Did Mike M made a mistake with the Kings? (WSOP spoiler)

[donny5k]

Amazing analysis in this thread.

Think about this:
If Lazar calls with QQ-AA there, Mike is exactly 50% to win longterm. There's other money in the pot. Lazar might call with even worse hands or fold (+EV). Seeing that this is +EV overall is relatively simple, even for this Vincent Lepore guy probably.

[popesc]

Actually, I had this impression of Mike's play when I listened to the live Cardplayer broadcast over the summer. They described every hand in that broadcast.

I double checked the Cardplayer logs. Mike played 28 hands at the final table and raised preflop with 10 of them. He limped twice.

I don't play a good LAG game, is raising a third of hands typical?

[centja1]

i just relistened to the cardplayer.com broadcast and here is what we know about the situation and daniel negreanu's commentary:

Second hand of the WSOP ME final table, 9 handed, blinds at T50,000-T100,000 (T10,000 Ante). Brad Kondracki moved all-in from UTG on the first hand and everyone folded.

Steve Dannenmann (T5,450,000) opens UTG for T250,000
Scott Lazar (T3,360,000) re-raises to T1,250,000
Joseph Hachem folds
Andrew Black folds
Tex Barch folds
Daniel Bergsdorf folds
Mike Matusow (T7,340,000) moves all-in from the button for T7,340,000
Aaron Kanter folds
Brad Kondracki folds
Steve Dannenmann thinks for about 30 seconds and folds
Scott Lazar calls all-in for T2,110,000

Upon seeing Matusow move all-in, Daniel Negreanu says, "I would expect Mike to have no less than two queens in this position."

And then, after the hands are turned over, he says, "What a cold deck. I don't know any player in the world who wouldn't take two Kings and play for all their money."

I'm not sure if Matusow had any kind of read on Lazar from previous play, but seeing his meltdown later at the FT, I think we can probably include AK in his calling range.

Two kings fare very well against this particular re-raiser's hand range, even though the range is incredibly small.

[Easy E]

[ QUOTE ]
i just relistened to the cardplayer.com broadcast and here is what we know about the situation

Second hand of the WSOP ME final table, 9 handed, blinds at T50,000-T100,000 (T10,000 Ante).

Steve Dannenmann (T5,450,000) opens UTG for T250,000
Scott Lazar (T3,360,000) re-raises to T1,250,000
Joseph Hachem folds
Andrew Black folds
Tex Barch folds
Daniel Bergsdorf folds
Mike Matusow (T7,340,000) moves all-in from the button for T7,340,000
Aaron Kanter folds
Brad Kondracki folds

I'm not sure if Matusow had any kind of read on Lazar from previous play, but seeing his meltdown later at the FT, I think we can probably include AK in his calling range.

Two kings fare very well against this particular re-raiser's hand range, even though the range is incredibly small.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, the information I had was pretty far off- how did I mix up Kanter and Dannenmann?
Now, Dannenmann was playing pretty tightly, wasn't he? Wouldn't Lazar know that? What hands am I reraising with, as the 2nd smallest stack, after a presumably tight UTG raiser opens for slightly under a standard raise, with 7 others to play behind me... including all of the big stacks? We can safely add QQ, maybe JJ and AK (latter seems less likely with Matusow's KK) ... anything else?

Given the stacks, Scenario 1 - reraising to $2.25M- may not be enough of a raise to drop Dannenmann, though it does pretty much commit Lazar all-in if he's going to play and should send a message to Dannenmann.
Can we fold Kings against an all-in from Lazar? Pot would be over $5M and cost Matusow another million to call Lazar's all-in, which means we have to be 85% sure he has Aces in order to fold (and we have pot odds to call even if he has Aces)

I think Scenario 1 is out as an option- even upping our reraise to $3M doesn't gain Matusow anything.


Does this corrected scenario give more possible weight to Scenario #2- limping for $1.25M- to see how Dannenman reacts? If Dannenmann pushes, can we fold Kings?
This also makes the pot smaller for the flop, assuming Dannenmann folds anyway as he did.

Matusow cold-calls, Dannenmann folds, pot is just under $3M. Flop comes Kd-Qh-6h. If Lazar doesn't push here, is there any way he can fold to a push by Matusow?
He'd be getting about 2.4:1 on a call... a big mistake, given the set Matusow flopped. We could also fear top two pair if Matusow limped preflop, but that only puts us at 2.3:1 against, holding the Ah.
Of course, we did reraise preflop in early position and Matusow limped, so what would he be pushing with here? Probably more hands than just a set?

So, we probably can't get away from the flop if we hold Aces, and Matusow can only get away from Kings if Dannenmann would push preflop (representing Aces) and Lazar calls all-in with Aces.

So, it seems that limping preflop with Kings doesn't give us enough information against the small stack. Pushing now seems best, given the range of hands Lazar would reraise with initially.

[donny5k]

"Can we fold Kings against an all-in from Lazar? Pot would be over $5M and cost Matusow another million to call Lazar's all-in, which means we have to be 85% sure he has Aces in order to fold (and we have pot odds to call even if he has Aces)"

Are you serious? You'd have to be 100% sure that he had 2 jokers to fold with those odds.

[gusmahler]

[ QUOTE ]
Final table, 9 players all looking to win the Big One. Loose player one, with the shortest? stack of around $2M, opens to $400K (there is reportedly $250K in the pot, so this might have been about a 3BB raise) on an early hand, if not the first hand, of the final table of the ME. I think this is an important point, but that would depend on the players involved.


[/ QUOTE ]

Actually it was the second hand. The first hand, Kondracki raised all-in and everyone folded to him.

You can go to Cardplayer's coverage to see detailed, hand-by-hand analysis.

In this hand, Matusow was the button. Dannenman was UTG. Lazar was UTG+1.

At the start of the hand, Dannennmann had T5.44M, Lazar had T3.35M, Matusow had T7.34M. Blinds were 50k/100k with 10k ante.

[Rottersod]

[ QUOTE ]
Phil Hellmuth would have folded them! Just ask him.

[/ QUOTE ]

No he wouldn't cuz he can dodge bullets.

[Vincent Lepore]

[ QUOTE ]
If Lazar calls with QQ-AA there, Mike is exactly 50% to win longterm.

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. So what. The point is that the way the hand went down the liklihood that Lazar has Aces goes way up.

Vince

[Fallen Hero]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If Lazar calls with QQ-AA there, Mike is exactly 50% to win longterm.

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. So what. The point is that the way the hand went down the liklihood that Lazar has Aces goes way up.

Vince

[/ QUOTE ]

has anyone ever told you you suck at trolling?

[centja1]

do you put someone who made one re-raise on AA every time? I don't dispute that some large percentage of the time they will have AA or KK, but the rest of the time they will have a hand that we have KILLED, like QQ or AK.

Look at the hand Lazar played against Michael Kessler the day before where Kessler raises in early position with AK and Lazar re-raises T600,000 more with QQ in late position. Kessler moves all-in and Lazar calls.

Seems much the same situation here, would you lay down QQ to the early position smallish stack moving all-in on you? It also appears that, in addition to AK, we can put QQ in Lazar's re-raising hand range.