Posts Tagged ‘Andy Bloch’

A lot of you probably get these “pro tip” e-mails from Full Tilt from time to time. I’ve glanced at a few and they were always very rudimentary and sometimes wrong. The title of this one caught my eye, though, and while it’s not a very sophisticated concept, it’s well-executed:

Andy Bloch on “Visualizing an Opponent’s Range”

This is essentially what I’m visualizing as I play a hand: a little bubble floating over my opponent’s head that contains an ever-narrowing range of hands. In fact, I think may borrow this technique for a video or two of my own.

The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition
Edited by Michael Craig

This Full Tilt guide is a 19-Chapter anthology, so I’ve broken down my review chapter-by-chapter.

Chapters Reviews:

Chapter 6 Play Before the Flop by Andy Bloch

Chapter 10-Online Tournament Strategy by Richard Brodie

Chapter 11-Pot Limit Hold ‘Em by Andy Bloch and Rafe Furst

Chapter 12-Limit Hold ‘Em by Howard Lederer

Chapter 13-Omaha Eight-or-Better by Mike Matusow

Chapter 14-Pot Limit Omaha by Chris Ferguson

Chapter 16-Seven Card Stud: Tournament Strategy by David Gray

Chapter 17-Stud Eight-or-Better by Ted Forrest

Chapter 18-Razz by Michael Craig, Huck Seed, and Ted Forrest

Wicked Chops Poker is reporting that, with 2400 players left in the main event, Phil Ivey accepted a $20K wager from Andy Bloch at 99:1 that he would win the main event. Now that he’s made the final table, Bloch’s got to be sweating the $2 million loss.

My first reaction was that, this close call notwithstanding, this was a pretty good spot for Bloch. Granted everything I’ve heard about Ivey is that he’s both incredibly good at poker and insanely intimidating in person, but is he really 24 times more likely than the average player to take it down? The one thing I don’t know, which would make a big difference, is what his chip stack was like at the time. I guess if he was already at like three times the average when he took the bet, it might not be so unreasonable to think he’d close out eight times as often as anyone else sitting on a stack that big.

Even against bad players in a great structure, that’s an awfully huge edge. Then again, if Ivey does make it to the final four with a decent stack, I imagine he takes it down a large percentage of the time.

What do you think? Was Ivey getting the best of Bloch when he took 99:1?