Darkened Poker

First watch the first 1/2 of the video to be amazed at what looked like poker amateur hour except it was online pro “Pokernoob” and live pro “Roland de Wolfe” in a large buy-in tournament over in Europe.

The good:

• What a call by Pokernoob, he put Roland on a busted flush draw and made a risky but normally +EV call which in this case turned out to be wrong.

The Bad:

• Roland de Wolfe does not turn over his hand when called, he tries some amateur move of just turning over one card to see if he is beat.  As I have discussed here before this form of angling at the showdown has to stop.
• Roland then further compounds his mistake by actively trying to avoid showing his full hand and pushing his cards into the muck.
• The dealer tries to stop Roland from mucking his hand, they should only do that if someone in the hand explicitly asks to see both show down hands.
• Pokernoob then turns up his hand to rub it in Roland’s face that he just folded the best hand.  Why is he trying to stop Roland from making great big mistakes like mucking the best hand.  Why not just take the pot and see if Roland will do it several more times in the tournament so he can make more money.
• Roland then try’s to get his hand back so he can win the hand by saying he showed a higher card.  Wow what a weasel move that was, he was happy to muck his hand to avoid giving away info earlier when he thought he was beat.  But as soon as realized he made a mistake he wants to get his hand back so he can win the pot.  Seriously WTF, pro’s should know better than that.

The Ugly:

Sure Pokernoob just proved that he can angle better than Roland at that moment in time, but he has now taught Roland to be a slightly better player.  Why do these kids always have to trade educating their poker competition of all their mistakes for a mere 2 seconds of “in your face” glory.  Not a long term +EV play.

PokerNews has a slightly different take on the hand which I fully disagree with.  I think Matt Savage saying that he would have pulled Rolands hand from the muck and awarded the pot to Roland would be a terrible mistake.  Just because he thinks Pokernoob did not play in a “Gentleman” manner does not mean you can go and change the rules of the game on the fly.

♣♥♦

Darkened Poker

Tags: Angling, Matt Savage, PokerNews, Tournament Poker

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website