Strange Plays, Bax, More SCN, Video Part 2

I was watching a top player last night in a $100 tournament and they were two off from cashing. The top player makes a very significant raise (maybe $8k) preflop and a very tight/aggressive player calls. Note: the top pro wasn't on the bubble himself, but was in the middle of the pack.

Flop is 9, x, x and the top player goes allin for another 10k and I immediately think the top player is in trouble because of my notes on the tight/aggressive player. Even though he's tight, he can be fearless. Tight/aggressive player calls and flips 9, 9 and top pro flips 6 2 without even a straight draw and he's out. Now I certainly understant the idea of picking up chips around the cashing bubble and the final table bubble. But this was a play from early position ... does he really think someone is going to fold AK, QQ etc.? This whole strategy around the bubble IS VALID, but it's almost become a cliche and other people know what you are doing. The people who I see do it most effectively do it in position and with reasonable hands like KJ. Something they can call a lower stack with if they are challenged. Just my thoughts.

Nice job yesterday AngryClec, who finished second in the 7:40pm $100! Also congrats to JohnnyBax, who was fourth in our leader board last year and he was first for the entire year in the Poker Stars leader board, which is extremely competitive. Bax is off to the Bahamas for the PokerStars Caribbean Poker Adventure World Poker Tour event. Good luck! Coverage starts today at Cardplayer.com.

Lots of good discussion on what to do with Stone Cold Nuts. Still not sure what I'm going to do ... I go back and forth. I'm going to talk to a statistician early next week, so that might shed some light.

Video Part Two

I produced this most recent video as a test of our software and we're now making a number of improvements on the image quality, the sounds, and some functionality. People seem to like the Table of Contents so that will stay. Next up is to work boring stuff like file size and streaming (all for the big launch coming up). So those changes will be in the next video test.

But first, here is the second part of the video. In this one I show almost all the hands in the final heads up because people have asked for it. This is a bit boring so I clicked the "fast forward" button to move it along at a faster rate.

Looking at your full tournament hand histories is a great way to learn. I do make some mistakes in my narration (meaning, it took a second viewing for me to understand why I made certain plays). For example in Part One, number 28: Hand 226 9d 9c ... it's right before the final table. I called a smaller stack's big preflop raise with 99. He bet two thirds of his stack and it was obvious he would be going all-in post flop no matter what. The reason I didn't just put him allin was because the Player 8 in the BB was still to act and he had been aggressive and had a bigger stack than me. If he reraises allin, I fold. But because the BB folded, I was committed to the pot for just 1400 more chips (there was almost 6000 in the pot). So I can do a better job adding narration. Sometimes you just don't see things right away.

Part Two

Part One