Phil Ivey's play in the WPT

[Josh W]

Maybe this has been disected before, but here goes...

There was a rebroadcast of a WPT tourny tonight. It was on at the casino, and some players at my game and I debated his final hand for some time. Your thoughts?

There are 4 players left. Phil has about 225,000. Howard Lederer has him covered (I'll say 300,000, but not totally sure). I think the blinds are 2000-4000.

Phil openraises for 14,000 (on the button?). Howard Lederer reraises to 54,000. Phil has AQc. What's your play?

Results and thoughts follow.

Josh

[Josh W]

Phil thinks and thinks, then pushes. Howard calls w/ KK.

I really thought the right play was to call preflop, as weak as that may seem. Phil gets to act last throughout the hand, will still be tied (roughly) for second in chips if he misses completely. He'd be calling about 20% more of his chips, and would thus be given more opportunities to bluff, more opportunities to read his opponent, and more opportunities to fold.

Now, obviously, Howard will play back at Phil with a large number of hands preflop. Many of these Phil will be ahead of. Many more he'll be a coinflip with. And many he'll be dominated by.

One guy at my table tonite swore up and down that it's a push or fold situation. I obviously disagree. Another player thought that folding was by far the worst decision. Because of the nubmer of chips Phil held, he leaned towards calling.

What are your guys' thoughts? Just judging by the general feelings on this forum, I'm guessing most of you will say push (which is by far my second favorite option), but when it costs not-all-that-much to call, and you have a mediocre holding, I like to call. If I was in the SB, my opinion may differ.

The last bit is that there are 4 left, so Phil is in the middle of a huge payscale gradient. The fourth player (Layne Flack had about 200,000 chips), Andy Bloch, had under well under 100K chips (75k?).

Curious....

Josh

[Jon Matthews]

My play here would be to push, if there were more players I would fold.

The problem here is they are both very aggressive players, Phil loves taking down pots with all in reraises, but he is also capable of open raising with trash, he knows Howard knows this and may resteal and since he actually has a holding here, he assumed that's what Howard was doing and pushed.

Jon

[hillbilly]

i feel when howard gets involved for 54,000, against a significant stack, and against an opponent who he knows is capable of putting him "to the task", he has already decided he will call an all-in bet. ivey should have realized this and severely overplayed his hand in a bad spot. ivey is a big dog to AA,KK,QQ,AK and has put all his chips at risk on a "horserace" if howard has a lower pocket pair. what else can he have?

the thing about the tour is we don't see every hand so we miss alot of the table dynamics. still fold has to be the best option here, call if you think you can outplay the opponent (not a good spot against howard) and raise all in the worst, imo.