Home

Poker After Dark - At Least Once Per Tournament

By launchpoker, Feb 21, 2008

  Doyle Brunson is a famous poker player, to say the least. He has ten World Series of Poker bracelets to his name, more than anyone else on the planet except for Johnny Chan, also with ten, and Phil Hellmuth, who has 11. He has been around longer than either of them, and has two of those WSOP bracelets in WSOP championships (as does Chan). He won both of those events with the same starting hand, a Ten and a Deuce. It is well known that this is called the "Doyle Brunson" hand, and he loves to play it when he can.



  During one week of the NBC late night poker show Poker After Dark, he was playing with five other players who were rich in bracelets, Phil Hellmuth, T.J. Cloutier, Chris Ferguson, Layne Flack and Erik Seidel, and they all knew of his penchant.



  During this hand Doyle started things off with a raise to $600 holding:






... The only taker was Chris, with:






... who made the call at a discount from the big blind. The flop came down:







... Ironically this helped Doyle quite a bit, and in two ways. First, it was scary for Chris, because Doyle could be holding any one - or more - of those cards with his pre flop raise. Second, it actually improved his hand from nothing to a straight draw.



  Chris checked and Doyle bet out $900. When Chris folded Doyle showed his hand. The whole table chuckled as Doyle said, "I have to play this hand at least once per tournament. Now I have, so that's it!" It's doubtful if any of them believed him.