Negreanu's exit

[West]

Daniel Negreanu describes his exit hand from the WPT championship on his journal. As great a player as he is, his decision to get involved with this hand appears textbook bad to me.

With blinds 600/1200, ante 200, Daniel had about 43,000 in chips. He had described his tables through the tournament as being "awesomely weak", so presumably that is still the case. There is still a player at the table who he says has been overplaying hand after hand, but has been incredibly lucky not to run into any big hand yet.

One the hand in question, UTG limps for 1200, and Negreanu elects to limp with 5 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]4 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]. The three seat calls, and then former WSOP champ Jim Bechtel raised 7000 to 8200. The incredibly lucky player called, and UTG called. Negreanu felt that Bechtel was trying to steal the limps, which he says he had been doing for the last hour since he had arrived at the table. So he felt he was weak. With 30,800 in the pot, he decided to call 7,000.

If you've got a player who has been bully raising limpers since he's been at the table, why would you try and limp in second position with a hand as weak as 54s? He may have felt that the UTG limp would scare away a weak raise, but he doesn't say.

Negreanu's preflop call of 7000 is 1/6 of his stack. That's quite a lot of chips to bleed away with a weak hand out of position (and while he was at a great table). Left with 35,000 in chips, he can only move all in for an amount approximately equal to the pot. Making the decision worse, I think, is the fact that the player who has repeatedly overplayed hands is also seeing the flop (this is bad because Daniel's hand is so weak). If he flops a draw and this player flops top pair, all that is likely to happen is that Daniel will get all in as a 2-1 dog. Not exactly how you want to exploit a weak player at your table. Of course, Daniel probably didn't have enough chips left to fold top pair no matter who had it.

As it turned out, the flop was 9 2 3 r, about as good as Daniel could hope for outside of two pair or trips. He moved in (35,000), and Bechtel went all in himself. Others folded and Bechtel had T [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], confirming Negreanu's preflop read. No straight came and he was out.