[KiwiMark]

[ QUOTE ]
no, you rr small because this is short-stack poker and there is no hand other than AA that villain can have that gives him proper odds to call your AA preflop. some might think small rr might gives your AA away but in today's donkament people are miniraising AJ all over the place. if he'not calling small, he's never calling big rr, and yes, we do want action w/ AA.

the reason we must rr preflop here is because we want pot bigger and to play AA heads-up, not 3 handed. calling w/ AA is retarded and rafe furst donkey sucked his way into a miracle bracelet. he didn't win did he?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well Rafe did get a flop heads up as an 88% favourite and in position, he hadn't shown any real strength so maybe Hua could throw a bet out to see where he is. If Rafe is super lucky Hua has QT and pairing the queen makes him think he has the best hand. Clearly Rafe knows that if Hua has a 7 then he is in big trouble, but with 2 on the board it is less likely that his opponent has one (if he was unlucky enough to see the pot 4 handed he would have been more scared that someone may have the 7). When Hua bet post flop less than half the pot it really wasn't super strong, I don't know how anyone could expect Rafe to know that he was being trapped instead of him doing the trapping - from his perspective Hua could have a queen or could have just been taking a stab. When Hua checked after the turn Rafe may have thought that he had extracted as much money as he could and that Hua had nothing at all - so he made a small value bet in the hopes that Hua might put a bit more in. When Hua raised him all in what could Hua have? A bluff? QJ? Do you really think Hua would never have check raised Rafe in that spot with KQ or a complete bluff? If Hua had KQ then Rafe was winning and Hua only had 2 outs with one card to come - Rafe would have been expecting to win when he called and so would any of you in the same position.

It's pretty easy to say that it was obvious that Hua raised with 72o and had made trips on the flop, but that's because the little on-screen graphic lets us see that's what happened. From Rafe's perspective there was no clue that his AA was no good until Hua turned his cards over. Check the reaction of Phil Gordon - when he saw the AA he thought his friend was winning and started to celebrate, not till his saw Hua's hand did he think Hua had a 7.

Check the comments throughout Youtube and this forum - everyone that has the benefit of seeing all the holecards knows how badly all the pros are playing their hands. Poker is such an easy game when you know everyones hands and even easier in hindsight after seeing the results.