No, have you seen Phil Ivey play before, some of his decisions preflop are just plain bad.

I remember him calling an all in (the other player had him covered) with AK, and Ivey still have like 35-40bb, didn't hit either an A or K, and got knocked out (this was an online tourney, so maybe Phil didn't take it too seriously).

I've also seen him call all-ins with hands like J9.

In the wsop main event, he called down someone's all in with pocket 8's, while they still had 20bb left, fortunately his opponent had AQ and Ivey won the hand. Still a terrible call.


Ivey does seem to take more coin flips then necessary, and doesn't seem to know the logic behind calling all-ins preflop. Still, he's definately got the best post flop skills in the world

Also, as a side note, a lot of players are scared to play Ivey post flop, so Ivey may see a lot more all-ins preflop than a typical person...

which may be why Phil calls all-ins so lightly some times.

Kill Phil was based around that theory, go all in because you're not going to beat this person post flop.

So their may be rationale as to why Phil plays like that.

This is very lazy thinking. Some things are bad, no matter who does them. I believe that many (but not all) situations in poker have correct decisions, and incorrect decisions.

no u



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Seriously, though, the call probably has a cEV of around -1 BB assuming that UTG is shoving any pair, AQ, AK, and AJs. Given the prize structure, it's probably a +EV call even if UTG isn't shoving baby pairs.

i think phil ivey just laughs at all these online pros overanalyzing every situation, he owns some of FTP shares, he has the money to not be so serious all the time and just gamble. that is probably why he wins, no stress, have the knowledge to play, and unlimited bankroll. as he said, poker is such a guessing game, there is really no right way to play, as long as you don't tilt. his maniac image allows him to get called so often, he could have air 50%, something 50%.

All of us are limited in the degree that we can evaluate Ivey's ability. If you're able to judge the correctness of all of his plays, you should be able to play near his level. Most of what we have to go by is results. He's almost certainly extremely good, but we really can't tell how much of that is due to positive variance. I'd guess he's probably running a decent amount above expectation simply because this is likely to be the case for anyone near the top in results for any game with luck involved.

There is another side to the coin of Ivey playing so bad, as people in this thread keep mentioning.

That when you are in a hand with him, based on all these 'bad' plays, he will be impossible for you to read.

On the other hand, most of the people in this thread so critical of Ivey, he would be able to read you like a book.

Thus, his edge over you would be pretty good.

I also think many in this thread are making the mistake of isolating a hand and then examining it. But the real examination would involve studying his interaction with the table over the course of the hours he played. That interaction + his reads + his hands + his table image = his playing decisions.

So when you 'trap' him many times you discover that it is you who was trapped, and you will be one of many on the rail, complaining about how he got 'lucky' on you...

Sure, nit pick on this hand and that hand, yada yada yada, and miss what is really going on.

Poker is more than isolated hands taken out of context. And IMO, when you are trying to evaluate the play of someone of his level, you need the context and that context is the hours of play and reads he's made and his table image.

im not sure if it was mentioned yet in this thread but my view is that Phil game selects better than anyone. theres an interview with him (searchable on u-tube) where he states that sometimes he may play only a short while, while other times if he feels his villans are tilting he'll play for days.

also Phil is a very smart guy, he may not have the degrees of an Andy Block or Ferguson, but the people who know him well like Barry G and who play with him like Galfond, always mention that hes just a stone smart guy. this is obvious when he goes out and takes down bracelets in games he rarely plays,

raw skill/intelligence and like others have mentioned, a certain degree of fearlessness/ gamble. he knows no matter how hard the hit he can win it back. I think Dwan has this same characteristic. good thread.

Randy Moss.





Generally I'd agree with you ....... but from time to time freakish talents come along who it seems can do w/e they want.

Your work in this thread is the most incredible effort I've ever seen that was invested in something that will never, ever matter.

it's clear that he loves poker and has obviously dedicated his life to it. anybody can be good at it if they put their mind and effort to it - you might not be as good as him but you can certainly get close.

we're all flesh and bone but some people are just born with a certain edge over somebody. and that's what makes them different. could ivey get into the NBA if he put his mind to it? ofc. would he be as good as MJ? no, because his frame isn't as athletic as MJs was but that doesn't mean he couldn't drop 20 per game if he tried hard enough.

so i imagine Ivey has started poker at a very young age and always just wanted to play. he was always just thinking cards, cards, cards, should i raise the turn if he checks and the flop was xxx, should i do this, what happens if i do that?.. and just tried it. he must've been busto for the majority of his teens and didn't quit even when he was about to fall asleep behind the table.

every known scientist, sportsman,... has dedicated his life to a certain proffesion and made it because they did so. I just read Hendrix's biography, the dude was playing guitar instead of going to school all day every day, he was touring USA for 4 years with nothing to eat, he had to pawn his guitar a lot of times so he could have something to eat... and all he wanted was to play the guitar, nothing else. and i think it was einstein who said it: succes is 1% talent and 99% work. so talent doesn't really mean **** if you don't work hard for it.

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Then that speaks of how poor your imagination and creativity is buddy!

Because at the very least you can start many discussions based on my examples on topics that come to tournament poker very often such as;

1) What hands do you play UTG when down to 10bb?
2) With what hands you call a UTG raise of stack 10bb from the blinds when covering the guy 3 to 1 or so . Does it ever matter at such point to play sub coin flips to try to eliminate him or do you actually help create a monster this way?
3) What hands do you steal with from cutoff in a tourney if you are prepared to call an all in up to effective stack 20bb from one of the 3 left to act. That way you wont have to wait the many min Ivey used to call with A8o (what a call really!) or maybe use those minutes to arrive at a proper fold by collecting data from his actions (good luck with that overrated post-all in reading garbageology)!

4) It is possible to exploit guys like Ivey at wsop big time so dont ever feel the sligthest fear to push against him with solid hands if he covers you !
He is your ticket to double or triple up town!

5) Spark debate on what is the worth of a stack at the hands of a better player and whether it makes any sense for such player to enter near 0 chip EV all ins or even negative ones in a field of weaker players that occasioanlly do ******ed things. Is it even ever possible to skip slightly plus chip EV all ins since you generally will exploit their mistakes later meaning every move from the opponent is not at 0bb/h rate of relative error (like ICM assumes) but actually such very negative average that you can now afford a small negative EV fold here (if that is the case , in Ivey's situations most examples were actually negative EV so not even an issue)

6) Is it possible doing a few ******ed loose thing here and there can produce for you in a tournament future huge plus EV situations because of that image or the savings you have on your blinds from stealers you now have discouraged , to compensate you? If so what is the minimum % of your stack you should be investing in such at face stupid looking ideas in terms of risk of ruin. Do you actually gain anything by such stunts? In cash games you do but what is the minimum for such tolerance for coin flips at tourneys? 10% of your stack ? 20% , 50%?

7) Spark a debate on what hands from UTG when down to 10bb are not all in but rather a raise to 3-4bb.

8) If down to 20bb and already in the money what hands do you go all in against a raise from cutoff if you are the small blind . Solve the game theory optimal problem there for both parties.


9) Is the way Hellmuth played his tourney elimination Aces preflop with a flat call of 3bb from mid position with 5 left to act ever reasonable for this situation or is the reraise pretty much a standard thing for a 20 bb stack quality player that tends to be better than his opponents in tournament EV?

One can go on and on with countless of projects that such events can promote you to think about so that when you play live can have some solid understanding and supply your game there with some intuition that is not based on the totally ridiculous for a superior brain concept of the experience acquired after millions of hands which usually takes a lifetime. Human beings ought to be better than rats in how they arrive at corect decision and not depend so heavily on trial and error in complex games like poker.


You know what everyone who mocks my long posts? I dont care. The first post is lengthy because the hands are presented in the detail they were played. I wrote my post to study the guy at this year's WSOP myself out of curiosity. I write posts for my own learning benefit first.

What is the object of a thread about Ivey if we cant study examples from his game to get inside his thinking and either bring down a peg the attitude that this guy is invincible or learn and decipher that what he does at surface seems wrong a times but it achieves later others results that are worthy (yes show how here i am interested ) .

To better understand how a great player works you need examples. Because there you have it now! If all the bad things ever Ivey does while playing is in a few of these hands then yes this is your answer why he is such a good player. Not because he makes no errors but because the average player makes a ton of subtle errors actually and he has managed to have fewer and even capitalize on them later (if you can show that). Maybe he even knows that if your own game has a few errors you invite the other guys to play in such a way that their errors are larger now in tougher spots. If so spark a debate on this and finally for once decipher what makes a somewhat loose player a winner. Or maybe have the courage to figure out that even Ivey can get better and he does so by playing all his life. A well balanced cash game does involve certain locally negative EV choices to balance overall match EV. Maybe its in a way similar to that in a tournament too. I find it hard to imagine how but if you can show me how a few bad all ins here and there help you later then yes we have done a decent job to illuminate further proper tournament poker. Maybe its wrong to try to play in such a way that every hand is a plus EV (or rather maximum EV) action.

Bottom line i think we do a service to studying tournament poker by examining cases that appear to be negative EV for even players like Ivey. Maybe we are on to something here that i have yet to see in poker tournament books.

To me its amazing that moreover the fans this guy has it takes someone like me to actually put together hands he played that can further enhance our understanding of his nature. Maybe i am actually doing his image a better service than the thousands of yes men he has around him.

Nothing wrong with trying to spark debate but if your posts were a bit more concise they would probably have more sucess.
Also some of the hands seem like at worst only slightly -ev (though i'm not tourney expert, i play cash), and surely AK for <50bb is like extremely standard (and alot deeper in any situation with an aggresive dynamic)

hey you masque de Z, if you think that Ivey is making such huge mistakes when he's bluffing or going all-in with AK then you should shut your mouth and start learning some poker because you clearly have NO idea what the fundamentals of this game are.

From the rare times I've heard Ivey talk about his thought process, I'm pretty sure he's not sitting there thinking, 'ok, what are the odds? What are the adjusted ICM odds? Do I have a +cEV call?' It's probably something more like this:

'Seems close, let's think about the important stuff. What would calling/folding do to my image? What am I left with if I lose? What about if I win - can I start controlling the table a lot better with that stack size? Do I suspect someone has 3bet bluffed me recently trying to slow me down? What's the overall tournament situation? When do the blinds go up?' Etc.

So calling an all in with J9 against a player who has 8-10bb means what?

What about calling an all in against someone with 20bb left with 88?


I just don't know, seems kind of iffy to me. I mean calling an all in with AK with 35bb is very very marginal in my opinion, could go one way or another, but seems like Ivey is willing to gamble a little too much preflop to get his desired result of big stack so he can bully the table.

But I'm sure there is some logic behind what he's doing.

As a side note, when Ivey called someone's all in with J9, his opponent had AK, Ivey hit a 9 and won the hand, just to let you know.

Guy, did you not see my head asplode? Its not marginal at all.

yeah thats why 5 million hands fgators is also a top player... oh wait...
the truth is that most people have no shot at being successful at poker at all no matter how much they work. i think a lot of ivey success is related to starting early. the best in every matter, especially in all sorts of sports, chess have started practicing very very young.

Don't be ignorant. I said the most work, time, and effort, not the most hands. There is a difference.

I'm not going to be looking at this thread again, so I'll finish up with a quote from an article, and a link to it.


http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/21/maga...tune/index.htm

bump.

Don't know if this has been mentioned before, but I respect him for not writing a book.

He could make millions by sharing his secrets, his life story.
Why make millions when you can makes 10's of millions exploiting weaknesses~!!

I also think that his wife has something to do with his success too.

He's good because he doesn't spend all day on Facebook.

Couldn't you easily say the ability to apply yourself with hard work is a talent in itself?

by calling the AI with A8o, especially if he has some sort of read the guy is weak, who do you think will be 3 bet shoving him lightly in the future? by "senselessly gambling" here, as you put it maniac, he allows himself to be able to fearlessly steal on future occasions.

hardly sounds like a losing formula having the table as scared to play against you preflop as they are postflop.

you cannot look at these things in isolation

Cheat codes.....