Poker After Dark

Poker After Dark (PAD) is a hit show on NBC that is aired six days a week at 2 a.m. I really love PAD, and the fact that it shows most of the hands that we play in a given session. Some people prefer “highlight poker,” in which only the bigger or more meaningful pots are shown, but I love the slower pace of PAD. The pace shown is the actual pace of a game, and the banter is priceless! PAD was created in the mold of the old days, when a bunch of us would sit around and play high-stakes poker while we talked about philosophy and politics, and made interesting side bets.

In a PAD cash game that was aired recently, quite a few interesting hands came up, and I’m going to discuss one of those hands. The theme of the show was “Hellmuth Bashers,” and the game featured Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari, Tom “Durrrr” Dwan, Phil Laak, Kenny Tran, Bob Safai, and me.

With the blinds at $200-$400, I was the first to act and decided to call $400 with A-7. Although I was up around $130,000 for the session, during the previous hour of play, I had been getting some bad cards, and also had experienced some bad luck; I had been up more than $150,000 an hour earlier. I decided that it was about time to make a move.

Safai called $400 right behind me, and Laak raised, making it $2,200 to go. Durrrr called, The Magician called, and Tran called. I studied Laak — looking for weakness or strength — and decided that I could probably win the pot if I made a huge reraise. One reason that I thought that I could win the pot right then and there with a big raise was that I had been merely calling bets from early position with some strong hands, like Q-Q, and I knew that the table knew that. After reading weakness in Laak and the rest of the table, I made up my mind that now was the time to make a move, and I announced, “I raise $15,000 more.”

Safai and Laak folded, but, surprisingly, Durrrr called. Everyone else folded, and the flop came down J43. I decided that Durrrr probably had a pocket pair, and that it would be hard to bluff him out, so I checked, and Durrrr checked behind me. The turn card was the 6 (I now had a gutshot-straight draw; I needed a 5 to make a straight), and I mulled over my options. If Durrrr had a pocket pair, he certainly was going to call any bet that I made. But what if he had K-Q or a hand similar to that, which I could actually beat with my A-7? I decided that I had to bet something, because if I checked, I felt that Durrrr would probably bet and force me to fold my weak hand. I decided on a weak $7,000 bet, into a pot of roughly $44,000. Durrrr called, and the last card was a 9. Now, I gave up. I mean, what were the chances that I could bluff Durrrr out of this pot now? I thought, slim and none.

When Durrrr checked behind me, I said, “I think you win.”

He said, “No, I think you win.”

I immediately flipped my lousy A-7 faceup, and Durrrr said, “You got it.” I was shocked, and the whole table was shocked as I gathered in the pot of nearly $60,000.

I believe the reason that Durrrr checked on the end — he later told me that he had the Q 2 — was that he thought he couldn’t bluff me. I’m sure that one reason he thought that he couldn’t bluff me was this: I check a lot of strong hands on the last round of betting, to induce others to try to bluff me. In any case, winning this pot seemed to give me some positive momentum, and I went on to win $275,000 for the session!

Learn more about Phil by going to his website, www.PhilHellmuth.com, and visit his webstore at www.PokerBrat.com.