Ivey's mad skillz and Mitchell's mad stack

Ivey's mad skillz and Mitchell's mad stack

Saturday, 25 September 2010

With so many potentially exciting tables to choose from it’s difficult to decide which is the most suitable for railbirding. Somewhat predictably, I wound up watching Phil Ivey for ten minutes. He was silent with trademark oversized headphones, getting a massage from one of the gorgeous Ibiza Angels.

He has what looks like about 125,000 in front of him and in the hands we saw, he took the following actions:

Open fold.

Fold to early position raise.

Open fold.

Open fold.

Raise under the gun to 2,200 and call a 7,000 3-bet. Check/fold 3d-7h-Tc to 15,000 bet.

Fold big blind to mid-position raise.

Exciting stuff! The main thing I noticed while railing the living legend was that, in all the hands he folded, his eyes never stopped moving. Stereotypical Ivey, you say – his weird darting eyes are a pinnacle of televised poker. But, it made me realise something.

You know when pros say you need to observe the hands at your table when you’re not involved? Most people do, to some extent, but to me it looks like Ivey is thinking just as hard about his opponents’ hands when he watches as he does when he is playing. He constantly glances at chips, the flop, faces, hands, riffling patterns, betting actions, everything. So maybe the key to success is really focusing on observed hands at your table.

Or hell, maybe you just need to be Phil Ivey.

In less brown nosing news I saw James Mitchell eliminate Kevin MacPhee when the latter moved all-in for about 21,000 over the top of Mitchell’s 2,000 button raise. James quickly called and turned over Q-Q to the unfortunate MacPhee’s 4-4. By the turn, MacPhee had outs with the four of clubs but the king of spades on the river ended his tournament and boosted Mitchell’s stack by an additional 25,000 or so.



Tags: Poker News, Ivey's, mad, skillz, and, Mitchell's, mad, stack