all the monday morning quarterbacking ITT makes me queasy....

I also feel that there is more than a little patriotism fueling the "if not cheong, then racener" sentiment, given that cheong and racener player pretty much exactly opposite styles. I guess that's ok, just not my thing personally.

Ok maybe i'm the only one who thinks he should have called the 5-bet? This is my read:

1) Duhamel's 3-bet looks like it could be a regular "i've lost my patience with you stealing from me so i'm finally going to play back" ... the 4bet seems ok

2) But when Duhamel 5-bets... *MIN* 5-bets... it looks to me like he's 100% never going to fold preflop.

3) therefore, pushing all-in with A7 is clearly a bad choice since you *know* you're going to be called with a worse hand. The right choices are either fold or call.

4) Calling vs. folding leaves Cheung with a 68m stack vs. 75m stack. either way he's got essentially the same tournament position (i.e., about 60% of the leader's chips and about 2x chips of 3rd place) ... so calling doesn't really hurt too much.

5) 7.5m into 40m is about 5:1. So "mathematically" he doesn't need a high expectation of winning post-flop to still make this a good call.

6) Cheung apparently has an ability to win a lot of pots with aggression. So there's a reasonable chance he could bluff a win post-flop, and also a reasonable chance he could simply hit on the flop and pull ahead.

7) I'd expect to check-fold 60+% of the time post-flop. But the other 30-40% of the time I'd expect to either: Hit, or to see a bluffable board.

Perhaps i'm biased by seeing Duhamel's actual hole cards, but in Cheung's place, i think he could have represented AK post-flop, and won the pot if any A or K fell.

so much lol
u really cant be serious about what you wrote

I guess we will never know precisely what either was thinking at the time (likely to get a revisionist history in any interviews)...

Cheong opens... standard. Duhamel's 3bet is a pretty standard steal attempt, so since Cheong has been raising a bunch recently and just punishing the table... he goes for the re-steal 4-bet, probably thinking that Duhamel will fold out his steal attempts and call/5bet his real hands.

Then something stubborn/crazy happens and he really wants to win the pot... and then he's out.

I find Racener v. tilting, but he doesn't seem to have made any obvious mistakes. Had Racener had a bigger stack I imagine he would've played more like Cheong did.

I'm bad, hindsight is 20/20 etc., but the more I think about it the more spewy Cheong's play seems:

- The reason that Duhamel has been slated so much on these forums is that he frequently made 'bad' calls and sucked out. By the point that Duhamel 5-bets, his range is polarized to air and hands that someone like Duhamel is never going to fold to a 6-bet. I guess the hope is that Duhamel has something like a medium pair or KQ/AJ-type hands which he might randomly feel like 5-betting but which would fold in that spot?

- The fact that Duhamel's 5-bet was a minraise should surely set off alarm bells in Cheong's head. If Duhamel is weak, he won't want Cheong to interpret it as a signal to shove, and Cheong is almost certainly going to call a minraise with a decent hand (minraising as a bluff to give the impression of trying to induce is pretty bad, no?). If Duhamel is strong, he wants either to have his next action be interpreted by Cheong as an opportunity to shove or to have Cheong call OOP with a weak hand. Unless I'm missing something, the 5-bet minraise makes no sense unless Duhamel has a strong hand that he's willing to call shove with.

- Cheong, humble though he appears to be, knows that he is better than both Duhamel and Racener. There's no reason to get yourself in this sort of position when you can wait for a better spot (read: almost any other spot). It's not like Duhamel's chip lead is overwhelming if Cheong calls the 3-bet and then has to c/f or folds to the 5-bet.

The 6-bet shove seems like the sort of play that would be brilliant if Cheong were playing HU online against a clone of himself, but which is bad here.
Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

Would Helmuth fold QQ there?

- Putting your entire tournament on the line with A7o in that situation was insane, I don't care what anyone else says.
- With Cheong's chip position and the fact he was getting away with bullying Duhammel all day, why do this the one time he actually fights back?
- He should have folded and made back the 11 million lost in chips over the next 4 times he raised Duhammel off his hand with no fuss
- This was his tournament to lose as he was able to slowly chip up with no resistance most of the time but what I can describe as nothing else but ego told him he could pull this off.
- Racener should send him a real nice Christmas card thanking him for the extra 1.4 million bucks he gets for sneaking into heads up

is that a level? how about trying to punt his stack to affleck, and then grinder (calling AI with A9o)?

i think it was probably the most skill intensive final table in years. very very good play all around. duhamel 3 bet soooooooooo much. cheong had 4 bet some before that hand came up. duhamel could def have been making a play there. i think he took a bit too long though time banking to make a bluff there. i dont think he ever thinks that long with aces or kings. just bad timing. happens all the time in tournament poker. not a blow up at all imo

Or if he actually had KK+. I can pretty much fully agree to your view, his fold equity was very tiny, and the move wasn't necessasary at all with Raceners shortstack.

The 4bet makes sense, altough I still would've calmed down a bit and stop stealing so many pots when there is resistance, so I would've even prefered a fold to the 3bet. I can't see how he could interpret the 5bet as weakness, only because it was a min5bet.

Ignoring the rest of your weird post... are you saying that being called by a hand YOU KNOW is worse than yours is a bad thing??????????

he perceived it as weakness because he had been 4 betting him a lot and it seemed like about time when duhamel would play back. also with raceners stack size it makes it harder for cheong to play back to a 5bet.

Lokking back I do not know how duhamel can make that call. really what does he think he can beat? With what was at stake I think it was a terrible call. I'm not a fan of cheongs play but after he followed through with the five bet. I still don't beleive duhamel calls.

he obviously should have min-6bet and fold to the 7bet

yea funny funny. That call was as bad as his call against Affleck

The easy answer? He beats A7.

Duhamel snap called, he tought Cheong was bluffing and he was right. I'm not sure what's your point.

How about Grinder's horrible AI with pocket 3's? Looked like a Cada move to me.

Had you been watching Cheong play? No way anybody this side of Hellmuth folds Queens to Cheong in the spot.

it is probably the stupidest play of all time taking into account how much it cost him

he was a huge favourite to make top 2 and would have edge hu

Is there a youtube vid of it?

Meanwhile.....

Joseph Cheong is 4 million dollars and not giving a crap about this thread

Argh, Cheong just outleveled himself here. Simple as that. I doubt Duhamel is really going to be 5 bet bluffing against Cheong knowing that Cheong will either likely a) call and play postflop in position or b) 6 bet shove light. Coupled with the fact that Duhamel won't be playing back at Cheong that much with Racener being so short (1.4m pay jump once Racener is gone).

Haha nice try...if you could nit your way to another 1.4 million dollars (and all the possible sponsorship that comes with winning the ME) but decide to bluff off your stack I'm sure you'd be thinking about it every day for a long time.

Poker players don't really think "oh damn, I just won 4 million dollars". Poker players will always want more no matter what they win. His equity was probably something like 6-7m at least and he just decided to throw it away on a sick sick bluff against an opponent who has never fought back too much preflop.

duhamel had position on cheong

Oh, okay that makes everything even worse then. Duhamel isn't going to be bluffing ever after min 5 betting.