WSOP Hand of the Day: 5-Way All-In in $10K PLO

World Series of Poker / Short-Stacked Shamus / 26 June 2011 / Leave a Comment

Tournament Director Robbie Thompson sorting out side pots at Event #42 (Photo credit: PokerNews / WSOP.com)

Today's WSOP Hand of the Day was an easy one to choose, a huge five-way all-in hand from Event No. 42, the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship involving Ivan Freitez, Dario Alioto, Emil Patel, Aaron Schaff, and David Ewing. The hand was expertly reported by Elissa Harwood of PokerNews, who incredibly managed to get all of the details of a hand in which 25 of the 52 cards in the deck were tabled!

It was Day 2 of the event. About 80 players were left from the 361 who entered. The hand began with Dario Alioto opening for 5,200 from early position and getting two callers in Patel (middle position) and Schaff (hijack). Ewing then tried to reraise all in from the cutoff, but the limitations of pot-sized betting meant he couldn't quite commit all of his stack and thus raised to 29,000, keeping 800 behind.

It folded to Freitez who called the reraise from the small blind. The big blind folded, then Alioto called as well. Patel then reraised again with his entire stack of approximately 140,000. Schaff called that reraise, Ewing chucked in his last 800, and then Freitez after some deliberation reraised all in himself!

That left just Alioto to decide whether or not he wanted to remain involved in this crazy PLO party. Alioto had everyone covered, and it would cost him 158,400 to call (about a third of what he had sitting in front of him). Finally he did, and the five players all revealed the hands that got them into this predicament.

Freitez -- Ah-Qh-4h-4c
Alioto -- Jd-Jc-9c-9s
Patel -- Kh-Kd-10c-9d
Schaff -- 8c-7s-6s-5c
Ewing -- Ac-Kc-8s-7h

Somewhat surprisingly, no one showed up with A-A-x-x here. If you're curious, twodimes.net calculates Patel's hand as the favorite among the five before the flop (27.6% to win), with Ewing's hand rating the worst (7.6%).

The flop came As-Qc-5s, which gave Freitez top two, Schaff a flush draw, and Patel a gutshot to Broadway. The turn was the 4s, filling Schaff's flush while giving Freitez bottom set. And the 2d on the river didn't alter anyone's fortunes further.

Schaff, who only had the short-stacked Ewing covered, won the main pot and a small side pot, while Freitez, who covered all but Alioto, was awarded the rest. Both Ewing and Patel were eliminated in the hand.

As we evaluate the degree of gamble going on here, it is worth noting the stack sizes of the five players. It looks like Alioto started with around 550,000, Freitez a little under 190,000, Patel about 140,000, Schaff about 105,000, and Ewing just over 30,000. With around 80 players left, the average stack at the time was about 135,000. The hand was reported during Level 12 (blinds 1,000/2,000), although might've happened at the end of Level 11 (blinds 800/1,600).

I'll leave it to the PLO players among you to judge each of the five players' decisions in this hand. Suffice it to say, it was a remarkable situation one rarely encounters -- especially on Day 2 of a high buy-in event like the $10K PLO Championship.

Kudos to Elissa for her hand report, cleverly titled "PLOmaggedon." I happened to have been working alongside Elissa yesterday, sitting nearby while covering another event (Event #40, $5,000 No-Limit Hold'em, Six-Handed), and marveled at her having captured all of the many details of the betting and the cards. See also the photo of the scene by B.J. Nemeth (interviewed here) -- with Matthew Showell's handy guide helping identify further details -- over on PokerListings.

"I'm watching @ebhizzle compose epic 5-way all-in PLO post," I tweeted as Elissa was writing up the hand. "The post already has a cult following. Film rights are being shopped."

As always, for more hand reports and updates head over to PokerNews live reporting, as well as WSOP.com for live streaming of every final table.