Craziest Live Poker Hands Explained: What Were They Thinking?
Poker legends clash with live reads and pro exploits in a rare double feature of high stakes poker breakdowns. What were Tom Dwan, Rui Cao, Andrew Robl and Matt Kirk thinking in these crazy poker highlights?
❗️Learn to think like a high stakes pro: ➡️ galfond.link/ThinkLikeaPro
It’s a rare double feature in today’s high stakes poker hand breakdown!
Tom Dwan, Andrew Robl, Rui Cao, and Matt Kirk battle in two of the sickest recorded and live streamed poker hands of all time.
Will Andrew Robl’s understanding of live poker reads, poker exploits, and overall game flow lead him to the right decision against the ultra-aggressive Matt Kirk?
Will Tom Dwan make the maximum by winning this huge poker pot against Rui Cao, along with the 72 bounty from the rest of the table?
SPOILER ALERT:
As Phil elaborates in the video, this high stakes poker hand showcases an important poker strategy concept: Don’t try to bluff Rui Cao 😂.
This first hand between Andrew Robl and Matt Kirk was played on the 2015 Super High Roller Cash Game on PokerGO.
To watch the full first hand, and see sickos like Patrik Antonius battling Scott Seiver among other highlights, you can check out ‘Super High Roller Cash Game | Episode 8 | PokerGO’ on PokerGo’s KZhead Channel: • Super High Roller Cash...
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To watch the highest quality version of the Super High Roller Cash Game and other great PokerGO shows, please check out PokerGO - The home of Classic Poker Entertainment: www.pokergo.com/
Browse PokerGO for quality poker entertainment like the World Series of Poker (WSOP tournament + final table coverage and more), No Gamble / No Future, Dolly’s Game, the Super High Roller Cash Game and Super High Roller Bowl, the Poker Masters, High Stakes Feud, Legends of the Game, poker documentary To Be Determined, the Global Poker Awards, and more.
The second hand was played during the Triton Madrid 2022 NLH Cash Game in Madrid, Spain.
To watch the full second hand you can check out the epic poker highlight video ‘Tom "Durrrr" Dwan vs Rui Cao - The SICKEST Cash Game Poker hand of ALL TIME 🤯’ on Triton Poker’s KZhead Channel: • Tom "Durrrr" Dwan vs R...
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Recreational players are gonna love this video
I'm a recreational player and I enjoyed it
Phil, I really love the chill, relaxed, yet concise and will thought out format of your videos. Keep doing what you're doing, man!
I appreciate the specific positive feedback very much! Thank you!
Preach it, brother. Appreciate you and all your content, Phil.
please turn this into a series! amazing content!
It's always funny when the 7-2 game is on and all the players not in the pot are talking about how one or both of the players in the pot has the 7-2.
IDK how long Phil has been making videos but I like his style. Always a better experience to listen to genuinely nice people.
You and your content team are really hitting your stride, you've put out some BANGERS lately Phil.
Thank you!! GO TEAM!
Banger confirmed
When I talk to people about poker who don’t play , I always show them a Phil Galfond video . Very easy to digest
I truly appreciate that. Thank you!
one of my favorite poker channels, Happy Holidays Phil i hope you and your family are well, Love the content!!!
Thanks so much! Happy holidays to you and yours.
these vids are so great pls keep pumping them out
Another excellent video from a top poker channel. Focused, entertaining, and I learn something new in each video. Keep up the great work, happy holidays!
You're the teacher of my poker instructor. I love your content and have a lot of respect for you! Keep up the great work!
Fun episode. Thanks to the team for putting this together
thanks phil! happy holidays
Your videos are so good man. Keep up the great work.
#suggestion - the Rui Cao vs. Tom Dwan hand with the 7-2 game on. Cao will forever be OG in my book for that play alone.
Agree. OG
Only way it's more gangster is if Dwan pulled the trigger on river and this cyborg calls with 8 high.
I love this kind of analysis. You are doing great, Phil.
It's wild in the streets! Great video, as usual. Thanks, Phil!
The level of understanding of the players tom says because he snap call me if i shove, loved this phil brings out the fun beauty part of the game
I just love these videos, so fun and interesting at the same time ! Bravo Phil !!
This was such a cool video with the hand analysis and the hands them selves this is what poker is about love it🎉🎉
Street poker is my favorite kind of poker. Glad you enjoyed it too!
Great video bro 🎉
Great review
Huge respect to the GOAT putting out top quality free poker training content right before Xmas. Love your stuff Phil.
Bruh...the best content on youtube. Keep up the grerat work. ...and thank you, I look forward to your vids
Thank you so much!
Omg what a great KZhead channel. Thank you KZhead algorithm! You are exactly what I have been looking for! Keep it up!
I just love your videos Phil :) So much fun and wonderful analysis combined
Phil, Larry here, you know me as a dealer-friend of Tommy's from Aria. Retired in the Philippines now.😊 Having dealt many hours to Matt, I'm only two mins into the Video and your analysis of Matt is spot-on, if not even more forgiving a description. 😊😊 Andrew knows him well and is obviously willing to risk his stack with intentions of showing and tilting Matt. Which is highly profitable.
Love the format ! I wish you covered the haxton vs daut wpt hand, but there is maybe not much to say about haha. Would love to have your insight on this one 😊
Good call! I sometimes worry about dipping that far back into the archives, but that was a true classic.
@@PhilGalfond Maybe you could try a fun hands classic review/analysis. I was thinking about that hand with phil laak vs scott seiver 😂. That could be so funny and nice to watch. Keep up the good work !
My favourite hand ever
Both Matt and Dwan fumbled their chips a bit on their respective turn barrells. I cant even imagine the pressure you must be feeling to slide out those kind of bluffs. Fascinating hands.
Phil Galfond u are the absolute goat keep pumping out videos
Thank you!
The Robl/Kirk hand was one of the best I've seen
Sick video bro 😂
I'm dying of that guy saying he'd snap call river with 8 high
The even sicker play for Rui would have been to check river 😂
With the last hand, even the dealer was laughing
Keep it up Phil 👍
Love the video Phil! Really looking forward to 5-betting K6 at my next session🎉😊
phil galfond makes the best poker content on youtube hands down!
Rui and Tom have a boatload of history going back to the late Full Tilt days when Rui first started playing nosebleeds. They are also former proponents of that hyper-LAG style which has made players like them so much money during their breakout years. With that said, I really don't think there's a ton of meaningful strategy to discuss in the hand other than perceived range vs. perceived range as well as the live tells that could derive from the fact they were drinking as this hand was dealt out. Just a classic example of a very entertaining levelling war which got way further out of hand than it ever should have because both players had some liquid courage in them. I'm curious now: I think you've analyzed the Durrrr Challenge hand with "Any Two" Sam before, but have you analyzed the Durrrr Challenge hand vs. Luckexpress where they both had king high on the river and Durrrr successfully re-bluffed Luck?
It was actually luckexpress who rebluffed durrrr in that hand!
This is amazing content
when i read the title i almost immediately thought of this hand being a part of it (certainly if this was longer and had more hands), as this hand here is well known "in the streets" hand. this was prior to seeing the picture of it clearly being this hand.
more hand reviews pleeeeease
Working on it!
Thanks Phil. Put that in your solver all you GTO pros
Great video 📹
schulman's comment just prior to flop coming out showing one of the very many ways he's the best poker commentator, for sure currently.
Rui calling a shove by Drrr would be historic. I'm guessing after playing a million hands of poker with the same people, it's pretty hard to disguise your hand.
Rui is a cheater
Another awesome video. I like watching the high stakes stuff from time to time, I feel it just theater. That said, these 2 hands were Masterpiece Theater worthy!! Keep up the great work.
Thank you!!
I swear Aussie Kirk is the guy they made the movie, The Gambler, off of when it comes to poker haha
keeping that part of tom dwan eating food in the end was the best decision for this video
Board is so bad for the 3b caller that it’s almost completely impossible to stay balanced with 72 game in effect. Toms only (normal) possible value hands on the river are 55, (3 combos) a5s (1 combo) Jts (up to 4 combos but probably less) And then a debatable amount of aq Compared to 12 combos, of 7-2 (because costa has a 7) But it’s way too dicey for Tom to find weird hands like A4s as a flop x/r in this spot to balance all those bluffs because of how good board is for Cao’s range so he’s almost certainly going to be over bluffing massively. From the moment Tom found x/r on aq5r Cao knew what was up. And decided the 7 blocker didn’t even matter lol. Great call down
Sheesh, I had a bluff get called after he tanked for 2 minutes for $200 last week and I was sick for 3 days....i couldnt imagine these nosebleeds. These videos are fun to watch.
The 27 hand is a great thing to do in a small cash game with friends. Tons of fun. Few drinks, low stakes, just enjoy the bluffs and the mindgames and have a laugh. Not really my cup of tea at higher stakes :D
I've seen action like that in Draw games, Deuce and NL draw
15:46 - what you can teach: "If you have 8 high, call on the turn to induce an opponent to bluff the river with 7 high". Norman Chad would say this hand has advanced poker by 50 years.
Love you and all your vids. Not sure about the use of the term "street poker" though.
Yea Rui is the right guy to put on the thumbnail lmao
Wtf hand at the end did I just watch. Been a fan for MANY years phil, please do a video covering Patrick antious hands, guy is a wizard like yourself
Id say that totally gto plays at those line-ups 😂 with Matt kirk on the table I'd call with pokemon cards 😂
Great great video, harsh to call Newey a rec, every time I see him he plays pure solid and well, not all recs are easy targets 🤣
The whole rec or pro thing is really stupid as a way to categorize players. When i learned poker bad players were just called fish and it is irelevant whether poker was their primary source of income. Recs can be crushers and "pros" can be fish. In Poker all skill is relative anyway as you can be a crusher in some games and a fish in others.
Hi Phil; Andrew is Robl and Matt is Kirk. Worth saying sometimes since graphic shows otherwise and not all viewers know them two that close. just saying....😉😁
Whoa great video man, fuckin Dwan and Rui are both insane. I wish i had that bankroll
In my own game, recognizing that a player is representing hands with too high a frequency is one thing, but using that information to find the right spots to take advantage of that by check-raising bluffs is hard and takes confidence. I appreciate the discussion of the success rate in such situations. The social fear of looking foolish so often outweighs, stupidly really, the factual probabilities of bluffing in the right spot. Players not recognizing that is the only reason aggression ever pays. Thanks for your insights. Been following your career for a bit.
this right here VERY apt: "The social fear of looking foolish so often outweighs, stupidly really, the factual probabilities of bluffing in the right spot." it's why you almost never see crazy weird bluffs in most players you play against in real life live games. and for most people in most games, just folding the river is almost always a money making play (against strong bets etc).
"In my game"... trust me when I say that not a soel came here hoping to hear aboutr "your game"... we couldn't care any less about your game or your pretending to be some sort of poker expert qualified to give expert advice this is not all about you
what about your K5 hand vs Eli Elezra on HSP? that was a pretty hood play from you, Phil! pre flop, at least...
He already talked about that hand in one of the HSP videos he made.
Not something me as a low limit player will probably run into, unless it's a friendly home game playing 72 so there's that but entertaining as hell.
awesome videos
The moment when the hands are revealed has big Leslie Chow “youuu fukka meee?!” vibes.
Nice video :)
Damn i loved this video, please sir, give me some more
72 is really interesting, lets say Tom only uses 4 combos of 72 to 4-bet so he has more AA/KK in his 4-bet range than 72 he has 12 72 combos to play aggressively post flop, if he has less than 24 value combos on the river and you're getting 2-1 you should call with hands beating 7 high. However Tom did give up on the river so it shows some kind of balancing Tom is doing as to not over-bluff his 72. The thing I don't like about 87 is that although it dominates 72 it blocks 1/4 of Tom's 72 bluffs so probably better to just play 2 cards higher than 7 just incase 72 flops a pair.
Surprised Phil didn't mention how odd it was for Rui to choose 78o to do this with as he's blocking the 72o. Hmm
Doyle had one of the best poker stories. 2 of the times somebody died while Doyle was at the table with them playing the game was some kind of low-ball game .
what
I love how Galfond has to explain how to balance your 7 2, 10k bounty range.
Love to listen to how you think
Rui calls with 8high until the river… never want to hear Poker is dead from anyone 🎉
Because one Chinese billionaire punted a tiny fraction of his net worth?
Tbh the call call shove against overly aggressive players who have a habit of building big pots with poor holdings is a really good counter. And also a way to torch a lot of money
hand 1: no analysis on robl jamming preflop?
if I was Dwan, i'd be slightly worried they could see my cards somehow
Super entertaining to watch but not recommended to try at home 😂 when I first started playing again, after not playing for 10+years, I watched this kind of poker, went and tried to play like that and failed miserably 😂😂
And I thought, after reading the video title, that Kirk would at least pull a true Stu Unger ( not even a Robbie 😛) : You got nothing, I got high card, - I win! But especially as Robl's shove on the Ace looks indeed so completely bluffy. 🤫🙃😉
Rui has a 7 in his hand, out of every combo you could lose your mind with that has to be basically the worst one. Did dwan accidentally flash a card to rui or something?
He was definitely cheating
Rui is the top 5 best poker player in Europe back in 2010-2015.
Another method of thinking I can afford it, and there’s some stuff roble can see we can’t. He must have some history here to do what he did seen this hand many times
Phil "The fish is actually a very tricky player who isn't bad and I don't have an easy time playing against him" Galfond.
Robl is my favorite color on the spectrum. Brilliant.
Paul Newey is one of the best recreaitonal players for sure. He plays better than some "pros"
90% of Poker "pros" are generally losers and degenerates. They are always broke and go around begging for money. Many others, so called "recreational" players have more lucrative business opportunities than playing poker 60 hours a week, which is manual labor in a sense, and being more intellegent and dilligent than these "pros" are many times better players. There are of course a small number of very good pros but these are the exception not the rule. There is a reason all these Pros teach now instead of play for a living. Its a better business and more stable than trying to make money soley by playing poker.
that last hand was WICKED...the first one was good too the reactions of the direct participants...they all COLD VILLAINS
Once matt 5 bets min robl automatically knows he can’t have AK cause AK would shove so robl knows Matt is super polarized to AA or air and given how spewy of a rep Matt has it’s much more likely he has the later. The final nail in the coffin is when Matt bets the A on the turn. If he had AA he will check a high percentage of the time to give robl some rope. Hands like A5o probably either rip turn or check not bet small. Another bluff tell by Matt is the classic small bet on turn he’s basically saying oh I still want to try and win by betting but I don’t want to risk it all which is funny cause if he just shoves turn he obviously wins. Easy for me to say when I can see the cards lol
Phil GOATfond
Tom vs Rui = Fuck Around vs Find Out.
Exactly
2 classic examples of Batman street poker.
Paul Newey is a rec? Guy had 5.5m career earnings, I would like to be this type of rec please :D
Using live earnings is not a good metric to determine if someone is a pro or not.
Set hunting
Crazy handd
Now do a follow up of hands where it didn't work and someone totally punted it off lol
Very interesting hands, To be fair A is a pretty bad card for Mat
Definitely. Still such a sick play!
Why does it matter? Couldn't the turn be a joker and it make no difference? Like he 5bet K5o he has no range construction
Lol thanks for teaching us how to play 78 vs tom
No problem
I didn't know Matt Damon actually played hig stakes poker.
My favourite youtuber
I’ve seen that second clip before but didn’t realize how much the table was talking about 7-2. I bet that played a huge part in the hand in terms of getting reads off of Tom.
Ba si oh I call 😂man i wish i knew what that meant 😅
There is nothing that tilts me more, than to see how ROBL is talking.
The problem with him claiming he knew Tom had 7 high and he calls if Tom shoves, is that if he really believes that then he can just check back river and win with no risk to his stack. Obviously he was lying. Great hand either way.
Nah you still have to shove in case dwan was losing their mind with 9 high. Even if you think they have 7-2 you obviously can never be 100% certain