This hand was played recently by Fedor Holz in 10K high-roller. Has some interesting verbal behavior from Chance Kornuth.
Quote:
Fedor Holz's extraordinary day is now over, with the young German making a pretty audacious call for his tournament life...and losing.
Holz got things started with a limp from the cutoff (also under the gun) and both Sergey Lebedev (small blind) and Chance Kornuth (big blind) came along. That took three of them to a flop of 4♣4♦2♣, which Lebedev checked.
Kornuth set the tone for the rest of the hand when he bet 120,000. Holz counted out a call, but Lebedev folded.
The 2♦ came on the turn and Kornuth bet 325,000 at his only opponent. Holz called. That took them to the 7♦ river and what would likely be a tournament-defining climax whatever happened next.
Holz had only about 1.2 million in his stack at this point. Kornuth had about 2.9 million. And Kornuth moved all in, covering Holz.
Holz took a long, long time about this decision. "I'm just happy you didn't snap-call," Kornuth said, taking a swig of water.
Holz then did call, and wanted to muck when Kornuth turned over his Q♣2♠. Holz knows the rules about called all-in bets, however, and showed his Q♥T♥. He was second best and out in fourth, winning €169,000. -- HS
This fits a pattern I talked about in my Verbal Poker Tells book. I had a chapter about "verbal expressions of relief after large bets/shoves are not called immediately." Generally, these will be said truthfully, with strong but not super-strong/nut hands. It's what I call a weak-hand statements, and bluffers will almost never make weak-hand statements; they don't want to weaken their range and make a call more likely.
In a vacuum, I'd be confident this is going to be a strong hand here almost always. It's possible, though, that Kornuth and Holz had a history of some verbal trickery. Like perhaps Kornuth had been saying other similar weak-hand statements (that usually when strength) when he was bluffing. I don't know about their history or Kornuth's usual behavior, so can't comment on that.
Someone on Twitter asked me if I thought pros and good players would be more likely to balance this kind of behavior. For some behavior, I'd say yes. But when it comes to this kind of thing, I think good players are just going to be silent or say neutral things in spots like this. It's pretty rare to be balanced with this kind of thing.
For one thing, Kornuth would have to be confident that Holz would interpret that kind of statement as strong. But it's hard to be confident of that kind of thing about an opponent, even one you've played a lot with.
Most players, even good players, if they're bluffing, are just not going to want to take a chance of making their opponent more suspicious, and this explains why even for good players this kind of hand-weakening behavior will mostly happen when they're strong and relaxed.
