he's basically down down what he lost 2pr < 2pr. Although I think he lost more than he needed to on that hand.

I'm sure as soon as he gets 2p r> 2pr he'll be close to even or +. He's not playing badly.

This.

"Brilliant Minds" week is the only PAD week I've started watching but then just given up about half way through Tuesday. "Mayfair Club" runs it close in terms of awfulness, but although the poker was god-awful, there was actually quite a high frequency of interesting 'old school' stories being thrown around, which just manages to give it the edge over the math guys.

I mean, the table talk involved Chen and co having math discussions, and didn't Ferguson produce a sheet of paper with formulas/problems on it at some point? My god.

Hellmuth fTW

Don't just stare at it Hellmuth; eat it.

Phil Hellmuth may possibly be the worst cash game player on TV. I have respect for some of his sick plays he makes in tourneys, but seriously his cash game strategy is horrendous. When I saw him fold KJ suited, and JJ without making any plays to push out weak hands, I gave up on him.


The rest of the table is pretty standard fishy anyways. Put 1 average online cash player on that table and watch them all go bust.

oh yeah, this never really came up but i think antonio played that hand awful. he's valuebetting the river? mike has top pair only absolutely never. for god's sake mike check/raised an AJ7 flop and bet/called a raise on the Q turn. even if there's a parallel universe where mike matusow could show up with A10 there, he still folds the river just about every time, far more often than the times he has QJ beat and calls. it's not even close. i think antonio's turn raise is pretty weird due to similar reasoning, but on the river he's setting 15k on fire. other than that hand i thought AF has played pretty well, but that really just made me scratch my head and question what he was thinking

edit: i mean i can sort of see the turn raise since mike's bet looks pretty weak and antonio doesn't want to let MM price himself in to a draw. i still don't think i'd raise turn myself, but i can see the merit to it. just seems like a pretty easy check back on the river once he calls. i'm so confused as to what range he could ever give mike that allows him to profitably value bet river

Yea...I thought the turn raise was super thin. When mike c/r that flop, you have to thinking he's pretty polarized (although he c/r/f K7 on a K34r flop later in a limped pot) to two pair or air/draws. I guess he can have AQ or AK or something some times. The flop bet/call is probably pretty ambitious too. If he thinks he's getting c/r enough to call there, just checking back flop is probably better.

But, on the turn, when he bets <1/2 pot, I can understand Antonio thinking he has the weaker parts of his range, ie, draws. So, he raises for value.

But on the river when ever draw misses, I just don't see how there can be any value.

I think you're giving Matusow's bets/game too much credit. Against a player like Ferguson, Todd or Brandon, I'd agree. Matusow has a history of overplaying a lot of his weak holdings.

Pretty typical of Hellmuth to play weak passive at the start of a cash game, and then go aggrotard later on. I'm not saying this is good, but I would expect more action from him in the coming week.

The average online player is a microstakes loser, btw, and I doubt they'd beat this game.

i don't know where you're getting that from. mike plays very nitty in cash games. to a fault. borderline weaktight. but that being said, mike is also pretty decent at handreading and doing stuff that at least makes some sense. c/r-ing A10 for example on AJ7 two-tone HU vs antonio makes pretty much no sense and it's extremely doubtful he would ever do that. if you're thinking of, for example, the hand where he raised K7 on K43, that situation was completely different since it was a multiway pot and he's not really raising for value at all, but just to protect and take down the pot with a hand that's often good but also vulnerable (and also maybe the fact that he was a little steamed by then leaned him towards raising instead of calling). but there's none of these reasons to c/r A10 on AJ7. id be shocked if you could ever find a televised hand where mike has done that

the other thing about mike is that he's very good at folding. he likes making big folds. this goes hand in hand with the nittiness thing. so even if mike could have A10 or even AK, and i'd say he practically can't, he's very very rarely calling the river the way the hand played out

Is he really decent at hand reading?

I guess it depends on how much you believe his talk after he sees the hands revealed.

But, on his A8 vs 72 hand against Ferguson he says he put Chris on JJ, which is probably one of the most unlikely hand he can have.

Just to recap, Ferguson 3bets ip, and 3 barrels a AQT98 board.

I don't know why Mike thought the 8 was the was a bad card for him. If anything, i think it's better for him because the 8 is so bad for Ferguson's range and it's more likely to be a bluff. It's much more likely Mike has a hand Like AJ or QJ than Ferguson.

Ferguson might not even cbet AJ if he decided to even 3bet it preflop. He's unlikely to keep value betting it for value on the turn.

QJ he's also going to check back a lot of the time on the flop and the same with JJ.

MM on the other hand could easily take two off with KQ/AJ/QJ type hands, so that 8 on the river is going to slow Ferguson down with a tonne of his range. It's conceivable he could even check back set, which would make calling with A8 or A2 for that matter slightly easier imo.

I agree, but when MM checks on the river, it allows Ferguson to value bet AT+ pretty comfortably. Mike probably didn't see any value in leading out, but unfortunately, didn't really seem to have a plan for check-calling either...

leading out on that board texture would have been terrible, he has a bluff catcher. The relative strength of his hand has not really improved.

I doubt Ferguson is going for three streets of value with AK or like QT there.

I don't think Ferguson can bet AT+ comfortably there though. He certainly can't bet AK. There's no reason to believe that MM can't c/c or c/r again with KJ, AJ, or QJ type hands which would seem to be a pretty decent chunk of his range the way the hand played out.

yeah i suppose it was kind of weird how strongly he thought chris had JJ. i think chris could play JJ that way if he decides to try to barrel mike off KQ or a one pair Ax hand with his tight image, but it sure does seem like the standard play from chris would be to check back flop. so it's hard to say what made mike think JJ was very likely at all let alone his most likely hand

i'm not putting too much stock in mike's whole "oh i knew he had that hand" after the cards are turned over. it just always seemed to me that he generally gets ranges and plays his hands in ways that makes sense, and i've never thought of him as someone who overvalues hands, at all. the fact that he tanked the AJ vs antonio tells me pretty clearly that he doesn't. if anything, i get the impression that he likes looking for reasons to make big folds

Matusow checks a jack there never.

Ferguson is the man for clowning Matusow hard after all that crap Mike gave him.

Indeed, Mike certainly had it coming.

It seemed like Antonio only put Mike specifically on J7. Or a weird Q7. I also thought Antonio brutalised that hand a bit.

If you're at his table and he sees you make a big fold, he'll become your new #1 fan.

From the looks of it, not may people here bothered to tune in for the Director's Cut; can't say I blame anyone. I watched it because I figured we'd at least get a glimpse into Phil Hellmuth's train wreck of a thought process, which is always good for a chuckle. My favorite is when he explains why he's contemplating calling Chris's 4-bet with 88 (with Antonio still to act) because if, for instance, the flop is 567 and Chris has JJ or TT, Phil can get it in as only a slight underdog! Then Todd talks about Phil telling the whole table how he's going to trap someone, and compares it to a general telling another general his entire battle plan. It's pretty apt because Hellmuth showed up at the 2008 WSOP Main Event dressed as an 11-star general.

I know it is just so absurd of Phil Hellmuth to constantly tell everyone how he is going to trap them and do exactly what he tells them by just folding everything and only playing big hands. Then again, this is Phil Hellmuth.

wat a horrible fold.

Antonio's line was for value. On a AJ7 flop, Mike checks knowing Antonio will bet 90% of his range on that flop as a continuation bet. Mike knows this, and Antonio knows Mike knows this. So Mike, assuming Antonio has no ace, wants to take the pot down right on the flop, acting as if he's disguising his ace but doesn't feel like getting fancy and smooth calling the flop. (This is because he has no ace, and therefore nothing really strong to disguise and take to showdown)

Mike and Antonio both know what the other is thinking 2 to 3 steps ahead, so that's why their lines seem so unconventional vs. each other. They have to know that other knows what they're thinking the other one is thinking about what the first guy is thinking. Y'know?

If Hellmuth were clever enough to tell everyone what he's going to do, and then do the exact opposite, it would be the best meta-ownage ever, as he's been setting himself up for years for this to work. He could find so many ways to make this work to his advantage and win hands without having to take them to showdown.

However, he plays right into what he already told the top-notch professional dissectors of truth and character, and re-re-raises a flopped set. For the self proclaimed "best NL hold'em player ever in the world," he simply seems to understand table image and metagame 0%. Actually, -35%.

I think Mike plays a set more aggressively against a guy like Chris who probably has a strong enough hand to pay off (and on such a broadway draw board) and definitely bets a straight, not wanting to miss out on value if Chris checks back.

AT is kind of thin, but I still think it's must-value-bet in position.

So is the PH blowup happening?