High stakes poker tournament
Great hand I’m about to cover here from a high stakes poker tournament.
The action starts with Gus Hansen sitting on pocket fives pre-flop at our table. Daniel Negreanu does him one better with pocket sixes. Hansen gets the pot growing with a $2,000 raise. Negreanu bumps it to $5K, and the games begin. A third player wisely realizes he’s out of position against two greats and folds his Ace, Queen. Hansen calls and the flop is out.
9, 6, 5. Ohhh, sweet. Two sets made from the flop. Negreanu holds a comfortable 80 percent advantage, and after Hansen checks (presumably to set a trap), Negreanu bets like it with an $8,000 raise. Hansen plays with his chips a bit, trying to give off a “I’m thinking about limping along” vibe, and then raises to $26K. Will Negreanu think he’s bluffing? Probably not, but it does give him something to think about. So far, two big-timers playing their hands perfectly.
Negreanu of PokerStars just calls, and the pot grows to more than $63K. The river is, wait for it, the last 5. Hansen makes quads, and you couldn’t tell from his face whether he’d won the lottery or his mother just died. He’s exhibiting great control. My blood pressure probably would’ve flushed my face redder than a raspberry.
Hansen comes out with just $24K. As the commentators note, you know Negreanu is putting him on at least a set of fives, but nothing more, possibly not even a boat, and he’s trying to think how he can pull the most chips into the pot as possible. He just calls, another ploy that will horribly backfire on him and he doesn’t even know it yet. Gotta love this game.
Hansen know, showing patience and control like nothing I’ve ever witnessed on TV or in person, checks his quads. He lays the trap, and Negreanu comes right in with a $65K bet. Hansen goes all-in, and before Negreanu of absolutepoker.com even calls or folds, at $408K they’ve created the biggest pot in the history of high stakes poker.
Negreanu, who is the spokesman for PokerStars net calls the $167K raise and quickly realizes he’s been beat. But as he is Daniel Negreanu, he takes it politely, and he shrugs his shoulders like only man who just lost $300K could.