Deeb-owned

Thursday, May 22, 2008

EPT Monte Carlo Part 2: Deeb-owned

By Sorel Mizzi | Poker Lifestyle

The EPT Grand Final had a structure similar to the WSOP which meant tons of play throughout the entire tournament.

At my table I recognized three players, Greg Raymer, who was to my immediate right, David Peters (dpeters online) to my immediate left and Maxime Villemure (eventual 3rd-place winner) a few seats to my left.

Just like every other EPT I've played this year, I had a very rocky start. I managed to chip down from 15,000 to 2,500 by first dinner break. The worst thing is there wasn't a single significant hand I played to get down that low.

Most of the pots I lost were simply spots where I would raise pre-flop, get called, make continuation bets and have to fold to raises. I was raising a fairly tight range early in the tournament as well, I just wasn't connecting with any flops and my opponents were either outplaying me or hitting big hands... I prefer to assume the latter.

First hand after dinner, I rush to my table barely in time to grab my hand before its taken away. At this point I have 2,600 at 100/200 blinds with 25 ante. Normally I would just fold in this spot on a 10-handed table, but I noticed that four people including the small blind hadn't returned from dinner so we were playing six-handed.

I decided to get creative and limp utg. The button, Maxime Villemure, who at this point I'm very impressed with and classify as a tricky/good player, made it 700 and when it came back to me I re-shoved.

This is another example of creating fold equity while representing a big hand. If I had just raised anything but all-in pre-flop, I would have had to fold to a shove which basically turns my KQ into 2-3o with the stack I had.

Greg Raymer: Playful wrist slapper.

So I shoved and unfortunately ran into aces. Fortunately, I hit two pair on the flop and held which doubled me up to 5k and created the momentum that would eventually allow me to win a big pot against Raymer and get me up to 50k after Day 1.

The Greg Raymer bustout hand happened like this; The previous hand right before busting out Raymer, Mel Judah opened for 600 in late position, button called and Raymer in the small blind called as well. I feigned looking at my cards but I had already decided I was going to reraise and I made it 3300.

They all folded and Raymer playfully slapped me on the wrist as a sign of frustration. The very next hand I get aces! I love when this happens :) I was pretty sure I was going to play a big pot with my hand.

Blinds still 100/200 with a $25 ante, five people limp. I make it 1700 from the small blind and get called in four spots including the big blind. Flop J-7-2 rainbow. I bet 4300, everyone folds to Raymer, and he calls with 12k behind.

Turn is a 4. I decide that shoving all-in on the turn would look like the weakest line and he'd have to call me with anything he calls the flop with. He thinks about it for a couple minutes and eventually calls with 6-7o and I scoop the 40k pot =).

The VERY last hand before the tournament ended for the day I was faced with a decision for my entire stack. Just when I thought I was finally going to make Day 2 of an EPT. Before the hand I had 25k and this guy had me covered. I had A7o on the button and the cutoff had limped in for 400.

I made it 1600 and he called. The flop was T-5-2 two spades. He checked after a long pause and I bet 2650. After examining my stack for 15-20 seconds, he called. The turn brought an ace of diamonds and at this point he bet out 5k.

I was pretty confused about his line, since I was the person representing the ace, took a moment and made the call. The river brought a non-spade 4 making the board (Ts-5s-2-A-4) and the player bet 15000 - leaving me with 500 if I made the call and was wrong.

I thought about it for a good five minutes and finally decided that because I couldn't put him on a hand he probably didn't have one. I made the call and he tabled 8-8, . That brought me up to 50k which wasn't a bad stack to end the day with.

Esfandiari: Not impressed with Mizzi's J-9.

Day 2

I'm happy with my table draw. I have two good players on my table but Antonio Esfandiari is on my right and Barry Greenstein is shortstacked.

Antonio has been raising a LOT in position and I have been letting him do so without confrontation every time. Finally, I make a stand in the small blind with J 9. He raises to 1600, I make it 4800, he reraises to 11000, and I consider my options and shove my remaining 30k stack.

Antonio looks disgusted and folds. I know everyone says don't show your cards, you're just giving away info. But I just had to do it! The looks on everyone's faces were priceless.

I managed to end the day with 203k without very many showdowns which obviously I was extremely happy with.

Day 3

I had an explosive start on Day 3. Within an hour I was up to about 400k. Unfortunately, I lost them almost as fast as I got them. There was one interesting hand where I had literally been raising 90% of hands and someone who hadn't been involved in many pots decided to call my early position 5500 raise at 1k/2k, with roughly 50k behind, which was obviously a little bit alarming to me.

I was holding A9 and decided that I would check fold if I missed the flop. The flop came down 6-8-2 rainbow so I checked with the intention of folding to any bet. He quickly checked behind. The turn brought a 9, I took a stab of 6500.

He instantly moved all-in for about 45k more. I thought about this for a while. Pre-flop, I thought he might be slowplaying a big pair but when he checked the flop I didn't think he was sophisticated or ballsy enough to check an overpair.

So when I bet the turn and he shoved it didn't really make sense for him to have me beat - the only hand that made sense would be some sort of draw or complete air. I made the call and he flipped over J T and spiked the 10 on the river. That was a minor setback, nothing big.

Mizzi: Usually good at not letting opponents outplay him. But not here.

I had another interesting hand with James Campbell (aka PokerPro33) where he had raised me from the SB to 6000 and I called on the BB with A5. The flop came A-5-2 all clubs. He bet 8000. I made the terrible mistake of making it 24k and not long after, he re-raised me to 80k.

I really should have just called. There's no point in me three-betting in that spot when I know I'm not going to call this particular player if he goes over the top. It's like turning my hand into air.

There are a lot of cards that would slow him down on the turn if he had a medium flush and it's also possible that he could have a hand like AK with the king of clubs, and by raising the flop I open myself up to the opportunity of getting outplayed.

Deeb Owns My Soul

One thing I'm good at doing is not giving my opponents a chance to outplay me, but that's exactly what I did in this hand. Shortly after, the table broke to my disappointment and I was sat to the left of Freddy Deeb.

For the first 45 minutes on the table, Freddy and I were pretty much taking turns stealing blinds and I occasionally re-popped him when I felt that he wasn't letting me open as much as I wanted to.

Freddy Deeb is an amazing tournament player. Often you see all these guys on TV that are really blown up to look a lot better than they are but Freddy Deeb is not one of them. He's very solid and plays the situation very well. Unfortunately, I didn't know that until after he owned my soul :(.

Or maybe I owned my own soul? I don't know, you be the judge. At 1500/3000 on the EXACT bubble (one more till the money) I made it 7700 from UTG with T 7. It's folded all the way around to Freddy Deeb in the BB and he makes it 38k to go with about 130k behind.

I have about 400k at this point and decide to ship it in and he insta-calls me with aces. Now, before you make judgments on how bad of a play this is, there are a couple of things to consider.

First of all, I remember thinking in my head that this is the spot where Freddy Deeb is going to repop me. I envisioned that had it been folded around to Freddy Deeb he would reraise me with any two cards.

Also his reraise amount kind of said "NO, you're not the table captain, I'm the table captain, don't raise MY blinds. Please fold." Obviously I know that Freddy Deeb doesn't care about the bubble but he might think that I do.

Kassem "Freddy" Deeb: Lots of overrated TV players out there, but Freddy isn't one of them.

Sometimes I think about things way too deep and eventually sway away from my initial read (and it's usually when I think I should fold and then convince myself to call). This wasn't one of those situations, I was actually pretty confident he would fold.

In my head, shoving seemed like the best play, and there was nothing I could do to change that, I was already decided. Also I should say that I had been raising in early position a lot so he probably correctly gave my UTG raise as much value as a button raise.

Had I thought about the situation on a simple and more practical level that a guy who likes to see a lot of flops is re-raising my UTG raise from the BB nine-handed, I might have released my ten high. After this hand, my image was crushed and I was getting repopped almost half the time I opened.

I finally took a stand with AJ suited and ran into AK and that was it for me. Finished 55th :(. Overall obviously I'm quite disappointed. At least I was smart enough to swap some % with Isaac Baron (westmenloaa). He's an amazing player and one of the few players I would ever swap % with.

Post-Tourney Prop Betting

The next day after the tournament was over we all got really drunk and Antonio Esfandiari and I started making ridiculous/random prop bets. Anything from roshambo, to me betting that his friend couldn't get 10 people to lay on the ground within two minutes.

It was all just for fun. I think he ended up winning a few hundred Euros overall. Then we made a much more serious bet, for considerably more money. The whole bet started when I was talking about a story I heard where a lady made several million in Vegas throwing craps by perfecting the number she wanted to throw at a very high success rate.

Then I thought to myself, hey if a human being could roll dice with the same outcome almost every time, I bet a machine could perfect a roll or flip. So I proposed this question to the crowd:

If you could build a machine whose purpose was to flip coins and every time it flipped the coin EVERY variable including but not limited to room pressure, gravity, wind, etc etc. stayed the same, would the coin flip the same way and land on the same side every time?

Initially the crowd seemed split, half of them thinking it would, the other half thinking it wouldn't. I bet that it would.flip on the same side every time given the circumstances. Antonio bet that it wouldn't and seemed scarily confident.

Things to note:

1. Coin has to be flipped from at least 1 ft
2. The coin, machine and floor stay the same. There is no damage to either of them that would result in a slight difference in the flip NO VARIABLES
3. This is theoretical, the machine doesn't actually have to be built (but I still think it can be)

Ryan Daut: "Pisses excellence."

Originally I was going to bet 1000 Euros with Antonio but after hearing that my friends Johannes Straussman and Ryan Daut wanted to take a piece of my action on the bet, how could I not bump it up to an even 10k?

For those of you that don't know Johannes or Ryan, they both piss excellence. I've never seen either of them make a prop bet unless they were sure they were going to win or had a significant edge.

In order to conclude the bet we have to ask a physics professor at a well-respected university (Harvard, Yale, etc). I've been too lazy to actually ask but I'm sure I will get on it in the next couple of months while we're both in Vegas.

If any of my blog readers have an opinion about this, please feel free to post it in comments :) I'd love to hear your reasoning, especially if you think I'm wrong.

-- Sorel Mizzi

More blogs from Betfair Poker pro Sorel Mizzi:

• EPT Monte Carlo Part 1: Sit-And-Go Success
• EPT San Remo and the Future of Poker
• Winter Sports, Prop Bets and Warsaw Trip Report