Hand 2 Hand Combat -- Liv Boeree

In this month’s Hand 2 Hand Combat, European Poker Tour San Remo champion Liv Boeree discusses what she remembers to be a crucial hand against her final opponent Jakob Carlsson. Card Player also gave Carlsson the opportunity to have his say about the hand. However, until reading this, neither player knows what the other held or thought. Firstly, the hand…

At level 34 with blinds of 150,000-300,000, Carlsson raised to 600,000 preflop from the button and Boeree flat-called. The flop came J 5 4 and Boeree led out for 750,000. Carlsson made the call and the turn was dealt the 2. Boeree once again fired out, this time for 1,700,000, and Carlsson called once more. The A came on the river and Boeree bet 3,500,000. Carlsson mucked. Both players were then almost even in chips.

Boeree now recalls that she held K-9 or K-8. Carlsson is pretty sure he held J-10.

Analysis

Rebecca McAdam: Was Carlsson raising a lot preflop?

Liv Boeree: Yeah, every time it was his button he raised.

RM: Did you have an idea of his range at this stage?

LB: Yeah, it could have been absolutely anything. The thing is normally, my K-9, K-8 is above average, so I would three-bet, and I had been three-betting a lot. I had just gotten off the phone with Shaun Deeb and Allie [Prescott] over in Vegas because we just had a break, and they said, ‘Liv, we want to see you flatting out the big blind with your above average hands occasionally, and we want to see you, on a fairly dry board, weak lead into his raise, and be prepared to double barrel and maybe even triple barrel if you feel that he’s got something that maybe isn’t that strong.’

That was one thing, and the other thing I was thinking about was if he calls the first bet and calls the second bet, he’s going to be expecting me to shut down at some point, so if I was going to go through with it then I really, really had to make sure I was going through with it. By the time he had called the flop and the turn, it was slightly kamikaze but I was thinking I could put him on a range of either a middle pair like eights or nines or some kind of jack. If he even had a strong jack I think he would probably have called in the same way but I felt like he wasn’t that strong. He seemed very unsure about calling the turn bet so by the river I thought if I’m going to do this I’m going to have to bet really big and almost bet full pot.

Also the ace really helped. It was a good river for me. He could have felt that I was bluffing with ace-high, although to be fair by the turn I think he would have raised if he was thinking that. The river helped add another layer of pressure to the hand. I felt it was unlikely for him to have ace-high himself because I think he probably would have raised the turn. I wasn’t too scared of the ace on the river helping him, I felt it would help me more because if he did have something like a pair of jacks on the J-5-4 board or a middle pair like eights, nines, or sevens, it would be even harder for him to call, so if I fire out another big bet it would basically have been his entire tournament, and similarly it was a huge amount of my chips as well, so I would have been in really bad shape if he had called.

RM: Was the weak lead meant to make him question you and frustrate him a little?

LB: Well yes that was one of the main things because that was something he had never seen me do. It was something that would take him by surprise because he was obviously aware that I play very tight out of position, which is true, I do. This was probably the first time in the tournament where I had weak led at all.

RM: If you hadn’t been given that advice would you have three-bet preflop?

LB: Yeah quite possibly and then he could well have decided (because he would have had enough behind) to do a four-bet shove with enough fold equity. I have relatively little heads-up experience compared to someone like him, if I felt like I had the best hand pre and we were less than 40 big blinds deep each, which we were, I would most likely three-bet it if I was out of position.

RM: If he had of raised you on the turn or river, would you have mucked or come back at him?

LB: If he had reraised me on the turn that would have been fairly tricky and I think I would have just mucked. Obviously on the river, if he had come back at me, I would have just sworn a lot and been very upset because his reraise would have been like an under raise basically.

Jakob Carlsson’s response:

I had been told Liv played pretty good, tight poker beforehand so I didn’t know what to expect heads up really. If I recall correctly this was in the beginning of the heads up and I had still not played against her that much, considering we never played together before the final table.

In this hand I’m pretty sure I had J-10 and was kind of shocked when she led out on the flop. At the time I was almost convinced she flopped two pair plus, but of course hands like 7-6, 8-6 etc. are probably in her range as well. Something made me want to fold already on the flop but I felt like that would be pretty bad in game theory so I decided to call two streets and fold the river which is what happened in this hand.

RM: Did you not consider reraising to see where you were?

JC: Raising ever in the hand was not an option at all since that would lead nowhere. If she’s bluffing I want to keep her bluffing (well maybe not in this hand since I eventually folded), and if I have the worst hand I don’t want to invest more than necessary.

It’s hard to say without knowing all the whole cards etcetera but I’m pretty sure I was outplayed in the heads up and she probably ran a few bluffs on me, but I’m still happy with how I played my tournament in general and I want to give a big congrats to Liv!
Check out this month’s feature on San Remo and Monte Carlo to get further details on this event and its results.