Live pros (rant)

to be honest, most the people you see playing poker on tv are terrible. jamie gold, victor ramdin, david williams, they are all just publicity blimps. let me explain why, i woke up this morning and turned on "poker after dark". at the table was doyle brunson (who i do think is one of the exceptions) tj cloutier, and possibly the biggest joke phil hellmuth. phill hellmuth did nothing right, he is an absolutely terrible tournament player, and i cant say much better about his overbetting spewtatstic cashgame. heres the rule, and every really great player follows this, when you have less than 10 big blinds, its stack time, there is no more limping and playing postflop poker. this is called push-fold. 3 handed the blinds were 1500-3000. tj had about 25,000 and picked up AA on the button, he raised to 7k (although i said its push fold, this isnt an awful play with this strong of a hand, exspecially if your opponent is a weak player like phil hellmuth) doyle folded in the small blind, and phil had A6s. phil barely had tj covered, but effectively he only has 25000 in chips now that doyles out of the hand. right now, its push-fold. first off a6 plays terrible oop postflop, exspecially if your gonna check dark (like he did...) what phill hellmuth should have been doing, was determing a range for tj cloutier and decided if his hand played well against that range. to my eye, its obvious he has a huge hand, because ill give tj a little credit to realize that it is push-fold time and he should be commited after any raise. this is why this is an easy laydown, yes of course phil is getting good odds to call, but he has no implied odds and you just cant take a flop with less than 10 bb.

phil ends up playing the hand just awful after that and rivers tj


later,
heads up between doyle and phil. 2000-4000 blinds, phil with about 38000, he limps A6.... its stack time, this is push fold, theres 6000 in the middle you need to be picking up. then doyle raises, now look what hes done to himself


few hands later, J4 hes got 24000, HE LIMPS AGAIN. its push-fucking-fold. you cant limp here, all in or muck (all in is my preference) and of course doyle puts him in and he has to fold.


few hands later phil with 16000, he gets Q3, he limps.... this is ridiculous, the blinds are 2000-4000 and he has 12k after the limp, barely a pot sized bet. heres the worst part, doyle puts him in, then he calls. IF YOUR GOING TO LIMP CALL, WHY NOT JUST PUSH IN YOURSELF?

and of course phil bitches because he doesnt know how badly outplayed he was. its a real joke hes in the poker hall of fame, and its a real joke that 85% of these people we see on tv, are awful players.