Winning or losing a million dollars is nothing but routine for the one man who’s generating more action in online high-stakes poker than anyone else.
Recently, Isildur battled it out with Doorbread on PLO.
From the Flop to the River
We are taking a closer look at a game of Pot Limit Omaha $250/$500, with the effective stacks at $118,000. Isildur1 is in the big blind with
Doorbread raises from the button to $1500, and Isildur1 re-raises to $4500. Doorbread calls and the pot reaches $9,000. The flop falls
Isildur1 takes the lead and bets the pot. Doorbread raises to $20,000 and Isildur1 re-raises to $69,000. Doorbread moves all-in and Isildur1 calls. Doorbread shows
for the middle set. The players agree to deal the turn and river twice.
First draw:
Second draw:
And every penny of the $237,000 pot goes to Doorbread.
Analysis
Once more, we find our players in a PLO situation with two very strong, but completely different hands.
But let’s quickly look at the pre-flop play, before analyzing the escalation post flop.
Doorbread in the small blind raises with a rather mediocre hand. J♠ 6♣ 6♦ 2♣ is sub-par, even in a heads-up game.
Apart from hitting a set that could well be beaten by a higher set, this hand can basically only make a club flush, and that could be dominated as well.
Isildur1 on the other side of the table is holding a valuable hand. He has two possible flush draws, one of which would be the second nuts, he has outs for a straight and he holds a king, which doesn’t really fit into the hand but could make a valuable top pair.
So, his re-raise is perfectly in order, but so is Doorbread’s call in position to see a flop.
The flop J♥ 7♠ 6♥ creates the perfect scenario. Doorbread does hit his set, but the flop couldn’t get much better for Isildur1 either.
A flush draw plus an open-ended straight draw give him 15 outs (as the jack of hearts is on the board and the seven of hearts is in Isildur’s hand, all the flush outs are good) and 52.8% pot equity, although his opponent has a set!
The only flops better than this would have been a J♥ 6♥ 5♠ which would have given him three more outs, or a board where Blom would have flopped a straight.
The maximum number of outs are 18 in this spot: A♥, K♥, Q♥, T♥, 9♥, 5♥, 4♥, 3♥, 2♥, T♦ T♠, T♣, 8♦, 8♠, 8♣, 4♦, 4♣, 4♠.
Under those circumstances, it’s not surprising that all the money went into the middle on the flop.
What happens afterwards can be best described as variance. Blom might be a slight favourite, but although turn and river are dealt twice, Blom loses the whole pot, and Doorbread walks away with a quarter of a million dollars.
Conclusion
Blom gets his money in on the flop as a slight favorite, but comes out empty-handed.
This is another hand that shows how close hands often are in Pot Limit Omaha as opposed to No Limit Hold’em.
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