Hellmuth checked and Negreanu bet 40,000 into the 41,000 pot. He should check-raise on the flop with hands that are capable of beating more than just Negreanu’s bluffs.Īs there are very few draws available, Negreanu is either going to be way ahead or way behind Hellmuth, who called to see the 5 ♣ river. This is the problem with putting in the check-raise on the flop with a hand like pocket deuces. Negreanu did call and Hellmuth responded by checking in the dark before the Q ♠ appeared on the turn. In other words, he could accomplish his objective by betting smaller. A smaller raise would help him minimize his loss if Negreanu were to have a strong hand. Hellmuth does not need to use a large raise size to get worse hands to fold this flop. He could even have the case four as Negreanu is loose and aggressive, so it’s foreseeable he would raise preflop with a lot of hands that contain a four.

He can easily fold his bad hands and is only going to call with hands that probably have you beat. Listen, Phil, when Negreanu calls this check-raise it is extremely likely that you are behind. Hellmuth opted to check-raise to 7,000 and Negreanu called. For this reason, Negreanu should often continuation-bet on this flop using a small size. Why so small? Isn’t that suspicious? Not really as this is a board that favors the preflop raiser’s range as they are more likely to have overpairs as they raised preflop and the big blind did not opt to three-bet.

Hellmuth checked and Negreanu continued for 1,600. The hand took place with the blinds at 800/1,600 when Negreanu (117,000 / 73 BBs) raised to 3,500 from the button and Hellmuth (83,000 / 51 BBs) defended his big blind with the 2 ♦ 2 ♣, which led to an all-four flop of 4 ♦ 4 ♣ 4 ♠.

Following a lot of pressure by Negreanu, will Hellmuth see a showdown, or is was his boat destined to sink? In one, Hellmuth got out of line after flopping a full house when he check-raised on the flop. That included a 3-0 record against Daniel Negreanu, against whom he played a number of interesting hands. Phil Hellmuth’s 7-0 run in the High Stakes Duel may have come to an end at the hands of Tom Dwan, but his run was impressive nonetheless.

Negreanu on high stakes poker