Erick Lindgren's final hand - does anyone disagree with me?

[curtains]

Anyone else agree that the hand Erick Lindgren went out on was a terrible play. To go allin UTG with 86o to only increase your stack by a little over 10% is not a good touranment poker strategy IMO. I'd want to have about 30-35k before I got this desperate with 2-4k blinds.
If blinds were 5000-10000 then ok, its not so bad at all...but 2000-4000 and you have 55k in chips? (I think this was the situation)

Anyway despite this, I am sure Lindgren is a really great player...his results have been simply too good, and he just seems like a very quick guy.
I just think that it's important to know when to steal and when the risk/reward just isn't there, and its not that hes trying some crazy bluff but that hes simply making a technical mistake.

ps - sometimes its hard to follow what the exact blinds are, but i was pretty sure it was at 2k-4k...if they were higher than it was either an OK play, or at least not as bad of a play.

[AndysDaddy]

There was also a (E)1,000 ante. I doubt this changes the equation a lot with only three left, but its worth considering. (btw - is there a way to insert the Euro 'E' symbol into a post?)

I agree. This struck me as a strange play. With the stack sizes, any ace - and probably a lot of kings are going to call the short stack here. Maybe he was more interested in getting back out amoung the hot Paris babes. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[J.R.]

I agree, I think Eric felt like he was a better player than everyone else at the table (which for my money is pretty clear) and it seemed like people were happy to fold so he amped the aggression. Eric's extremely-confident attitude was apparent to me in his coffeehousing. Anyway, he had the skill to wait but not the patience and I think he really thought he could just run over his "weak-tight" opponents.

[jayadd]

he bluffed and he got caught thats it duh.
Why even take time to think, of course it was a bad play. Just like everyone else calling with 9 10s utg for 3 bets. Move on.........

[Rushmore]

[ QUOTE ]
he bluffed and he got caught thats it duh.
Why even take time to think, of course it was a bad play. Just like everyone else calling with 9 10s utg for 3 bets. Move on.........

[/ QUOTE ]

Jay,
I don't recall your posts ever being quite so, uh, pointless.

The question is not whether he bluffed and got caught. The question is whether one should ever bluff in such a situation. I believe the point of the post was that an argument can be made that Lindgren's play should never have been made, and that the implied question is whether or not anyone else was surprised by the fact that a well-established professional player would make such a play.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Anyway, I SURE don't know what "calling with 9Ts utg for 3 bets is."

[drewjustdrew]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyway, I SURE don't know what "calling with 9Ts utg for 3 bets is."

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe it's a super straddle.

[jwvdcw]

I agree totally...why bluff from UTG??

[ohkanada]

Not saying it was the correct play, but it was 5 handed. So UTG 5 handed is like cutoff-1 in a 10 handed game.

He tried and failed. Maybe the blinds were increasing very soon.

Ken Poklitar

[curtains]

There are some situations when its almost never wrong to bluff,no matter what your cards are. Im just saying that I think that this is a situation where its almost always wrong to bluff allin, no matter what your cards are(something like AJo would not be considered a bluff).
Whats interesting about it is that if the blinds were doubled or a little bit more than doubled, one could argue that bluffing allin is the correct play UTG.

[Nottom]

[ QUOTE ]
There are some situations when its almost never wrong to bluff,no matter what your cards are. Im just saying that I think that this is a situation where its almost always wrong to bluff allin, no matter what your cards are(something like AJo would not be considered a bluff).
Whats interesting about it is that if the blinds were doubled or a little bit more than doubled, one could argue that bluffing allin is the correct play UTG.

[/ QUOTE ]

We have no clue how the table was playing since we only got to see a small portion of the hands played. Maybe he had bet legitimate hands and had people all folding so figured a bluff would be +EV, who knows? We don't see all the times when somebody does this and pulls it off, we just see Erick getting knocked out after going all-in with 68o just like we saw Howard Lederer get knocked out of tourney of champs with 63o in an even more questionable situation.

We can chat it up on here all we want, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say these guys likely know more about high stakes tourney poker than 99% of the players here and had a good reason for doing what they did. Without knowing the whole story its hard to really fault them for making a play that just doesn't work out.

[tewall]

I agree about him appearing to be the best. He seemed to have the best reads, and thought about things like manipulating the pot with techniques other than "all in".

[slamdunkpro]

There are some posts over on RPG that suggest that there was a final table deal made. This could account for some of the sloppy play.

[curtains]

Lindgren's play was simply of a technical nature with no real reads involved, and he risked his touranment life to win a relatively small amount in blinds, with 4 players to act after him. His play was not really a BLUFF.
btw the statement that I made was that this play by Lindgren is almost never correct, regardless of the table conditions. He is going to simply get called by a better hand way too often to justify risking his whole stack for a 15% chip increase.
On a final note, Howard Lederer's play with 63o was an entirely different type of play, and shuold not be meshed in the same category as Lindgren's play. Lederer was acting on a specific read, and was going to see a substantial reward, whereas Lindgren had no specific information on his opponents hands, and just made a technical allin blind steal.
Lastly, I stated that I may have had the exact blind conditions wrong, and that it could change the play drastically. I just thought that it was an important situation that comes up a lot in NL tournaments.

[J.R.]

Lederer's play in the "Battle of the Champions" is more justifiable becuase of the payout structure, which I believe was winner take all but in any event was far more top heavy that even the WPT Aviation Club event..

[Nottom]

[ QUOTE ]
He is going to simply get called by a better hand way too often to justify risking his whole stack for a 15% chip increase.


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think this is true. I would even say if called he probably has about a 30-40% chance of doubling up. And most of the time hes not going to get called.

Another thing to remember here is that aside from the 1 big stack everyone else was kind of in the same boat. Most of the other players would have had to call for a huge percentage of their stack so are going to need a better hand than normal to call such a big bet. Erick was unfortunately in the worst position at the table realtive to the big stack, so has to be a bit more willing to make a play like this in order to steal some chips.

[J.R.]

Eric didn't like it:

"I was able to put the hand behind me but soon after lost a large pot by calling an all in bet with 9-9 vs. Jamie Posner's A-K. Now I was one of the short stacks and time was running out. I finally decided, probably incorrectly, that I didn't want to wait another round to find a hand and moved all in with 6-8 off suit. I knew if I could get past David I would probably be OK, but he found A-J and made an easy call. We both flopped a pair and I needed to improve but it was not to be."

link (http://www.ericklindgren.com/trips.html)

[Rick Diesel]

The WPT does not permit final table deals.

[J.R.]

July 10-13 Aviation Club de France Paris €10,000

September 1-3 Bicycle Casino Los Angeles $5,000 + $80

The no deal policy didn't come into effect until after the Bike's event, which was after the Paris event in question.

[slamdunkpro]

They did when this event was shot.

[Daliman]

[ QUOTE ]

Lindgren's play was simply of a technical nature with no real reads involved, and he risked his touranment life to win a relatively small amount in blinds, with 4 players to act after him. His play was not really a BLUFF.
btw the statement that I made was that this play by Lindgren is almost never correct, regardless of the table conditions. He is going to simply get called by a better hand way too often to justify risking his whole stack for a 15% chip increase.
On a final note, Howard Lederer's play with 63o was an entirely different type of play, and shuold not be meshed in the same category as Lindgren's play. Lederer was acting on a specific read, and was going to see a substantial reward, whereas Lindgren had no specific information on his opponents hands, and just made a technical allin blind steal.
Lastly, I stated that I may have had the exact blind conditions wrong, and that it could change the play drastically. I just thought that it was an important situation that comes up a lot in NL tournaments.

[/ QUOTE ]

Funny how you have both "on a final note" and "lastly" for 2 completely different thoughts... /images/graemlins/grin.gif

That said... I agree w/ you about the difference, but I still think Lederer's play was terrible. Rosencratz had (and always has) shown a propensity to call with many sub-par hands, and should have at LEAST waited for a suited connector or SOMETHING that has any real shot at winning. I'll never be the player he is, but i usually like to at least have SOMETHING to bluff with, not a pretty much hopeless hand like 63o.

[JustPlayingSmart]

There is a rumor in the "UB Pro??" world that Howard Lederer plays on UB as tiltological. I have seen this player several times in multi-table tournaments (as low as $5, which obviously makes me wonder about him being Lederer), and in the $500 Sunday tournament today. I have never seen anyone come over the top as much in online tournaments as this player. I have not seen Lederer play very often, other than in last year's WSOP and the 3 WPT's he has been in, but I do recall him doing this against Rosenkrantz and against Moneymaker when MM had AA and Howard had AK. If these are the same person, it would lead me to believe Lederer makes this play somewhat frequently, and that he had gotten Jose to lay down earlier hands, and that this time Jose decided to look him up.