[ QUOTE ]
I like to comment on something that WAS unusual though.
None can deny that Antonio played the AA hand against Barry like a retard.
Some people in this thread tried to explain it as playing with scared money etc.
More likely is that his strategy for this session was to stay away from confrontations with the better players at the table and focus more on Jamie and especially Guy.
But even if you consider that he still played the hand horribly.
So I`m gonna point out something that was probably overlooked.
Antonio played on every HSP season so far and IIRC every time he had AA he lost big pots with them.
I don`t know how superstitious he is but he might have thought: "Here we go again..."
It`s a long shot I know but I also do know that many live pros are affected by superstition to the point that it screws up their game from time to time.
[/ QUOTE ]
From Antonio himself (
http://alwaysbluff.com/poker/blogs/b...oker-season-4/)
Recently I played a hand on High Stakes Poker that, more than any other hand for me illustrates the difference between big and small stack poker. It makes a world of a difference when you have an abundant amount of chips in front of you and so does your opponent. You never want to risk your entire stack, especially in a cash game, unless you pretty much have the nuts. A very interesting hand recently came up on High Stakes Poker that I would like to discuss.
The game had a 500k buy in; yes, FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS just to sit down, no limit holdem. That’s a lot of cheese so of course so I will be playing very carefully. I had aces in the one hole and decided to limp. There was a lot of raising going on and I wanted to put in the reraise and just get it over with before the flop, but ultimately no one did raise. I hate aces in a multi-way pot especially when everyone is super deep. More big pots are lost with Aces in my opinion than any other hand. A few limpers, no raise, flop comes A 4 8, all spades. Berry Greenstein, a very good player whose game I respect tremendously, leads right out. For him to lead out into multiple players tells me he, for sure, has a hand. There is no way in the world he is bluffing. He might be betting with the king of spades, but that is highly unlikely. It was just obvious he had something. I cannot raise here because there are players behind me and I certainly wouldn’t want to get reraised and possibly have to throw my hand away, so I call. Everyone folds (which I don’t mind btw). The turn, I think, was a red queen. I haven’t seen the show yet so I am going off of memory, though the card was insignificant. He leads again. Here is where it gets interesting. He led on the flop, I called and now he is leading right out into me again. Now I am 100% sure he has a hand. He either has a flush, two pair or a smaller set. That’s it. He can’t have anything else. If he has a flush then I certainly don’t want to raise. If he has 2 pair, raising is not the best move either because he will more than likely realize that his hand is no good and muck. Remember Barry is a wizard. He would know his hand was no good here. The only thing that I would hope for would be for him to have a smaller set and even then if I do raise and he calls, if and when the board doesn’t pair, he will probably not pay off the river anyway. So with all that said I think calling was, in fact, the best option. The river brought a red king. He led again. At this point I didn’t think he had the 2 pair. If he had a 2 pair it would be any variation of the flop 2 pair…I didn’t think he had this hand because I was early position limper here I could easily have had the A Q or the A K. It was either a set or the flush and I thought the flush was way more likely than the set, although his bet on the river was more on the weak side I still saw no benefit in raising here. If I raise the river for sure 100 % he mucks. So with all those factors considered I think I played the hand correctly. If I thought there was any chance of a call on the river a value raise would have been correct and against your average player I might have done so, but against a wizard I see no value. I made the call and a crying one at that (I really did put him on the flush) and he showed me the 8 -4 for a two pair.
Maybe one day I will learn this game.
Antonio