[legend42]

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To me it seemed in Laak's first appearance he threw the other pro's off. Made some good bets and wasn't intimidated.

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Laak played okay, but ran much better, and he was definitely at least somewhat intimidated. In fact, I think it was his timid play that threw players off.

He flopped a set and just called on a draw-heavy board, then Daniel (naturally) paid off his river bet becuase he couldn't figure out why he wouldn't raise the turn with any made hand that could bet that much on the river.

He flopped a king-high flush, and let Matusow donk into him on all three streets, which was probably the best way to play it (certainly turned out to be), but again was much more lucky than good.

There was another hand where he was scared to call a river bet with a big hand (can't remember exactly, like a set of tens with a possible straight on the board or something), then when he did call and the bettor mucked his bluff, he was embarrassed to show the winner, because he took so long to make the easy call.

He raised pre-flop with 9h8h, got several callers, flopped an OESD and played it as passively as possible (c/c the flop, and c/f the blank turn). Not terrible, but hardly dynamic.

Ted Forrest was clearly targeting him. He re-raised him out of the blind with 42 once. He called Laak's big reraise of DN's open with pocket 7s (Laak had AK and flopped trips, of course).

I'm not criticizing his play, but I think it was pretty basic and non-creative, maybe a little scared, and the cards were falling his way. Even though he was only on about half the episodes, I can't recall anybody flopping more sets than he did.