A call of a champion (Stu Ungar).

Hi All.


I was reading trough the WSOP main event of 1997, trougt conjelcode. This was the year Stu Ungar won his third title.

I have always been a fan of him, and try to reads everything about him.

To describe his amazing reads on his opponents, the author gives us this hand:

This hand was played between David Roepke and Stu Ungar in the main event of 1997.

Here is the hand

"Roepke opened the pot for $35,000 with a suited K-10. Ungar called with a suited K-Q. The flop came 7-6-2 off suit. Roepke moved all in (for approximately $47,000). Confident that Roepke did not have an ace or a pair, Ungar called. The turn and river helped neither player, and Roepke was eliminated."

Like Ungar said, No one at the table would have called in that spot.

To me this is the kind of calls I dream of making, but probably never will. Its pretty amazing to me that you can make a call like this, but then again, I'm no Stu Ungar.


What do you guys think of making a call like this?


Just wanted to share my amazement on this hand,

Daniel

Tough to say, as I wasn't there. I think it was over a year ago where there was a lot of fuss made over a guy laying down KK to a huge pre-flop raise, and the other player showing AA (I forget those involved). It was touted as the greatest lay down people had ever seen.


Talking to people who were there, and people who know people well who were there, I hear that it was blatantly obvious that the guy did have AA, and the laydown wasn't quite as "amazing" as everyone was saying it was.


Tough to say if you weren't there, but I just wanted to make the point that it might not be as remarkable as it sounds.


~D

If Roepke opened for 35K, then the blinds were probably about 5/10, so after Stu called preflop, he was getting about 3:1 on his call of the last bet of 47K. I don't have to be very sure that KQ is the best hand to call in this spot. Heck, as long as I'm sure that catching a K or Q is good, that's enough, since you're about 3:1 against doing that. Add in even a relatively small chance that you're ahead, and it becomes an easy call.


Now, knowing that there's a decent chance I'm ahead, that takes skill. However, this hand really doesn't seem to demonstrate that, or if it does, it's more on the preflop call than the flop call.


Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

While gutsy, the call seems to make sense under the right circumstances.


If (and it's a big if) you don't have the bettor on an ace or pair, then overcards with a draw (in this case, two backdoor draws) are a good possibility.


The bettor is laying poor odds for himself if you call. While he may have a great draw, if he's beat so far then 3:1 pot odds are probably not favorable for him.


On the other hand, the call is more questionable when you take into account: 1. the chances that your read on his hand is wrong, and 2. the chance, however slight, that you're looking at an identical hand.


Rough decision. Depends largely on what stage of the tourney you're in, how many opponents are left, etc., etc. That's why Stu won that year and the rest of us are left tossing around our opinions.

On the surface it looks like a great call, but a lot of information is missing. Had Roepke made this same all-in move earlier on the flop(showing or not showing his hand)? Did Roepke give off a tell by the way he put the chips into the pot? How big was Ungar's stack at the time? What position were each of the players at the table? With the answer to those questions and others, it very well could have been the only correct decision that Ungar could make!

Even if David has a hand like ATs, A7s or 99, the call is almost break even, so Stu wouldn't have to be right very often to make this play profitable, as long as he can exclude a dominating hand (and then he wouldn't have played KQ in the first place).


cu


Ignatius

i agree with all of these posts in that it probably was the best call given the odds, and his (i assume) superior chip position. but really, how many of us allow ourselves to play like this? what's the saying?: poker is hours of boredom and seconds of terror.


to me the amazing thing about stu ungar was that he was capeable of making cool, rational, CORRECT decisions when 99.9999% of all the other poker players in the world would automatically fold.


-Marlow

This is my take on it, No doubt about it, Stu Ungar was like the Michael Jordan of Poker, but for the guy to make a raise with Kx, he could have been doing that all game, and calling with Ax, or only raising a little with Ax, so that could have been a tell.......

..at the WSOP last year, both Jim Lester & another player(Steve Riehle?) made the exact same call w/KQ in NLHE events; Lester against Jay Heimowitz holding a K8[flop ~T97]. Probably knowledge of your opponent is the key factor here; note from the video that Stu called John Strzemp when JS made a river flush, then told Gabe Kaplan something about wanting to see what he had.


Stu's best play that day was probably the bluff against Ron Stanley, which Kaplan called immediately on the commentary after Stu's raise on the turn[and he analyzed it unbelievably; just a little different than the Travel Channel crap] while Hellmuth had no clue. /images/smile.gif


Again, very good call by Stewballs, but not unique to top players. Now, Erik Seidel's call w/AQ at the '99 WSOP and Ram Vaswani's overcall w/2nd or 3rd pair in the $2K LHE this year[both against 'unknowns'] were GREAT calls.

I'm not totally sure but from memory the call is a hell of a lot better than you people are giving Stu credit for.


Firstly Stu didnt have a mountain of chips to be playing policeman. I think this call if incorrect would make him a very short stack. Far from an automatic call when moving up a few ladder rungs by folding is the technically superior play. Losing the hand may well have meant elimination is not far away.


Secondly, Stu was probably the greatest reader of players in poker history. How many people can accurately say that they can put a raiser on neither a pair nor an A. For the majority of your stack at a final table this is a phenomenal call.


I think this call is the weapon of two types of players. The true greats like Stu, and the fishies, who have no idea of what a good hand looks like.