POTD #100 Phil Ivey has QUADS

Can I fold? Is this title enticing you to click and read more?

We have reached the century mark, and to commemorate the occasion, we are writing about a hand I played vs. Phil Ivey. The more you do something, the more you grow accustomed to it. I remember being a 17-year-old who was kicked out of the RIO Convention Center for trying to spectate the WSOP; the security guard said I needed to be 21, and he was not fooled by my very bad fake ID. I remember being in awe when people told me that they played poker with Phil Ivey, and what it was like the first time I was in the same poker room as him when I finally was old enough to play live poker.

I try to not take things in my life for granted, up to and including that people are interested in reading over a hundred essays/blog posts/newsletters that I’ve written for Punt of the Day. If you told that devastated 17-year-old that he would eventually play poker with Phil Ivey so often that Phil would know who he is, he would be floored. I want to thank everyone for reading and supporting POTD, and given the theme of the blog is self-criticism, I’d like to take this brief moment in POTD #100 to remind myself— hey, you’ve made it, Phil Ivey knows your name.

In 2023, I tweeted, “20 years after Moneymaker and 8 years after Piosolver the most reliable way to have a poker hand go viral is still aces getting cracked”. Generally, people like watching poker hands where someone has AA; it’s better if they lose, but hands where they win still seem to attract more eyeballs. Another way for a poker hand to go viral is for the hand to feature Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, or Phil Hellmuth. Another way for a poker hand to go viral is for a Casino Royale-type hand where someone has quads or better and coolers someone else.

Given what I just outlined, it will not surprise you to learn that I played a hand where I had the second nuts and Phil Ivey had the nuts, quad aces. It’s probably the most-viewed hand I’ve ever played. There are some other things that led to this hand’s popularity. PartyPoker Sochi 2020 was the last live tournament series before COVID lockdowns began, so when PartyPoker streamed online tournaments during COVID and those tournaments went on break, they would show PartyPoker Live highlights. A frequent hand they chose was Phil Ivey busting this poor shmuck who thought his flush was good.

Imagine this scenario: You’ve been playing online poker for 20 straight days, you have a deep run in a tournament, so you load up YouTube to see your opponent’s hole cards from hands played 30 minutes ago. You see someone, let’s just say Michael Addamo, bluffed you, or someone else, let’s say Mikita Badziakouski, correctly hero-folded to you. You’re still playing the tournament, but the stream goes on break. Then you see Phil Ivey cooler you, and you look at the chatbox, and every reply in chat is “Why is this such a big cooler? Doesn’t this Greenwood idiot realize he can lose to a full house?” You feel like responding to the trolls, “Actually, it’s Short Deck, and in Short Deck a flush beats a full house, so I only lose to quads, that’s why the announcers are so shocked as well,” but you don’t. If that happened to me once, it would have been unpleasant, but it happened to me several times. It has happened so many times that when I gave a fireside chat at VClub in Toronto earlier this month, a question asked to me in the Q&A was “How do you feel about this hand being so popular when most of the people who watched it didn’t even know a full house loses to a flush?” That doesn’t bother me too much— if people in a YouTube chatbox hate your play in a poker hand, you probably played it well— but there was one thing that irked me about this hand. I actually think, like Erick Lindgren yesterday, I could have hero-folded my second nuts. Today I’ll write about why.

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$ 51,000 NL Short Deck partypoker MILLIONS Sochi Super High Roller Series
3-Handed, we are ITM, 60k Ante

Phil Ivey (7.205M) completes 60k, Wai Kin Yong (3.36M) folds the CO, I (4.375M) check K♣️8♣️ on the button

Flop (300k) A♣️Q♣️8♠️: Phil bets 200k, I call

Turn (700k) A♠️: Phil checks, I check

River (700k) J♣️: Phil bets 400k, I makes it 1.95M, Phil shoves, I call and am shown A♥️A♦️ and lose.

What I was Thinking

Phil had been shoving a lot as the chip leader. Short deck is a game where chip leaders can play very aggressively, and Wai Kin and I only had 70 antes; however, it is three-handed, so there is less dead money in the pot than six- or seven-handed. From a stack-to-pot ratio perspective, we are about as deep as being 40bbs deep in NLHE, but equities run a lot closer in short deck than PLO, which makes shoving much more attractive. Phil’s limp was slightly concerning to me. If you’re shoving a ton and suddenly limp, it raises alarm bells. However, it didn’t affect my preflop decision-making, as in short deck you almost never bluff-raise suited hands from the button, so I checked.

I flop a hand with a lot of equity, but one that runs hot and cold. I am not an equity favourite vs. hands that stack off and would not want to play a massive pot vs. the chip leader three-handed. I’d rather play in position and see if I make my hand. On the turn, I wasn’t sure if I could get Phil to fold a better hand than mine and chose to bluff with weaker flush draws that had less showdown like Jc6c, so I checked back with my pair. On the river, Phil can value bet as thin as a straight for this size, and raising any flush is mandatory for me. I figured a roughly pot-sized raise that risked slightly less than half my stack was an appropriate size. When I got shoved on, I was very concerned that I was beat, but I was getting such a good price and thought I might beat some value bets, so I called.

What I Got Wrong

Like yesterday’s hand, everything up until the river is fine. Unlike yesterday’s hand, I think the raise size from me on the river is fine. If you had a short deck ICM calculator, I suspect Ivey would never open limp first in; he would shove a bunch, and he would raise first in with AKs and AA (and bluffs) and call a shove. An ICM calculator says I need to call the river if I have ~36% equity, so let’s go through the exercise we went through yesterday. Is Phil value shoving worse or is he bluffing? Yesterday I concluded that Joao was unlikely to value shove worse, but could be bluffing, and I think you need to call. In today’s hand, I think it’s unlikely Phil is bluffing. It’s a very hard spot to bluff. He almost always takes an aggressive action preflop or on the turn with an ace, so it’s unlikely he’s value-betting trips and bluffing with it over a raise. A jack should have enough showdown on the river that he doesn’t really want to bluff with it. TT/99 would often be all-in preflop, and he can’t have the Kc blocker when I have the Kc8c in my hand. Phil Ivey is one of, if not the greatest poker player of all time, but even he would have trouble finding an appropriate hand to bluff here.

So that leads to the follow up question, can I beat worse for value? This is short deck, so there are only 6 possible flushes he could have— T9/T7/T6/97/96/76. T9s is a short deck power house; it has 39% AIPF vs AA, he’d shove it for sure. 97/96/76 all have gutshots on the flop (A6789 is a straight in short deck), and he’d likely continue playing aggressively with them on the turn. That leaves exactly T7/T6, which might just call the river or bet the turn, but could plausibly play this way. I think Ivey would almost always play AA like this if he wasn’t playing RFI preflop, which means I need Phil to shove around 0.55 combos of worse hands to give me the 36% that would make my call breakeven.

However, being a short stack in a short deck tournament sucks, and being a big stack is very good. So ICM is undervaluing the EV of gambling for a big stack, which means I can make calls which ICM would declare -$EV. I am unsure if I should have folded and definitely think I could have folded a worse flush on the river, but ultimately I think my hand is just too good and the odds I am getting are just too enticing. If I could bet at even money than Phil Ivey had quads, I might have done it, but that extra 15% chance he doesn’t is too enticing to pass up.

Grades

I still don’t know how I feel about this hand. It really does feel like Phil should have quads a lot, and it’s his most likely individual combo by a lot. However, there is a very large difference between it being his most likely individual combo and him having it 2/3rds of the time. Short Deck, especially in the money, can be tricky, and I got the preflop, flop and turn decisions right. Yesterday, I criticized Erick and said he should have thought a little longer on the river and I think I should have done the same. I think my instinct when playing a game I’m less skilled at is to avoid making heroic plays that could spectacularly blow up. I also didn’t want to risk doing something like accidentally slowrolling a legend of the game, which is a silly thought to have when playing for such high stakes. I’ve been nit-rolled and slow-rolled dozens of times in my life and usually handle it adequately, I am sure Phil Ivey do the same. My technical analysis was sound and the hand was well played, but I think I got some of the soft things wrong that could have allowed me to make one of the greatest folds of all time to the GOAT.

B