Strategy Snapshot: Brother Runs Zig Down

Hac "trex313" Dang, of the infamous Dang and Dang Poker Destruction Co., hits up Ilari "ziigmund" Sahamies for $200k in this week's edition of the snapshot.

(Hand history and stats from PL.com MarketPulse Biggest Pots section.)

Players: Hac "trex313" Dang vs. Illari "ziigmund" Sahamies

Game: $300/$600 No-Limit Hold'em, heads-up, Full Tilt Poker

Stack Sizes: trex313 $103,400; ziigmund $296,776

The Setup

ziigmund raises it up from the button/small blind to $1,800. trex313 decides to fight fire with fire and three-bets from the small blind to $6,600.

ziigmund, never one to shy away from a challenge, flat-calls and they see a flop of 7 8 A. trex313 continuation bets $9,200 and ziigmund once again smooth-calls. The turn brings the K, and trex313 tanks for a moment before betting $22,000.

ziigmund almost instantly shoves all-in. trex313 makes the call for his remaining $65,600. ziigmund turns over A 2 and is ahead of trex313's pair and a flush draw with K T.

The river comes off the K and trex313 hits triple kings to beat the aces of ziigmund and scoop a $206,799 pot.

The Breakdown

ziigmund makes the standard button raise with A 2 - a hand that is far better than his actual button-raising range. trex313, knowing ziigmund's button range is massive, makes a three-bet with K T to $6,600.

ziigmund elects to smooth-call because he likes to see flops with a wide number of hands and, he figures, because trex313's three-bet does not necessarily mean he can beat ace-high.

The flop of 7 8 A is a good one for trex313; it gives him the nut flush draw and he chooses to continuation bet $9,200. ziigmund also hits the flop hard with top pair, which is usually good at showdown heads-up. He decides to try and let the Dang brother hang himself and smooth-calls.

The turn drops down the K. This now gives trex313 second pair to go along with his nut flush draw. The pot is $31,600 and trex313 bets $22,000 - about two-thirds the pot size.

ziigmund now feels it's time to spring the trap and shoves all-in. He makes this play because he's usually ahead of trex313's range. His top pair is expected to be good at showdown and the pot is already large.

At this point trex313 doesn't have much of a decision. He has already committed a good portion of his stack to the pot. As the pot stands right now there is $141,119 in it with ziigmund's shove. He has to call $65,600 more so he is getting a little better than 2-1 on his call.

His flush draw is nine outs and if he assumes that ziigmund has one pair of aces then he has an additional two kings and three tens for a total of 14 outs. To break even he would need to be getting 3.2-1 on this turn.

This is of course if he knows ziigmund has a pair of aces. Since trex313 can only put ziigmund on a range and not an exact hand, he must also include some hands in ziigmund's range that he can beat.

We all know that ziigmund can get real out of line from time to time. His turn shove can be a variety of things. It could be a smaller flush draw, it could be a straight draw, it could be a smaller one-pair type hand.

trex313 feels that his hand stacks up very well against ziigmund's - he could very well be ahead and those times he isn't, he has his large draw. This makes the call fairly easy for the Dang brother.

He was probably slightly disappointed when he saw ziigmund's hand but luckily the river came up with one of his 14 outs and he earns the $206,799 pot - the seventh-biggest pot online this week - fair and square.

To see more hand histories from their session, or more of the Top 100 biggest pots online over the last day, week, month and year, jump to the PokerListings.com MarketPulse section.

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