Patrik Antonius Hero call

Yesterday, a really interesting hand happened in the nosebleed games Patrik Antonius won a $497k pot with a super thin hero call. Of course its hard to know what he was thinking without knowing the history between the two, but still is a very sick and risky play.

So this is the hand in question:

Some say is one of the best calls ever, It could also be a misclick or tilt-call who knows??

Lets see if we can analyze a little bit of that hand and gets inside PA's head. First is the setup:

Its 3 handed with a 40bb stack on the big blind and Patrick 250bb effective stack on the small blind. Btn raise to 2.4x with what we can assume is a wide range and PA decide to 3bet with KTs , Which of course is ahead of his range, but might not be the best play deep, however he had to decide if he wants to let the small stack squeeze and if not, then even play out of position with a dominated hand like KT, with the initiative it might be easier to play it oop and we can flop some nice combo draws to bluff at this deep(Without knowing the flow of the match we can't say if this is a good play or not).

Villain calls (They are deep so both ranges could be light). Flop comes J46r It looks like a normal flop for a cbet, but in reality has a ton of backdoor straight draws and flush draws with overs so a float here could be expected (specially deep), but If PA checks he never has a big hand here so he cbets. Turns brings the flushdraw and PA's hand improved, if villain have the A high flush draw it could mean big problems if all the money goes in and PA could get raise if he bets the turn and might be forced to fold his draw. He can expect villain to check behind a lot of his showdownable hands this deep. So A high hands and small pairs/ weak Jacks can check here. However I can see the nut-flushdraw bet here quite often, and most combo draws.

So I like his turn check/raise for all the times villain floats and bets on turn and he can represent an overpair here quite easily. The problem comes when villain decides to call that turn. He is not floating on that big raise so he must have something. My guess is that his range most of the times when he just calls is that he either have a J (That decided to bet for protection) or some kind of pair+ flushdraw type of hand like Ac6c 5c6c or JcXc. Also he has position so slowplaying something big is not out of the question (Even if he does it like 10% of the time).

My guess is that is unlikely villain has a set here, cause on that dry flop it looks so full of shit that I think is actually good to raise with a strong hands (Of course it all depends on his style), unless he's been floating too much in the past, in which case I don't like his turn bet at all unless he had something huge and don't like PA's 3bet preflop either. Also overpairs like AA/KK are unlikely cause I expect a 4bet some % of the time preflop, don't know enough of his game to include QQ on his range, but could bet there. Anyway on the river the J pairs and Patrick decides to check/call, In my opinion is better to just shove and put pressure, just in case villain has A high or pair+Flush draw type of hand, and even something like QQ could fold there so I expect to get called down by trips.

Of course he won more money by check/calling and catching that bluff, but if villain was capable of turning made hands into a bluff then it wouldn't been fun. The key of the hand is the turn bet by villain, cause he is not betting with QJ/JT type of hand and if Patrik had a good read of villain's play on the turn and how often he turns a made hand into a bluff then its a lot closer cause his bet on the river doesn't make much sense unless he have exactly AJ and sometimes JJ. The draws that bet the river are not that many, cause I expect to get a fold on the turn a nice % of the time so most draws could be the Nut Flush draw/ Jack+FD that we lose to anyway and some gutshot +FD that we are ahead (Thats if we expect him to check the river with a small pair +FD) we have the Kc so something like KcQc or KcJc is out of the question.

With only 100k or so left in PA stack and 300k in the pot he is getting a great price for his bluff and if he was ck/calling anyway he doesn't risk to lose against those weak pairs combos and A high.

In conclusion it was a really interesting hand, and its always cool to see how something as simple as a turn bet on a deep pot can change everything up if we know how villain plays certain hands and make some really nice plays for the railbirds.