1. Mizrachi, I thought, just blew up. He had control of the tournament, he was in first place for a while… but he was in there mixing it up with VERY marginal hands and even eventually making huge plays and colliding his entire stack. I really felt that he should’ve “grinded” and just looked for big hands or better spots…
2. Dolan I felt kind of gave up at the end. I thought he might’ve done better, or waited a bit before getting all his chips in.
3. Cheong’s play down the stretch was pretty bad I thought.
For one, the pay jump between 3rd and 2nd place was like 1.5 million dollars. Why the HECK is he getting all-in with A7 when Racener is sitting there with like 15 BBs or whatever he had?
Duhamel is obviously kind of inexperienced, but he is a ballsy kid. The mistakes he makes are making calls that are too loose, and spazzing out at times being over-aggressive. He proved it over and over and over.
So, after the 5-bet and building this big pot, and you’ve got the aggro sky diver sitting there, just waiting to “go for it” yet again… if you shove you better have an actual hand I think. What, suddenly Duhamel is some awesome player who is subtly and ingeniously making this min-raise 5 bet, intending to fold to a re-raise? Not likely.
And ok, yes, it IS possible… Duhamel wants to apply pressure, but not commit… So Cheong makes the “Ivey” play. But what is the chance that Duhamel folds any of his 5 bet range? Is he 5 betting with pocket sixes or something? His range is probably AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, AK and AQ and he probably calls with 100% of that range 100% of the time.
From what I could see, Duhamel was both timid (and thus looking for big hand) and not likely to back down once the play of the hand begins.
So, with zero percent fold equity, Cheong is simply getting it all-in with A7 against AA-JJ, AK-AQ.
So he has like 25% equity in that spot. Losing patience like that and coin flipping with Duhamel while Racener has so few chips, and there is such a huge pay jump… is just terrible. Especially because after eliminating Racener, Duhamel would likely be content to just play a big pot for the whole thing.
Imo, he shouldn’t even be mixing it up with Duhamel (again and again) until Racener is out–and shoving over the top of Duhamel’s 5-bet just seems really really bad.
imo I think that Mizrachi and Cheong could both have finished higher, and very likely won the main event, by just exercising some common sense and being more patient. I know it’s easier to say that, but that just really jumped out at me watching the broadcast. I know it’s tough being there though under all the pressure and fatigue. But yeah… there seemed to be some errors in not folding to 3-bets and/or restealing from very straightforward players, as well as building huge pots with weak aces and also disregarding changing chip values and payout jumps.
