The Poker Play Part I -- Vladimir Geshkenbein

Vladimir Geshkenbein recently got the attention of the poker world for his performance at the European Poker Tour Snowfest. Geshkenbein snowballed his way over 481 opponents to reach the €390,000 first prize. In this special edition of The Poker Play, the Russian discusses two key hands from the event (in a two-parter across today and tomorrow), and Card Player Europe also asks his opponents their thoughts on the hands in question.

Hand No. 1:

Vladimir Geshkenbein: Overall on day 1 I had a pretty nice table. It was a couple of hours into the game (but we were still deep because of the good EPT structure). I had about 120 big blinds. My image was pretty crazy, I had been opening a lot and barrelling a lot, so I was considered a bluff-monkey. So I get jacks UTG+2 and raise ‘em up!

Now the action folds to Jan Heitmann, he is sitting on the button. He is a very good German player and knows me pretty well. He was commentating on the German High Roller show, so he knows a lot about my game. He was kind of aggressive though, I noticed him three-bet bluffing a few times and trying to float/outplay other people. I haven’t been involved much with him yet. So the action goes back to him and after a few seconds he announces raise and puts out a three-bet.

Now I had a difficult decision: Obviously folding was out of the question, but should I call and see a flop this deep or should I four-bet and get it in? The problem here is that if I call the three-bet I am going to be out of position against an aggressive opponent. I will have to fold a lot of flops, and on the good flops (for example 10-high), I will still have to call at least two streets and put in more than half of my stack. So if he has Q-Q+ I’m still going to lose a big part of my stack.
Now the second option was to four-bet and get it in. I chose the more aggressive route and four-bet to my usual size (about 2.8x his raise). After going into the tank for about a minute he announces “all-in”. I was not happy about that, but because I had already made my decision to four-bet get it in before, I sighed and called. He asked, “Kings?” And was pretty surprised to see me turn over just pocket jacks (considering we were both over 100 BB’s deep). Sheepishly he turned over 6 4 for a complete bluff and was crushed by my jacks.

Jan Heitmann’s thoughts on the hand:

Basically, I knew Vladimir a little bit from commentating on the German High Rollers where he played very loose and aggressive, bluffing a lot and getting involved with a lot of speculative hands.

At the EPT Snowfest table, he was quite active and had raised the last four hands consecutively, giving up 3/4 versus a three-bet. So I figured, it was a good time to three-bet his open-raise with 6 4 in position. Once he four-bet, I thought he was likely to fight back at some time, given he had to give up so many times versus a three-bet in this orbit. I figured he might four-bet light and give up anything but his monsters.

I still had a nice stack, threatening almost his entire stack, so my fold equity was high versus all but his best hands. I five-bet-jammed and he called with jacks. In my opinion, the call with J-J is marginal if he does not think I am bluffing a lot in that spot. (I was playing my normal tight aggressive style up till then, not spewing any chips, I think.) Versus my five-bet-jamming range (AK+, QQ+) he only has around 35 percent equity.

However, thinking about the meta-game and having given up so many pots in the past at this table, he must call the push with J-J if he decides to four-bet in the first place. He also might have picked up a tell that I wasn’t strong.

All-in-all, I was semi-happy with the play. Obviously, it feels a lot better, if it works (or if I suck out). Maybe the spot was not quite as good as I thought at the time. But that is the beauty about poker — You learn something every time you play, and some answers still elude you.

Check back here for part II tomorrow when Geshkenbein takes on his final opponent Kevin Vandersmissen.

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