WPH #531: “OMG SHE’S A MONSTER!!!”

The Poker Coaching Podcast with Jonathan Little

#gameofgold #pokerstrategy #ggpoker

Heads-up poker is the purest form of our beautiful game & there is nowhere to hide! There can only be one winner and one loser! In this heads-up battle Nikita Luther takes on David Williams during PokerGO’s Game of Gold in South Korea. Luther finds herself on the river with a busted draw. It looks like she doesn’t have the courage to fire out a bluff as she decides to check. Surely she has now waved the white flag to Williams to value bet his pair of jacks?

In full-ring games, when you defend from the big blind against a raise and then call a continuation bet on the flop, it’s often a solid strategy to have a leading range on turns that pair the middle or bottom card. These cards are more likely to be a part of your range than your opponent’s, so you can go into the leveling war. This allows you to mix in leads with both your value hands and your bluffs.

David Williams is a professional poker player from America. He has over $9,300,000 in live tournament earnings putting him in the top 150 on the all-time money list. His largest cash of $3,500,000 came from the 2004 WSOP Main Event where he narrowly lost out on his first bracelet to Greg Raymer ‘Fossilman’. Two years later he captured his first WSOP bracelet after winning the 2006 $1,500 7 Card Stud event for $163,118.

Nikita Luther is a professional poker player from India and is a Natural8 ambassador. She has over $530,000 in live tournament poker earnings and one World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet from the $1,000 Tag Team Event in 2018 for $87,902 where she partnered with professional poker player Giuseppe Pantaleo from Germany. Filmed in Seoul, South Korea and hosted by experienced poker broadcaster Ali Nejad, Game of Gold combines high stakes poker with survival reality TV. Over the course of the 12 episodes, the sixteen participants competed across various poker formats, including Sit & Go’s, Heads-Up games, Indian Poker and a standard tournament poker game.

The poker players on the show included Daniel Negreanu “KidPoker”, Jason Koon, Fedor Holz “CrownUpGuy”, Kevin Martin, Kyna England, Josh Arieh, Daniel Cates “Jungleman”, Lukas Robinson “RobinPoker”, Nikita Luther, Charlie Carrel “Epiphany77”, Johan Guilbert “YoH ViraL”, Olga Iermolcheva, David Williams, Andy Tsai “Andy Stacks”, Michael Soyza, and Maria Ho.

Round 2 was the heads-up team battle part of the show – There were 4 teams with three players on each team. After one match, the losing team would put up their next poker player. After one team had lost 3 matches they would be eliminated to the losers bracket with the winning team advancing to the winners bracket. The 3 players on the losing team from the losers bracket would be eliminated from the show.

The final six players competed in a winner-take-all format Sit & Go (SNG). This was unique as it meant there was no Independent Chip Model (ICM) pressure on any of the poker players.

Game of Gold Results

1st: Maria Ho – U.S.A – $456,000 2nd: Daniel Cates ‘Jungleman’ – U.S.A – $0 3rd: Johan Guilbert ‘Yoh Viral’ – France – $0 4th: Fedor Holz ‘CrownUpGuy’ – Germany – $0 5th: Kyna England – U.S.A – $0 6th: Josh Arieh – U.S.A – $0

Preflop: David Williams raises to 40,000 with J8o from the button, which is also the small blind during heads-up poker. Nikita Luther calls with 96o from the big blind as they both head to the flop.

Flop – Jd 7d 5s: Luther flops a gutshot straight draw that isn’t to the nuts, she checks to which Williams fires a continuation bet of 50,000 with his top pair and backdoor straight draw. Luther makes the call out of position.

Turn – 7h: The board-pairing 7 of diamonds doesn’t improve Luther’s hand. However, she decides to donk lead for 70,000 since she is aware that she has more sevens in her range. Williams who will also be aware of this, just calls with his top pair and they head to the river.

River – 4d: The river completes a few possible front door straight draws but not the one Luther has. She checks, seemingly content to give up on her bluff. Williams now decides to go for some thin value and bets 150,000 with his pair of jacks. It looks like WIlliams is going to take down the hand right now, right? Stay tuned to the end of this poker video to see how this crazy poker hand plays out!

Jonathan Little analyzes live poker hands from TV poker shows such as Poker After Dark, Hustler Casino Live, The Lodge Poker Club & PokerGO. He also analyzes popular poker vloggers such as Rampage Poker, Brad Owen, Jaman Burton, Ashley Sleeth, Wolfgang Poker and others!

You will also find many poker hands on this channel that contain some of the biggest names in the poker world such as; Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, Doug Polk, Garrett Adelstein, Tom ‘Durrrr’ Dwan, Dan ‘Jungleman’ Cates, Fedor Holz & many more!

#pokerstrategy #gameofgold #ggpoker

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