[Closed] Weekly Vote: What Do you Think of Hellmuth's Play in this Video Clip?

It is not a semibluff

any hand that would not currently win at showdown but has the capacity to become the best hand and is played aggressively is a semi-bluff.

He is trying to max his EV. Maximising EV doesnt mean just trying to get all-in with any draw that you know has around 50%+ eQuity against your opponents entire broke range. It means playing the hand in the way that you max profit vs this particular player and his likely holding.

The potsized bet from matusow is either a bluff or a strong hand thats not folding. Given how far ahead of the bluffs PH is, I dont see why he should just opt to flip vs the strong range when he can play later streets with posn. As soon as you shove in this spot, you just give up your positional advantage and flip a coin.

Its no particular victory for PH to raise the flop and force out 8h9h...

the bigger question is why the hell you would post this video. someone decides to be a bit tricky/mix it up, play a strong draw and TP+strong redraw passively. big deal

Originally posted by argentina71
It is not a semibluff. He has >= 50% of that flop. A semibluff is a drawing hand that at this moment is beat (i.e, vs 1 other player is <50%), and might have good implied odds. I don't think he gets respect, on the contrary: they will start stealing from him and his value bets won't get called.
S.

you bluff when you dont have thwe best hand so obviously he doesnt have the best hand if he has k high then pair of K's so obviously its a semi bluffffffffffffffffff

Honestly i would have bet the turn, but i wouldnt probably raise at any point. But it's all up to the way you play poker.
Btw if Dwan and Ivey played this hand, they would end up allin on the flop imo.

calling the flop for trapping maybe is ok, but not betting the turn even, i dont get what he wanted there to do...wait the flush and bet? the turn card would slow down anything, any 2pair/set so he should bet even if he had a flushdraw without a K pair

I love that we are all members of a poker-strategy web-site (granted of different experience levels) and we still have these discussions where so many different views on how to play a given hand emerge.

To me, this is the beauty of Poker and why this game is so challenging.

Raise Flop, Bet turn, Build Pot. Nuff said.

This was a perfect example of small ball poker strategy.

On the Flop, Hellmuth has to figure hes around 40-60% in the hand, rather then building up the pot and giving Matusow the chance to shove all in, thus giving Hellmuth a hard decision, he simply calls, gaining maximum information for minimum risk.

The turn check and river call is a bit more debatable, he could believe that Matusow didn't have better then the king (since Matusow was playing a trap, hoping Hellmuth hit the king) and I'm not really sure if Hellmuth did see the king at all, sometimes players can get so focused on one or two draws they will miss hitting a pair (Phil Ivey's muck of his winning hand from the 2009 WSOP comes to mind).

Whatever the reason though Hellmuth made a good decision to only call on the river. About Hellmuth's only mistake was not mucking the cards afterward (which he even mentions in the video). Never give your opponents free information.

I just saw this on television (it was a little different in the end) and I loved the commentary. I also wondered why Phil can be a winning poker player if you keep calling with two pair when there are 4 connected and 3 suited cards on the board.