Robert Varkonyi vs. Jan Boubli

[Tyler Durden]

ESPN replayed Day One of the 2003 WSOP the other day and I watched the hand that ended Varkonyi's reign. His KK ran into Scotty Nguyen's AA. The hand went something like this: Varkonyi openraised, Scotty reraised him (both raises were less than $1,000), then Varkonyi moved all-in for ~$7,000 total. It doesn't take much to realize that Scotty won't call with QQ and some other hands. Of course Scotty called and Varkonyi wasn't saved.

By contrast, if you read Mike Sexton's article in Cardplayer about the WPT in Paris a few months ago, Jan Boubli and Howard Lederer went back and forth a few times before Boubli folded his KK face up and Lederer did indeed have the Aces.

http://www.cardplayer.com/?sec=afeature&art_id=13455

If you don't feel like checking out the link, here is the info. The blinds were at $25/$50, and each player started with $10,000.

Lederer had $12,000 in chips and made it $150 to go. Everyone folded to Boubli, who, with $6,700 in chips, reraised it to $400. Lederer raised him back, making it $1,500 straight. Boubli then reraised Lederer $2,500 more, making it a total of $4,000. Lederer then raised it one last time in an effort to put Boubli all in before the flop.

At this stage, Boubli went into deep thought. There was nearly $11,000 in the pot and he had only $2,700 left. This meant he was getting a little more than 4-1 on his money to call; nearly the right price to call even if his opponent had two aces. After a while, Boubli showed two kings and folded! That's right. He opted to fold, save his last $2,700, and fight back from there rather than call with kings.

I hate to disrespect a guy who won the big one but I'm sure you can see what I'm getting at. Varkonyi likely didn't take the time to read Scotty. And if he did, he didn't do a good job of it. BTW, Boubli came back to place second in the tournament.

[J.R.]

I see a few differences: 1) many more raises in the Lederer-Boubli confrontation to define the hands and 2) I don't think Varkonyi was trying to get called with the kings, but to take down the 2K or so in the pot because he knew scotty could play fast and thought he ws making a move. Varkonyi open-raised and an aggressive player played back at him, I think that's much different than facing an all-in bet (which Varkonyi never did) that arose after 5 raises.

That said, Varkonyi overbet the pot and took a big risk that was perhaps unjustified. I think the 2002 WSOP clearly provides many clearler examples of questionable play, most notable the QT Helmuth hand and the JJ hand at the final table against Hall (who shouldn't have called, but I didn't like Varkonyi's all-in in the first place).

Either way, your point is well taken. Don't play the big one until you've highly developed your card catching abilities.