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What is the highest goal TV poker can attain? To me, the best TV poker makes you want to PLAY POKER. For the most part, the way poker is televised fails to do this. I don’t necessarily blame TV for that. Their goal is to get people to watch, not to get them to play. Even though showing the players’ hole cards was a great innovation that made certain aspects of televised poker more exciting, few people realize how it pushed aside other means of presenting poker, including some means that may occasionally be more exciting and better.

You may never know from watching on ESPN but the heads-up match between Joe Cada and Darvin Moon included a hand that was one of the most exciting I have ever seen. Although I am certain it will make the broadcast, you can’t possibly experience it the way I did when you know both players’ cards throughout the hand. In this instance, ignorance truly was bliss.

Just after 1am (hand #356 according to pokernews.com) Joe Cada made the call that was the turning point of the match. I don’t mean that, in retrospect, that was the turning point of the match. I mean AT THAT MOMENT, it was crystal clear that this hand was the turning point.

Don’t get me started but another problem with TV poker is continuity. You usually don’t get a sense from watching on TV of the flow of the match, how much time has elapsed, or the stacks in relation to the antes and blinds. I don’t know if you will get that from ESPN tonight, and by diving in to this hand in my analysis rather than by going through all the significant hands in order, I’m not giving you much context either.

In short, here’s the context: When they started at 10:37pm, Cada had 136 million and Moon had 59 million. Blinds were 500K-1M with a 150K ante. By the end of the level, though Moon narrowed the gap during the first several hands, Cada restored it pretty close to its original size. When they went on break forty minutes later, they each had just under 100 million. Coming out of the break, Moon won a couple of huge pots with marginal hands (we didn’t see what Cada had) and then Darvin became more bold, forcing Joe to retreat. By the turning-point hand at 1:04am, Moon’s lead was approximately 140 million to 55 million.

Joe Cada raised the 1.2 million big blind to 3 million and Moon called. The flop was Tc-5d-9h. Both players checked. The turn was the ten of diamonds and Moon checked. Cada bet 3 million and Moon INSTANTLY, with a wave of his hand and a jerk of his head, said “All in”.

You will know what both players had. Even the players themselves at least knew what they had. I, on the other hand, didn’t know what either player had. By analyzing the hand, that minute or two during which Joe Cada thought before calling his last 48 million chips was among my most exciting in poker. I feel bad for you because you will probably never know how exciting it was to play this hand without knowing the cards.

When Darvin said “All in,” I immediately wrote “I think it’s a bluff” in my notebook. I thought, at most, there was a minute possibility that Moon could have a set of fives. But that was it. I could not conceive that he could play the hand this way with a pocket pair larger than tens or even with a ten in his hand.

Then I started to imagine what Joe Cada was thinking about. (I’ll flatter myself and imagine that he was thinking a little bit like I was thinking.) Joe clearly couldn’t have a ten but I’m pretty sure he figured that Moon couldn’t have a ten either. Throughout the match, Moon LOVED to bet the flop out of position after Cada had raised from the button. Likewise, I believe Cada fairly quickly discounted the possibility that Moon had a big overpair. Moon had a big chip lead and was betting Cada out of hand after hand. He would not have neglected the chance to do that before the flop or on the flop with a big pair. He had gotten to the point of pushing Cada around – something you will unlikely understand just from on ESPN but maybe they’ll astound me – and perfectly set Cada up for betting a big hand strong from the start and getting his frustrated opponent to shove back.

That’s when it flashed through my mind: Joe Cada has second pair and is trying to convince himself that his instincts and his thinking are correct. I imagined Joe saying to himself, “Can I really go out on a limb for 50 million chips – the rest of my stack – CALLING with second pair?” When he continued thinking, I mentioned to Shauna that I thought Joe had a nine and was trying to figure out if there was a chance that Moon had a better nine.

Finally, Joe Cada made the call of his life and simultaneously made me the most and least surprised person in the room. Joe Cada had Jh-9d for second-pair. Darvin Moon showed 7s-8s – the underside of an open-ended straight draw with one card to come.( But he had just seven outs, not eight, because Joe had one of the jacks that Darvin needed.) The river was the three of hearts and Cada’s double up knotted the match.

When Darvin had built his biggest lead, I thought there was a chance that Joe could lose, either by getting unlucky or losing faith. By making several lay downs (and by losing some pots calling when his almost-nothing was smaller than Moon’s almost-nothing), he had been grinded down to the point where a bad break or self-doubt would have ended it for him. But he made that incredibly difficult call and was rewarded for doing it, I believe, for all the right reasons. I thought there was almost no chance that Moon could get Cada away from his strategy and it was overwhelmingly likely he would win if he kept playing this way (which, by this time, I had begun considering “my way”).

I said to Shauna and wrote in my notebook, “God, I wish I could be playing poker now.”

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5 Responses to “#911 – Magic Time Heads-Up”

1. KenP Says:
   November 11th, 2009 at 8:49 am

   OK, we are now aware that instead of law you wanted to go to med school but your penmanship was too poor to qualify.

2. PB Says:
   November 12th, 2009 at 12:35 am

   Hi Michael -

   This was the hand of the night and I’ll give it to ESPN that they showed the wheels just churning in Cada’s head…

   Optimistically, giving Moon the benefit of the doubt, I think Moon was telling Cada with his big bet here, “I know the bracelet means more to you than me…call me and hope that you’re opinion of me is correct – that I’m bluffing. Are you prepared to risk that bracelet that you want so badly?”

   Cada seemed to be putting the puzzle together, “Why would he push here? If he has a set making the full house, or at least the 10…shouldn’t he be trapping me? Fine…I’ll take second if I’m wrong.”

   It was the call of the night…

   When I first started playing, after watching poker on television, I really wanted to play…now…I just want to play.

3. Fifth Street Journal Says:
   November 12th, 2009 at 11:11 am

   Re.: “Their goal is to get people to watch, not to get them to play.”

   I’d argue if they’re not making people want to play, they’re not making them want to watch either.

4. DLeeCT Says:
   November 14th, 2009 at 4:01 pm

   FYI – I watched the Final Table with the PokerNews hand-by-hand reporting next to me. That way I could capture the sense of time between hands and some of the flow of action. It actually worked out great – the hole card cam provided info that PokerNews didn’t have as they didn’t know the cards (eg Shulman laying down 9s to Ivey, Ivey laying down Js to Saout) and thus added to my understanding of the final table. Similarly, you knew what hands were big for players and when ESPN broadcast them, you had a better perspective on what was going on based on PokerNews info. I give ESPN a lot of credit – they missed very few important hands based on PokerNews report and added a few that you wouldn’t know were potentially big.

5. James L Brooks Says:
   December 18th, 2009 at 2:55 am

   Worst penmanship ever!

   But a great Head’s Up!

   What style of HU do you consider your “style” now?

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