Final Table Takedown - Shaun Deeb Terrorizes the Final Table With Scary Folds and Freaky Calls

Shaun Deeb, 24, has been known as the hardest-working man in poker, at least when it comes to the volume that he puts in online, day in and day out. He has made a name for himself unlike any other online pro. Hailing from Troy, New York, he began playing poker at the age of 19 by depositing a mere $30 into an online poker room. Within two weeks, his bankroll was up to $33,000. Deeb has numerous tournament victories to his name; two of the most noteworthy are the Full Tilt Online Poker Series IX event No. 9, for $115,014, and the World Championship of Online Poker event No. 25, for $114,113. He is routinely ranked as one of the top online players in the world. On Sept. 14, 2010, he finished first in the WCOOP event No. 28, for a $243,610 win. This past January, he scored a monster win in the Full Tilt Poker $1,000 no-limit hold’em Monday event, for $312,610. In total, he has more than $5 million in career tournament cashes. He also is a coach at livepokertraining.com, and will host a tournament seminar at the Aria Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on March 26 and 27.

Event: 2010 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker no-limit hold’em event No. 28
Players in the Event: 1,433
Buy-in: $1,000
First Prize: $243,610
Finish: First

Hand No. 1

Key Concepts: Knowing when to fold; paying close attention to an opponent’s image and how he perceives you and your opening hand range

Craig Tapscott: Set up this final table for us, Shaun.

Shaun Deeb: I’m minimum-raising and calling a lot of my opening hand range from early position with my image preflop being so aggressive. But my image toward the last few tables of this WCOOP event was on the tighter side, due mostly to the fact that Greg “DuckU” Hobson had position on me all of day two. He had a lot of chips, and presented me with a lot of tough decisions throughout the day. So, the history and flow going on at the table was very important to my decision-making process in this hand. I was the second-shortest stack at the table, I believe.

Shaun Deeb raises from early position to 40,000 with the A♠ Q♠. The villain reraises to 100,000 from the big blind. Deeb tanks, and folds. The villain wins the pot of 88,000.

CT: Can you explain what you were thinking in this situation, and what caused you to fold?

SD: I took a lot of time before I decided to fold. In more than 95 percent of tournament situations, I’m raising and going with this hand if reraised, but I just knew that this guy didn’t expect me to be folding many hands in my spot. So, his three-bet, which he’s almost committed to calling versus my stack if I shove, is usually heavily weighted toward value hands. I didn’t see A-J or K-Q in his three-bet calling range, so I folded my hand. And thanks to the replayer on PokerStars, I later found out that he had K-K, and also that two aces were folded preflop. So, my equity was really low.

CT: Very nice fold.

SD: Thanks. Good folds like this keep you around during a final table to get a pay jump or three. Don’t try to win the tourney every hand of the final table; just accumulate and survive, and let your opponents make the mistakes.

CT: You’ve played thousands of tournaments online. What are the most common mistakes that you see players make when they reach the final table?

SD: I think people are too afraid to risk a small amount in chips to win a pot preflop or post-flop; every little bit of momentum helps. Sometimes, that also helps you to get paid when you finally make a hand.

Hand No. 2

Key Concepts: Knowing your own table image; re-evaluating an opponent’s hand range once the river has been dealt

CT: Has anything changed since that first hand in regard to table dynamics at this point in the tournament?

SD: My image has changed a lot since the start of the final table. I’ve now become very aggressive, opening a lot of pots and playing post-flop a lot more as my stack has grown. My opponent is very tough and European, which usually means a lot of three-bets, and he’s not a fan of folding. And he will try to bluff me if I give him a chance to do so.

CT: Was there anything specific that you were picking up on as the match progressed?

SD: I had noticed during our match that he wasn’t folding to bets enough, so I expected a large floating range. I thought he was raising some of his value range on the flop, too.

The villain raises to 120,000 from the button. Deeb reraises to 282,034 with the K♦ 2♦. The villain calls.

SD: My guess is that he would have folded 60 percent of the time here to my reraise. He was raising 80 percent of his buttons, which gives you an idea of what his range is.

CT: Since you’ve seen thousands and thousands of hands, how accurately do you assign a hand range to a villain when he calls in this spot?

SD: I go by frequencies. Since he was folding to more than half of my three-bets, I knew that his range was mostly suited cards or big Broadway hands. Then, I keep reducing or widening his range based on action. It’s a tough skill to translate to others, since it’s so hard to truly know. It’s a guessing game for anyone. But I use every showdown to learn as much as I can, and adjust my thinking if someone’s hand range is merged, polarized, or just plain crazy.

Flop: J♥ 5♦ 3♣ (pot: 579,068)

Deeb bets 210,304.

SD: I continuation-bet for less than I three-bet preflop, which I was often doing when it got down to heads-up play.

The villain calls.

Turn: J♦ (pot: 999,676)

CT: Is this a good card for your perceived range in your opponent’s eyes?

SD: It’s a really good card to barrel in this spot, as the number of value hands in my opponent’s hand-range combinations drops. And if he has some small-pair hand on the board and thinks I had top pair, he’s now drawing dead.

Deeb bets 377,294. The villain calls.

CT: Now you have me curious. What’s the plan now that he has called you every step of the way?

SD: I was planning on bluffing the river, pretty much regardless of what came.

River: 2♣ (pot: 1,754,264)

SD: Then, a very rare card came off. It was the 2♣, giving me a pair, finally. Now, this card does improve some of his straight-draw hands that were double-floating, but I felt that given our dynamics, if he had A-5 or 4-3 suited, he wasn’t going to fold to a bet, and probably wouldn’t value-bet some of his weaker showdown hands.

Deeb checks. The villain bets 980,600.

CT: Can you even think of calling?

SD: To tell you the truth, I was thinking the hand range that he was representing was too small a portion of his overall range that got to the river, and now he has to bet all of his unpaired hands that got this far. So …

Deeb calls. The villain reveals the 7♥ 6♥. Deeb wins the pot of 3,715,464.

SD: That pot propelled me into the chip lead, and after a few more hands, I was able to take down the victory for my biggest score up to that point in time.

CT: Still, I find that to be a crazy call, but obviously the right play. Help me out here. What made you think he got to the river with no pair? Give us more to go on as to how you could make such a call in this spot?

SD: Well, it was just an observation of his ranges post-flop. He wasn’t folding much to earlier bets by me, so I knew that he had more than just top-pair types of hands in his calling range. I knew that any hand with equity and a few without it were still there by the river. And no one calls twice with those hands and checks back the river without showdown value. I thought any hand besides A-4 and 6-4 that improved by the river card would have checked. Sure, sometimes an A-2 type of hand here bluffs me, but my image wasn’t of folding strong pairs to him here. So, I doubt that he would be turning a low pair into a bluff, as he expects me to call with any two-pair hand I got to the river with. ♠