durr Bluffs Ivey in Huge Pot

In the latest episode of High Stakes Poker, Tom 'durr' Dwan bluffs Phil Ivey out of a huge pot. See the hand in the video below:



The hand basically goes like this: Another player, Phil Laak, raises first in to 3.5k. He gets three callers including Ivey with the A6 of diamonds. Now it's Dwan's turn in the BB. He looks down at 89 of spades. He now has three options; Call, fold or re-raise. Folding is out of the question because of the good odds he's getting. The way the game has been played so far is that it has been quite loose, meaning that people have called with a lot of questionable hands. So, the only player at the table Dwan really has to worry about pre-flop is the initial raiser, Laak. By making a 'squeeze play' - re-raising the initial raiser and all the callers, he gets Laak and everybody else to fold their hands. Only Ivey calls because they both have around 750k before the hand giving him huge 'implied odds' if he hits his hand.

The flop comes TQK with two diamonds giving Ivey a huge draw. He has the nut (best hand possible) flush draw plus a gutshot straight draw. Furthermore, he has the ace high which also MIGHT be good against Dwan who's recognized as one of the most aggressive players in the world. Dwan leads out 45k into a 70k pot with his crap hand. This is just a standard play when you make a squeeze before the flop! Ivey just calls. Maybe he could have raised to take the pot down right there. He could easily have called with hands like AK, KQ, KJ, KTs preflop and Dwan knows that too. So unless Dwan has the absolute nuts, he really can't re-raise Ivey on that flop.

On a complete blank turn, Dwan bets 123k into 162. Ivey, again, just calls. He must figure that if he hits one of his draws, he can get Dwan to pay him off. Otherwise, he doesn't have the odds to continue with his draw. But maybe Ivey puts Dwan on the exact type of hand he actually has - a bluff. Dwan could have squeezed preflop with air to steal the pot right there and followed it up with a continuation bet to try to steal it again on that scary flop. Now he fires one more time in case that Ivey was floating him (calling the flop with a bad hand to steal the pot on the turn).

The river is a blank 6. Although it gives Ivey a pair of sixes, the card changes nothing. If Ivey was ahead/behind on the turn, he still is on the river. Dwan fires the third bullet of 268k into 408k. This is a really gutsy play! The only hand Dwan can get Ivey to lay down is a combo-draw (which he has). As I said, Ivey could have played the hand like that with any two pair and a lot of top pair combinations. So, when Dwan makes that kind of bet, he 'polarizes his range of hands' meaning that either he has the nuts or he's bluffing. He is not valuebetting any one pair or maybe even two pairs on this board because the board is so scary and they have so deep stacks.

That is also why Ivey thinks for so long about calling with just ace high. It's not an easy call at all and I would probably have folded too. But when you think about it, this might have been the time to make a hero call (huge call with bad hand to beat a bluff).

But that's just my 50 cents. I mean, who am I to question a man who has more than 12 million dollars in career winnings in live tournaments and who has won more than 15 million in online cash games since 2007!


On a side note, in a previous episode of the show, Dwan and Ivey made a one million dollar bet. Dwan bet Ivey to become a vegetarian for a year! So if Ivey eats "anything that moves", he has to pay Dwan a million but if he sticks to his promise, he gets a cool million from Dwan! These guys just have way to much money on their hands!

I wouldn't eat anything for a year if I got a million dollars to do it :P