Durrrr's Biggest Pot

I'm constantly on the lookout for notable hands that are good examples of an important poker concept I feel my students could learn from. The hand that I discussed over the last two issues was a good example of what not to do. For a change of pace here I'll look at a hand I feel was brilliantly played.

Most people will need no introduction to Tom "durrrr" Dwan, this month's Card Player cover star. He is a young poker player from New Jersey that regularly plays and beats the highest stakes games available. Recently he issued a high stakes heads up challenge (the Million Dollar Challenge) that the likes of Phil Ivey and David Benyamine have taken him up on. There is a site called PokerTableRatings on which you can see hand histories of most of the high stakes games that take place on the Internet. You can break it down by player and see the biggest pots that each player has won and lost. The biggest pot that Durrrr won went like this.

The game was five-handed, with blinds of $500/$1,000. Durrrr has $327,000 in front of him, and most of the players cover him. From under the gun Durrrr made it $3,000 with pocket fours. The next person to act, Urindanger (another high stakes regular, real name Di Dang) made it $10,500 to go; a raise of $7,500. All the other players fold. Durrrr's raise is standard in any cash game, no matter what the stakes. Most winning tight-aggressive players at every limit from 5c/10c to $100/$200 will raise any pair from any position in a six-handed game. The next question is whether Durrrr should call Urindanger's reraise. Under normal circumstances this would be a close decision, however with 300 big blinds rather than the normal 100, a call is much more profitable because the implied odds are tripled. So Durrrr makes the call. So far, so standard.

The flop then comes A-7-4 rainbow. There is $22,500 in the pot, and the effective stack is $317,000. This is obviously a great spot for Durrrr. He has flopped a set and there is a good chance that his opponent has a good hand, like A-K or A-Q, which can pay him off. His aggressive image may also mean that under-pairs may give him some money. This is the type of situation that many players feel is impossible to play badly. However, that assumption is incorrect.

In spots like this you want to immediately come up with a plan to get all of your opponent's money. The best way to do this is to put in a good amount of money on each street. Leaving it to the river to put all the money in is usually a mistake, as would be taking a line that looks incredibly strong, like flat calling the flop and check raising the turn (at mid-stakes anyway).

What Durrrr actually did is to "donk" out at the pot for $17,600. To donk is a slightly disparaging turn that means to bet out into the preflop raiser not giving him a chance to continuation bet. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with this move, but only if you have a relatively balanced range for doing it with. The reason it has a bad reputation is because at low or mid-stakes, nearly all the players that do it are very poor players and their range is always very strong, or very weak. So in short, if you bet here with a set, you need to be betting out sometimes with bluffs, and sometimes with medium strength hands. If your range is too skewed either strongly or weakly, you will be very easy to play against. So I wouldn't recommend betting out to most players, but if you know what you are doing then it's fine.

Urindanger then raises to $44,200. Durrrr now has two choices. He can call or raise (folding is out of the question). On such a dry board with basically no draws (remember it was a three-bet pot, so although 6-5 is possible, it's unlikely) flat calling is fine. But the problem with flat calling is that it doesn't get much money into the pot. The problem with raising in this spot, is that it looks very strong. So if you think you can get the money in by the river easily, then flat calling is probably better in spots like this, which is what Durrrr did.

The turn is a king, putting a meaningless backdoor-heart draw on the board. There is $110,000 in the pot and $273,000 in the effective stack.

What Durrrr did next, though, is what is so important about this hand. Usually in a situation like this, when a player has been raised, he automatically checks to the raiser on the next street. However, Durrrr led out again into Urindanger. Leading out here again has two drawbacks.

Firstly, it makes it less likely that Urindanger will bluff him, although, if he does decide to bluff him, it will cost him his entire stack. Secondly, it is further evidence that Durrrr has a strong hand. However, what it does is recapture the betting lead, and allow Durrrr to control the size of the pot. Usually when you talk about controlling the size of the pot you mean keeping it small, but in this case he wants to make sure he gets all-in!

The amount he chose was excellent. He bet out $71,200. What durrrr is thinking about here, probably automatically and without any conscious effort, is setting up the pot so he can push the river - he is good enough to do this with bluffs as well, so it's not really a tell.

When he bets $71,200 here, he knows that $142,400 is going to go into the pot which already has $111,000 in it. This will make the pot $253,000, and leaves him with $201,000. This is perfect bet sizing, allowing the push on the river to be a normal sized bet. Many players in similar situations end up on the river with weird sized amounts, meaning they either have to over-bet the river, or not put their entire stack in. Any time you have the betting lead and you get to the river with 1.5 times the pot, you have made a mistake somewhere.

So what Durrrr did here that was so excellent was two things. Firstly he retook the betting lead on the turn, not allowing Urindanger to check behind or bet a small amount. And secondly he sized his flop and turn leads perfectly setting him up for the river push.

Daragh Thomas has made a living from poker over the last three years. He also coaches other players and writes extensively on the boards.ie poker forum, under the name hectorjelly.