Hand 2 Hand Combat -- Sorel Mizzi

Sorel Mizzi: It was day 2A and the blinds were about 600-1,200 with a 100 ante. Brandon Demes raised in early position to 3,200, and we had a lot of history — he was reraising me, I was reraising him. We know how each other plays and we’re also really good friends outside of poker.

Rebecca McAdam: Do you think that’s an advantage or disadvantage at the table because you know each other so well, but you may also not want to put each other out?

SM: Well it depends; if it’s a friend, like even somebody you’re not that close with, you dont expect that guy to play back at you when he shouldn’t, you just expect him to play his hand accordingly. We’re close enough that we almost want to knock each other out. So with Brandon it was more like we were gunning for each other, and I had position on him so that made it a lot easier.
He raised it to 3,200 from early positon and I called in middle position with threes, and another guy called from the cutoff. And he had been very active at the table as well.

RM: Are you not afraid of your pocket threes in that position with an early raise?

SM: Not really, we’re still deep — he has 350,000, I have 160,000 or 170,000, it’s such a small percent of my stack. If I call and flop a set, I know he’s the type of guy to pay me off.

RM: Is the plan just to call and see the flop then?

SM: Yes. Well, I mean, see what the flop is and then play accordingly. I wasn’t just looking for a set, I was just going to see what the flop was and then reevaluate.

Flop: 10 7 2

SM: There was three people in the pot and he bet 6,500.

RM: What are you thinking now?

SM: I’m thinking that he’s usually betting like 100 percent of his range. I have a guy behind me so that’s worrysome but at the same time I know he’s betting 100 percent of his range, and I know that if a scare card doesn’t come on the turn, he’ll probably check if he didn’t hit anything on the flop. I’m also floating him — I’m not just playing my hand for the hand value, I also plan on bluffing later streets if I do hit something that I could represent. I don’t necessarily believe that my hand is the best hand at this point, but it’s definitely possible that it is, and that compounded with the fact I’m floating him in position and I could take him off the hand if a good card comes for me, and I can bluff him aswell if a good card comes since I know hes betting 100 percent of his range there. That makes me make the call.

Mizzi calls.
Turn: 5
Demes checks.

SM: Now the board is 10-7-2-5 and he checks. So at this point I’m not giving him credit for that big of a hand. I mean he could be doing a lot of things — he could be pot-controlling it with a lower pair or he could be check-folding and just check-giving up. So I don’t know what he has yet but when he checks I know I can eliminate so many different hands from his range — I can eliminate aces, kings, queens, any set, or any top pair with any big kicker because I know he would bet them. It was very player dependent. I know this is the type of guy who would bet his top pair with any kicker, and even sometimes a middle pair with a decent kicker. So, he’s either pot-controlling a middle pair (which I think he would bet), or he’s just checking to give up.

River: J
Demes bets 14,000.

RM: It seems you already figured out what he would do, so with this river, you most likely feel safe?

SM: The jack is a semi-scare card because it completes one of the straights, and if he had two overcards he is definitely betting a jack, but I already made the assumption that he’s giving up or he’s pot-controlling a middle pair, and unless he had something like J-6, J-7, J-2, or something like that which I don’t think he does have, for him to bet 13,000 on the river with any of those middle pair hands would just be ridiculous, I don’t think he would ever do that. So it’s almost a brick in my opinion since I’ve decided that he was giving up, unless he was giving up and then he hit his Q-J or his J-2 and then decided to value-bet which is possible but it is unlikely. So, I just put him on absolute air and he bet 14,000, and I called. He had ace-high and I won.

Mizzi wins the pot with a pair of threes.

SM: Definitely something that helped my decision was he made a similar play versus the big blind a few orbits earlier, where he bet the flop, checked the turn, and bet the river. A lot of times when people check the turn, I just don’t believe they have a hand anymore when they do that. A lot of good players do that so that they want you to think that they don’t have a hand but they’re really value-betting, but I knew from the past that he would do that with a bluff because some other guy called him on the river, so I thought that factored in.

RM: Would you say that a lot of the time you play your opponent more so than your cards?

SM: It’s definitely a mix of both of them, but in this situation, a lot of it was because of player dependency.

Mizzi finished in 366th place for a payday of $27,469. He cashed five times at this year’s WSOP including in the main event for a total of $369,608.

Sorel Mizzi began his sprint up the online poker ranks in 2004 when he was better known as “Imper1um”, but instead of just being the latest in phenomenonal Internet kids who cause a stir and disappear, Mizzi made a name for himself and stuck around. Hitting the live scene with venom, he proved his talents there also with an abundance of cashes and final tables including second in the World Series of Poker Europe’s £5,000 pot-limit Omaha event in 2008, and again in 2009 at the WSOP in Vegas in the $5,000 pot-limit Omaha event. Due to narrowly missing out on a bracelet twice, Mizzi is hungrier than ever for a major win, and at 23 years of age, he is not content with having more than $2.4 million in lifetime winnings. The young Canadian now continues his hunt for first place.