fit this in the previous Eugene Todd reference, but it really deserves it's own heading.  LA Mike ran into Gene strutting like a peacock down the hallway yesterday as he was fresh off his first major win.  When you look at Gene's results you'll see a solid string of cashes with several second and third places (including one vs. Phil Hellmuth at the $5k final table last summer). Although it's not his biggest cash, winning 1st place in a $2,500 Bellagio cup event prompted Gene to tell Mike, "The monkey's finally off the back, bro!"

There's some great poker being played in the $5,000 six-handed event
Dutch Boyd has been leading the field since halfway through yesterday, and doesn't seem like he's ready to look back.  However, he's not lacking for competition in the event.  Bill Gazes, Erik Friberg, Danny Noam, Gioi Long, Tony G, Keith Lehr, Nick Schulman, Dustin Woolf, Mike Guttman, Ram Vaswani, John Racener, Mark Vos, Lance Allred, and Alex Bolotin are still in the running as 29 players remain.  Unfortunately for Gene Todd (you didn't think I would make it through this thought with mentioning Gene, did you?), Phil Hellmuth took a bad beat when he got it all in with a set versus an overpair only to have his opponent river a higher set. 

Oh, and don't forget about everybody's favorite Wild Bill Edler.  Actually, Bill's not that wild.  At least not that I've seen.  But I've been dying to refer to him as "Wild Bill" for sooooo long...Bill's "sophisticated" approach to the game is perfect for this event; with 340k and blinds at 4k-8k Bill is the guy to watch in my opinion.  I hope we'll be seeing him at the final table tomorrow.

First to the math. I ran a bunch of hands through twodimes, and came to this conclusion: If you can tell the difference between a playable hand and a piece of garbage, chances are you’ve got no more than 60 percent pot equity preflop and no less than 40 percent. Of course, some oddities come up, where you can end up with a hand that’s completely dominated, but that’s a pretty rare case.

So if you’re holding a playable hand, anything from A-K-2-3 to 9-T-J-Q you should be trying to see a flop. As I watched the great players, I saw that they (and their tablemates) often limped. Contrast this to hold ‘em, especially late tournament hold ‘em, where limping is pretty rare. But this makes sense because in hold ‘em a player can possess (or represent) a hand that is 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 favorite against all comers. In PLO-8, the best you represent is a marginal favorite: the equivalent of A-T vs. K-Q.

A good example of a spot when limping then calling a raise was appropriate came up between Brett Jungblut and a player I didn’t recognize. Brett limped UTG, and the player to his left raised pot, thereby committing about 70 percent of his chips. Brett called and the two saw a flop of Ac-Jc-9c. Brett checked, looked at the inevitable all-in bet, then thought before folding, face-up, A-2-3-4 with the two red suits. His opponent showed a set of Aces.

When I plugged the competing hands into twodimes, you can see the reason in Jungblut's play:

Ad-2d-3h-4h vs. Ac-As-Tc-Js is a dead heat, 50/50 pot equity.
Ad-2d-3h-4h vs. Ac As 8c 5s, gives AA a 55-45 pot equity edge.

Even in a total nightmare match up, the situation isn’t all that dire:

Ac As 2c 3s vs. Ah 2d 3h 4d gives Aces a 67-32 equity advantage.

Yesterday, I made a clear tactical mistake. I made a few raises with decent hands in favorable position. Almost every time I found myself in a difficult spot, facing re-raises or looking at flops that had no relation whatsoever to my hand. I lost a lot more chips in these spots than I needed to.

The other major point that I took from both my play and my observations concerned the play of good but vulnerable hands when out of position. For example, yesterday, with blinds of 100 and 200, two players limped; the small blind (a stone) didn’t complete, and three of us saw a flop of Ad-Jd-7c. I held A-J-X-X. I bet out the pot and was called in one spot. The turn was the Qd. I checked, and then folded.

When I talked through the hand with a friend, he asked me what card I would have liked to have seen on the turn. The 9s would have been nice, we decided, but other than that there’s almost no clean card in the deck. Any paint would raise the potential of Broadway; any low card could but me in spot where I was playing for half the pot.

I saw Chau Giang enter a similar situation from the big blind. It was limped in two spots and the small blind completed. On a flop of K-J-2, two spades, Chau bet pot and was called in one spot. The turn was the Qh, and Chau checked, and his opponent bet enough for Chau to make a call for his tournament life. Chau folded and his opponent showed a hand, AA, that he said he could beat.

These are tough spots that are sometimes unavoidable, but I wonder if I (or Chau) could have looked for check raises that sealed the action. I guess what I learned here is that, if at all possible, avoid hitting two pair on a draw heavy board – or something like that.

Any advice for playing these sorts of hands from pokerwire’s readers is welcome. Leave a comment.