Satisfying end to a $28 million hand of high-stakes poker

Aces and ate.

In the second video Brunson was being nice, he offered to run it multiple times, thus essentially playing the hand multiple times from the point of the all-in call. So each of the three runs was worth 1/3 the pot. I don’t think that can be done in a tournament. It’s done in some cash games as just a way to help a guy stay in the game longer if he’s way down on the odds to win a hand.

Running it more than once also cuts down on the variation. With one chance, Brunson will almost certainly win the pot, but there’s a small chance he’ll lose and get nothing from the hand. With three chances, there is a larger (but still small) chance he’ll lose once, but he’ll almost never lose twice (and he can’t lose three times).

2 Likes

Anything you do in the sportsbook works like this too. The casino wants equal money on either outcome and they get paid off the vig, rather than putting 90% of bettors on the losing side.

And that’s exactly why Brunson did this. He wasn’t being nice to the guy. Doyle Brunson is about as old school as old school gets. He started playing poker professionally in an era when it wasn’t always the safest line of work. And by not safe I mean you could actually get killed.

1 Like

Going all in with a pair before the flop is a pretty Phil Hellmuth move, anyway. It usually results in a flop of like 2, 5, 6 and Phil screaming:

“You called with a pair of TWOs?!?! See the amateurs I have to play with?!?! F*cking internet players!”

… and storming off in a huff.

In table games that require no skill and where the house has an edge (craps, blackjack, roulette, etc), “the house always wins.”

In poker, this does not apply. You are not playing against the house. You are playing against other players.

That’s one hell of a ballsy/strange call from Paredes with nothing more than a pair and only the river to come.

I don’t buy lottery tickets and have zero interest in betting on sports (or anything else for that matter) but poker’s a different story (tournament poker at least - cash games are a little different). I don’t really see it as gambling; more like a game with a prize. A good game of poker with mates with a £10 buy-in is a great (and pretty cheap) way to spend an evening.

Watching pros play poker like this can be great fun once you’ve picked up some of the basic probability maths of the game and learned the odds of the common set pieces. At some point it’ll dawn on you that you’re watching people calculating the odds that they’re playing one set of odds versus another set of odds and trying to manipulate every one else’s mental calculations and therefore their actions in their favour… There was a series called “High Stakes Poker” where a bunch of pros got together and had an actual cash game with their own money on camera, that was awesome to watch. Poker at it’s purest. This tournament stuff is mere shadow of that kind of play.

I appreciate the skill required in poker versus other gambling that is pure chance but still don’t enjoy it myself. But I have no ill will towards others that do enjoy gambling.

2 Likes

Well, the house still wins in poker; they just do so without any risk on their part by taking the rake.

So, if you do win money, you’re winning it off of other players. If you lose money, though, some portion of the money you lost went to the house, and if you lost more than that, the rest of the money you lost went to other players.

No. Kassouf absolutely thinks he is winning. He’s taking Benger’s feigned hesitation and silence at face value (as weakness). So Kassouf is trying to goad Benger to re-raising him. When Benger does reraise him, its a rather small amount, less expensive than pushing all-in: its suspicious, almost as if Benger wanted a call. So, then Kassouf spends 10 minutes berating Benger for information-- and makes the completely wrong analysis, pushing all in versus Benger’s AA. Kassouf could have saved the inhabitants of Earth 10 minutes of exposure to his toxic personality and pushed all-in more quickly.

That being said, when you’re heads-up AA v KK its almost impossible to fold KK in this situation. Its very hard to ever know your opponent has the AA; it’s completely unextraordinary for two players to be all-in, AA v KK.

1 Like

Yes, and the people who sold pails and blankets during the Gold Rush were the true winners.

Except you didnt mean it that way. You implied “If you played long enough, you will always lose all your money.” A negative expectation of value. Which is not applicable to games of skill, like poker, where there can be a positive expectation of value.

I implied whatnow?

I’m re-reading the three sentences I’ve written in this thread, and I can’t make that inference.

1 Like

That’s a nice perspective on it.

1 Like

They may be conflating you and I. I implied that earlier but have been educated. Not enough to want to play anything, but educated nevertheless.

1 Like

Agreed but it is interesting to think about what makes a skilled player win over time. High level poker players have an interesting concept called “variance”. Simply put it means that if however many people play just a few hands, luck will be a big factor. But the more hands they play the more luck will be evenly distributed and the better players will tend to win

The same concept is at play in games where the house has an advantage. In blackjack I think the house has something like a 5% advantage over someone applying perfect blackjack theory, and maybe 10% over your average shmo. If they play just a few hands the shmo could get lucky, but if they play a few hundred the shmo is likely to lose 10% compounded until you have a broke shmo.

One of the other players made an interesting point after kassouf lost this hand. He said kassouf’s “speech play” worked well for him earlier and was probably mostly responsible for getting him into the later rounds. But the reason it became particularly annoying was that it wasn’t working at all anymore, it was just purely obnoxious. It’s one thing if it’s obnoxious but effective, another if it’s merely obnoxious.

Still what an interesting phenomenon kassouf was. I think people will be saying “nine high like a boss!” at pokers tables for years in honor of him.

It reminds me of a book… The protagonist ends up in a one-on-one poker game against a professional player for an obscene amount of money (the circumstances leading up to this game can only be described as “shenanigans”), and decides to not even look at his cards, but to go all-in on the first hand. All of the skill in the universe can’t change the cards that you’re dealt (short of cheating). The professional goes along with it, because he genuinely has an excellent hand, and that highly-hyped game ends after just the one hand.

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.