Deuce-four at the World Series of Poker

Last night while reading the day's PokerNews live updates from the WSOP in preparation for writing my overnight summary of events, I came across the first deuce-four sightings of the Series. To be fair, I'm assigned only a portion of each day's action to write about, so there could have been other 2-4 wins earlier that went by without me seeing them.

First:

Four High Wins Pot!

British poker player Karl Fenton just stopped me to tell me he just won a pot with four high!

It was folded around to the SB who called before Fenton checked his option. The flop came 3-6-K and Fenton floated one after the SB bet. The turn saw Fenton make a move as he raised the SB's bet from 425 up to 1,150. The call was made though so the river came 10.

Both players seemed to give up on it though as it was checked through. "You got it," said the SB and threw his cards in to the muck. Fenton then had to turn his cards up to claim the pot and he did so with 4-2 for four high. The SB said he folded 9-x. Pretty sick way to learn a lesson.

It is certainly true that there are lessons here. First is not to throw away your cards until you have actually seen your opponent's hand and know that you have lost. Alternatively, just always show, and this won't ever happen to you.

Second, though, is the mysterious power of the deuce-four to perform a Jedi mind trick on opponents on the rare occasions that it fails to actually make the nuts. "You should throw your cards away," it whispers, and the opponent does just that.

I have to admit that, even though I am the world's leading proponent of the Mighty Deuce-Four, I had not previously know that it had this extra way to win. Truly awe-inspiring.


Second:

Sorel Morell

Sorel Mizzi raised from LP before a short stacked player in the next seat moved all in. Morell was priced in and made the call with 2h-4h and was up against 6d-6c.

The board ran 9d-3d-2c-4s-8h. Turned two-pair for the man from Toronto to unluckily eliminate his opponent.

I dislike writing anything even remotely favorable about Sorel Mizzi, who is a big fat stinking good-for-nothing cheater that should be banned from poker. (That's him pictured above so that if you ever run across him you'll know who you're dealing with, and can call him a cheater to his face.) But the man does know how to play the game (which makes one wonder why he feels the need to cheat). And he obviously is in on the whole deuce-four thing.

The blogger who wrote this? Not so much. He first makes the mistake of thinking, apparently, that it is possible not to be "priced in" with the 2-4. He then says that the opponent "unluckily" lost--as if the deuce-four taking down an overpair there is something out of the ordinary.

Clearly PokerNews needs to get better-informed writers.

Just for fun, I ran the 2-4 versus 6-6 through the CardPlayer.com poker odds calculator. It said that the 2-4 is more than a 4:1 underdog there. Hahahahahahahahahaha! I think their software needs a bit of tweaking!