"Gigabet" - Going Deep In The Bellagio WPC

The C Kid

Was second chip leader and just doubled through the chip leader, Patrick Antonius. Chip leader by a good margin now.

Nice hand too. Gigabet, Darrell Dicken raises preflop, Patrik Antonius reraises, and Dicken calls. The flop comes Js-7d-5d, Dicken bets out, and after a long period of thought, Antonius moves all in. Dicken immediately calls with 7c-5h (two pair). Antonius shows Kd-Jd (pair of jacks, flush draw), and he has a ton of outs to win this hand. The turn card is the 9h, and the river is the As. Antonius fails to improve, and Darrell Dicken doubles up in the biggest pot of the tournament to about $885,000 in chips.


Could be a hand-history melt down on 2+2 if he wins.

Ste05

I hope he does, he's a great player...

The C Kid

Ste05 wrote:

I hope he does, he's a great player...

He is indeed. I love reading some of his thoughts on the game too.

Amaru

It's really a shame that more people in the offline poker world don't know who he is(maybe his article in this month's Cardplayer will change that), as he has one of the most creative poker minds, possibly of all time. Outside of Doyle Brunson, nobody has made me think more differently about the game than him. I really hope he gets a bracelet soon.

Also, on a side note, this hand still astounds me

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=2415418&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1

The C Kid

I love that hand too Amaru, just a pity there was never confirmation that the hero laid down the AK.

Kind of ironic that Gigabet tried a similar play at the end of play yesterday and bluffed off over a milion of his chips.

Here's the great man's play in his own words.

"I opened in the cutoff with AdQd, JJ Liu makes it 140k from the button. Blinds fold. Flop is K66 rainbow. I check, JJ Liu bets 100k, I call. Turn is offsuit 2, I bet 200k, JJ calls. River is another offsuit blank, I shove for the rest of her stack(about 600k more). She calls and opens KK.

Earlier in the night, she folded KK face up on a flop of T66, with preflop action like this, phil laak opens utg for a standard raise. JJ Liu reraises big from the button, folds to Laak who calls. Laak leads the flop for 75k(with around 500k behind before the bet, I believe.) JJ raises Laak to 175k, with around 900k behind her. Laak shoves the rest of his stack in. She thinks for 10 minutes and then mucks KK face up.

Side Note: I had never been caught bluffing by anyone at the table, and JJ had consistently shown that she respected my raises, she knew I was out of line alot preflop, but postflop, she never saw anything from me that could be construed as "way out of line."

Amaru

Gigabet may be the luckiest man in the world:

James Van Alstyne raised to 75k, Mike Gracz pushed in, Darrell Dicken pushed in over the top, and Patrik Antonius pushed in over the top as well. Van Alstyne folded and the players turned up:

Mike Gracz Kh9h
Darrell Dicken AsAd
Patrik Antonius AhKs

The flop came Kd9d5d putting Gracz in the lead with top two pair. The turn came Jh with no change, but the 3d on the river gave Dicken the nut flush to take the pot. Mike Gracz was eliminated in 15th place with $80,500.

After the hand Darrell Dicken was up to 1.5m and Patrik Antonius was at 1.7m.

And the latest chip counts for the remaining 11 players

Place Poker Player Chip Count
1 Phil 'Unabomber' Laak $ 2,670,000
2 Doyle Brunson $ 2,350,000
3 Patrik Antonius $ 2,200,000
4 Darrell Dicken $ 1,980,000
5 Joanne 'J.J.' Liu $ 1,850,000
6 Rehne Pedersen $ 1,750,000
7 Bengt Sonnert $ 1,300,000
8 David Levi $ 940,000
9 Jeff Rine $ 575,000
10 Joe Cassidy $ 560,000
11 Jeff Littlefield $ 290,000

Doc Farrell

Go Doyle!

The C Kid

That's nothing Amaru. Check these two out.

Jeff Littlefield raises to $75,000 from the button, Darrell "Gigabet" Dicken moves all in from the big blind for $331,000, and Littlefield calls with Ac-Js. Dicken is dominated with Ad-7s. But Dicken takes the lead on a flop of 7d-5c-2c, and goes on to make quads when the last two cards come 7h-7c. Darrell Dicken doubles up in chips.

And the best of the lot.

Darrell Dicken raises to $70,000 from the small blind for $188,000, Patrik Antonius reraises all in from the big blind, and Dicken calls for a total of $188,000. Dicken shows 7c-3d against Antonius's As-5c. The flop comes Jh-10d-6h, and Dicken needs to improve to stay alive. The turn card is the 3h, giving Dicken a pair of threes to take the lead. The river card is the 4d, and Darrell "Gigabet" Dicken doubles up to about $425,000 in chips.

NickyOD

I thought Darrell's article in Carplayer a few months back was excellent. It's collumns like this that make the American Cardplayer well worth subscribing to.

Here is the full article.

**********************************************************
Throughout my years of playing poker, I have found that the most common reason for the “failure” of poker players stems not from lack of ability, but the fear of “failure.” Where does this fear come from? Let me start with the two words that are pertinent here, success and failure. These are words that mean such different things to each individual that to use them to label your accomplishments, or lack thereof, is setting yourself up for a long, arduous journey that most won’t finish. Success and failure are just ideas created by society to improperly judge others against ourselves. There are no successful people, or I should say, using these words, there are no failures, and everyone is a success.

“Everyone will eventually run worse than he thought was possible. The difference between a winner and a loser is that the latter thinks he does not deserve it.” — Craig Hartman

This statement is truer than I believe anyone can know (even though I think most people reading this do know, it just seems impossible for me to believe that someone else can truly understand). The problem with the statement, however, is that thinking about winners and losers in this manner will keep you from attaining a more complete game. There are no winners and losers; to think that is to let yourself be affected by negative variance. If you are not on the plus side for the day, then you are, in effect, a loser, and so the downward spiral begins. All of those negative ideas must be eliminated from your mind or you will not perform to your potential. The trick is recognizing these negative ideas.

Because there are so many and they are so commonplace in our society, it is a large task indeed to sort them out as real, or just ideas created by the masses. Our labels for winners and losers simply identify individuals who play the same game a different way. Just because one person doesn’t achieve the same goal for which I am striving doesn’t make that person a “loser.” Everyone is the same, and everyone has the same potential; some just direct their energies in a different direction. The sooner you can get that idea into your head, and really believe it, the sooner you will start to have a real understanding of the game.

I really believe that everyone has the psychological fortitude to manage the vicissitudes of this game. It is simply a choice — a choice to change the way that you think about results. Stop thinking in terms of winning as good and losing as bad. The two concepts should be grouped in your mind exactly the same. When God “blessed” mankind with shame, failure became a real entity with which we had to deal. That is what we are trying to achieve when we label a person as a failure, we are attaching shame to a meaningless act. Throughout my life, I have been around lots of people whom most would classify as “failures,” and knowing them personally, I would say that none of them seemed any different than myself.

The problem comes to life when people start a downswing, which most would classify as “losing.” They begin to suspect that they may “fail,” and rather than become susceptible to the shame that comes with “failure,” they decide to quit.

They stop playing because they fear things that aren’t even real. The people who come to realize that these negative labels aren’t real, either concretely or intuitively, are the same people who do not give up, no matter how bad things seem to be running. Eventually, they become the “professionals” in whatever walk of life they choose.

You have to find your own way to deal with these thoughts that have been ingrained in your mind your entire life. Identifying every negative thought as it creeps into your mind is a start; it takes practice to monitor your thoughts, but you cannot eliminate what you do not recognize.

I try very hard not to allow any negativity into my life; just ask anyone who has played next to me for any length of time how irate I get when, after playing and struggling for hours on end, that person utters those deadly words, “I can’t win,” as I am certain you have done at one point in time or another.

You might think that you can avoid this trap of psychological betrayal by turning your “noise filter” all the way up. While that will work for a time, the noise builds and builds, until everything that you have blocked comes pouring out at one time, which creates the very worst tilt imaginable. Believe me, I have been there many times. I have come to realize that it is much better to acknowledge the negative or angry thoughts as they arrive. That doesn’t mean just noticing their presence; when they approach, actually talk to your mind and announce their arrival, then identify the reasons behind the thoughts. As your mind comes to realize how trivial and meaningless these thoughts are, it will eventually stop creating them in the first place. It takes a lot of time and effort to do this, but the long-term results will be well worth it.

So, How Does This All Relate to Poker?
The game that most of us play is really very simple. You get two cards, five cards come on the board, and you do a little betting here and there. The best five-card hand wins.

In a game this simple, why do so many people have so much trouble ending up ahead of where they started?

The real game is about people, not the cards in your hand. If you know a person well enough, you can read his hand, and once you know what he’s holding, the game becomes a cakewalk. The problem is, we have predisposed ideas of who a person is, based on ideas that have been placed in our heads by our society. You have to be able to eliminate all of these ideas. Once you train yourself to be completely judgement-free, you will become a more complete player.

Anyone can read a person’s hand based on his actions and seeing common tendencies; that is, a beginning player will commonly bet small when on a draw and big when he has a made hand. What about more experienced players? What does it mean when they bet two-thirds of the pot one time and then pot the next? They certainly are experienced enough to know not to bet the same pattern for the same types of hands. So, how can you figure out what they have?

Well, get to know them, watch them play. Try to figure out what they’re thinking, as they have to be thinking something.

Put yourself in their spot; what kind of hand would you have if you were betting like that?

Now, do this for every hand of every player who is in a hand, for every player at the table, and if you’re playing online, for every table that you are playing (try to eight-table while doing this exercise). Put effort into every single hand that is played out at your table, not just the hands in which you are involved. Every time there is a showdown, and the losing hand is mucked, open up the hand history file and see what it was. Go through a hand again and see if you can figure out why a player willingly showed down a losing hand (something that rarely should be done).

I called this an exercise, but it should be done on every single hand that is played out at any of your tables for the rest of your poker career. This is how you become a real player. Post-flop is where the real game is at, and it is fun to play.

Use your bets to pull information from an opponent, and then when you know what he has, trust your judgement 100 percent. If you think he is on second pair but will not fold unless you bet your whole stack, bet your whole stack (unless, of course, you have a better hand than second pair, which is unlikely, since players like us can rarely beat bottom pair), even if it means your tournament is over if you are wrong. Practice trusting yourself; you will be wrong enough in the beginning to doubt yourself, but don’t let that stop you.

There is a strong possibility that I am the most active player in the world, and I can honestly say that this is something I do on nearly every hand. Imagine playing 6,000 hands a day on average, and watching and learning with no predisposed judgements of the other players. That is what it takes. Bad beats are no longer bad beats; they are just the cards coming out randomly, evening themselves out over time. What is really important is learning the thousands of languages that different people speak through their actions at the table. Believe me, it isn’t some spiritual science, it is listening and learning without prejudice.

Amaru

This article is pretty much a carbon copy of a post he wrote on 2+2 a good while ago, which is revered among 2+2er's as one of his best, along of course with the "Gigabet dilemma" post, which still blows my mind.

NickyOD

Amaru wrote:

This article is pretty much a carbon copy of a post he wrote on 2+2 a good while ago, which is revered among 2+2er's as one of his best, along of course with the "Gigabet dilemma" post, which still blows my mind.

Was that the post where I said fold and was berated by everyone for making the right move?

Amaru

I don't follow?

Amaru

I just seen this from the event report

A bad beat is usually defined as a dominating hand that is cracked after the money goes in the pot. But then there are the painful beats -- the rare situations like losing with quads to higher quads (which happened to T.J. Cloutier on day one), or going home with kings full against a royal flush (which happened to Marcel Luske on day one).

mewso

Sod it I'm off to the planet Zog.

The C Kid

Second in chips going into today's final table of six.

Cannot wait to see this guy play on TV.

Hopefully he'll take it down.

Ste05

Also did you notice that Patrick Antonius is also known as "I_Knockout_U" On-Line, plays the biggest games on Prima and others.

Wouldn't mind watching this one if it was ever on TV

Here's the chip count last time I looked.

Seat Player Chips
1 Darrell Dicken, $3,510,000
2 Patrick Antonius, $1,755,000
3 Rehne Pedersen, $3,225,000
4 Joanne 'J.J.' Liu, $3,630,000
5 Phil 'Unabomber' Laak, $2,505,000
6 Doyle Brunson. $2,025,000

Lafortezza

Ste05 wrote:

Also did you notice that Patrick Antonius is also known as "I_Knockout_U" On-Line, plays the biggest games on Prima and others.

If you follow the high stakes NL forums on 2+2 or ever watch the high limit tables on UB you'll see him cleaning up. He took Mahatma/Prahlad Friedman (apparently the biggest winner in online cash games ever) for several hundred thousand dollars on Prima $100/$200 NL Hold'em.

Shortstack

lafortezza wrote:

If you follow the high stakes NL forums on 2+2 or ever watch the high limit tables on UB you'll see him cleaning up. He took Mahatma/Prahlad Friedman (apparently the biggest winner in online cash games ever) for several hundred thousand dollars on Prima $100/$200 NL Hold'em.

Mike Matusow had some interesting comments about his style of play on cardplayers online radio show 'the circuit'. Judging by some of his and gigabet's plays the key to success is not monsters like 7 3 to a re-raise. It certainly seems to amass them a lot of chips. Following the live updates I would imagine most of the chips in play would have passed through their stacks at some time during the tournament the amount of times they have been up and down in chips.

The C Kid

Shortstack wrote:

Mike Matusow had some interesting comments about his style of play on cardplayers online radio show 'the circuit'. Judging by some of his and gigabet's plays the key to success is not monsters like 7 3 to a re-raise. It certainly seems to amass them a lot of chips.

Can't stand the Circuit myself, Matusow comes across deeply annoying and that's being polite.

gerire

I watched a bit of this the other night and Doyle was playin great stuff: Latest counts: The following approximate chip counts are announced to the crowd:


1. Patrik Antonius - $7,340,000 (seat 2)
2. Rehne Pedersen - $4,000,000 (seat 3)
3. Joanne "J.J." Liu - $3,000,000 (seat 4)
4. Doyle Brunson - $2,500,000 (seat 6)

Wish I was still back there

Shortstack

Just noticed from the pictures on Cardplayer that Rhene Pederson who eventually beat Patrik Antonius heads up is actually CarlosDK from Pokerstars whom I have played with a few times this year on the EPT & WPT. He is a genuinely top bloke, was part of a great drunken cash game in the Bahama's which got live straddled round the table. He also went out of his way to get some money into a friend of mine's account to play the Pokerstars WCOOP main event whilst we were in Barcelona. .