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Something bizarre happened at one of the most expensive tables with Viktor Isildur1 Blom, Chun samrostan Lei Zhou, and Ben Bttech86 Tollerene. Lift the curtain!
From the Deal to the River
It’s a Pot-Limit Omaha table with blinds of $500/$1000, but it is a capped table, and you can’t bet more than 40 blinds per hand.
There are four players at the table, with Ben Bttech86 Tollerene first to act. He holds
And raises to $3,500. Chun Lei Zhou calls from the button, but Viktor Blom in the Small Blind doesn’t appreciate the game that way. He raises to $15,000.
German high-roller Follow the hawk folds, but Tollerene pushes $40,000 all-in. Now samrostan calls, and so does Blom.
Suddenly, three players are all-in in a pot of $121,000. The board runs
Ben Tollerene has hit a pair of threes, which gives him two pair (threes and fours) and an ace kicker. Not exactly a big hand, but then Blom shows
for a pair of fours with king kicker, while samrostan opens
for a pair of fours with a ten kicker. Suddenly Tollerene’s “monster”
is worth $121,000.
Analysis
Wow, definitely not your average hand. To have a pair of treys win the complete pot three-handed pre-flop all-in in PLO, that doesn’t happen very often.
But let’s look a little closer at what happened here. Bear in mind that this is a capped table, which means that position has less significance than in regular PLO.
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If you can’t bet more than 40 big blinds per hand, the implied odds are lower, and certain AAxx hands are easier to play from the blinds, as the road to showdown is much shorter.
Pre-flop, Ben Tollerene has a nice double suited hand definitely worth a raise. Samrostan calls from the button with a pretty well connected hand, and then Blom follows up with his double-suited hand and another raise.
Of course, the Swedish player could have just called and see a flop, as his hand is mediocre and he doesn’t have position, but that’s just not his style.
There are additional problems with his hand, as his potential club flush is dominated. That is also why a hand like Tollerene’s with Broadway cards is definitely preferable.
With his re-raise to $15,000 Blom invests 37.5% of his effective stack and demonstrates he is not going to fold anymore. It is questionable, though, whether his hand is really strong enough to play like that.
When Tollerene raises it up again, all players find themselves all-in. Look at the pot equity, and it quickly becomes clear that Tollerene is the clear favourite here.
Blom: 22.04% win; 4.9% split pot
Chun Lei Zhou: 26.66% win; 4.9% split pot
Tollerene: 46.38% win; 0% split pot
A big lead for Tollerene, that even increases to 57.36% on the flop. The 4♠ gives Blom a couple of outs, but at the extraordinary showdown, it is Tollerene’s single hit with his only low card that wins the hand.
The hand we picked out this week shows why PLO exerts so much attraction – and so much variance. It just isn’t a game for the faint-hearted.
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