HSP: Benyamine vs. Esfandiari

[ALAEI]

This hand illustrates the differences between live and online play. Online, when you are faced with a situation you can put an opponent on a range of hands based on his bet amounts and betting history and make a decision based almost entirely on that. You can even post hands on forums like this that show nothing at all but how much was bet and be able to make a pretty clear decision on what you would do in the hand. This is not the case at all live. There are so many factors that could never be put into words that come into play that make discussion about a hand after the fact totally pointless. What happened here was David read Antonio for exactly what he had, thus being the reason for the re-min raise. All of the table chatter was 100% strategic and it EARNED David the extra $70k that Antonio put into the pot. The reason for just calling the last raise rather than going all in was only because he knew where Antonio was at and saw 0 value in ending the hand on the turn. I am very confident that David was calling any river regardless of what it was, even an ace. As for Antonio, he really got lost in the hand. You could tell that David really got into his head and Antonio was convinced he was getting re-bluffed and decided to take a line that made absolutely no sense in hopes that David would just throw it away. Say what you will about David's NL game, but he is a fantastic poker player and played this hand to absolute perfection.

DA