Poker Superstars
Phil Hellmuth
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New WPT Season 5 Broadcast from Canada |
 The World Poker Tour on GSN is going strong and this week’d broadcast proves to be a pretty interesting match up, with the king of the hill Barry Greenstein heading up against a recent WPT champ Jonathon Little, as well as 3 young and volatile online pros and one lucky amateur. The players involved this week are Kofi Farkye, Scott Clements, Jeff Garza and Dave Cloutier. This is a broadcast of the North American Poker Championship at Fallsview Casino Resort in Niagra Falls, Ontario. Here’s are some notes on the plays made in the event.
I’d forgotten that 18+ were allowed to play in Canadian casinos, which is another example of how the U.S. is behind in the poker world. This WPT broadcast has two 19 year olds, though in the fashion of quick young online players, they go out pretty fast. Couldn’t see that one coming, right?
I hate watching players raise from early position with hands like K 10 suited or KJ off, an then getting reraised and laying it down. Just such a waste of chips. If you are going to raise with crap from early position and lay down to a reraise over and over again I don’t see how you can ever except not only to win the tournament, but to get any respect for your bets (which can pay off when you actually wake up with a hand, but obviously that is less frequently going to happen.)
Barry Greenstein gives out a copy of his book ‘Ace on the River’ to whoever knocks him out, including writing in the details on how the hand went down. That’s a pretty cool gesture from one of the game’s more humble figures.
Barry check raising the turn after his opponent called a small bet on the flop with just an openended straight draw was a pretty brilliant and astute play on his part. A type of shortstack move you don’t offer see from less experienced or balls out players. Knowing that your opponent is just trying to steal to your sign of weakness and then putting your whole tournament on the line for it takes heart and Greenstein has it.
The amateur Dave Cloutier made a pretty good run for himself, showing that he wasn’t there just to play standard by the book poker, and making some strong plays reraising preflop with midpairs and bluffing against Greenstein’s short stack when he had no chance to win the hand otherwise.
But then he turns around and made a pretty stupid call after flopping middle pair and two players in the pot ahead of him, just calling a bet trying to catch up. There’s pretty much no reason to be calling down two players’ bets in a tournament when the best you can do is make two pair or trips and there’s already a potential straight on the board. People mistake that second pair on a scary board and multiple players betting or calling is a lot different than flopping second pair in a heads up situation.
I love watching Barry lead out from under the gun when he flops a straight and getting action from two players, then coyly checking the turn and allowing his opponent two pick up two pair and end up paying off a big pot.
I have to say, though, I miss Shana Hiatt. Sabina Gadecki is a standard pretty face, but you can’t really beat the original.
Overall, the WPT is making for some great poker viewing and I’m glad they’ve found a good home in GSN that will keep them going on.
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