Benny Spindler rewriting the rules of poker

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Benny Spindler is one of the great young talents of poker, he has amassed almost $4.3 million in live tournament winnings and is also a successful online player under his "toweliestars" nickname. PokerStars recently had people vote for the greatest poker hands, and the following video was on of the crowd's favorites.

The hand stars out innocent enough, Mattias Bergstrom raises with 44, but what happens after this is complete madness.

Spindler re-raises with KJ offsuit, Paul Foltyn cold-4bets on the button with A6 offsuit. Spindler 5-bets pretty quickly. Foltyn thinks about the situation a bit then 6-bets. Spindler counts his opponents stack and goes all-in. Foltyn reluctantly folds after investing nearly 50% of his stack, and Benny Spindler shows the bluff.

This hand is one of the best examples of how far poker has come in the past decade. 10 years ago, players knew that a re-raise was at least AK or QQ, while a 4bet was always KK or AA, and now players are 7-bet jamming with KJ offsuit. The young and agressive players are not playing their cards, they are playing spots and their opponents, and trying to outlevel their opponents.

Foltyn knows that Benny is an agressive player who loves to re-raise with marginal hands, and decides to try and take the pot down with a 4-bet. Benny, however knows that he is perceived as a maniac and that Foltyn could be trying to make a move, so he decides to 5-bet with his blockers. Foltyn reads the situation well: he knows that Benny knows that he (Foltyn) could be trying to make a move with the cold 4-bet, so Benny can try and push him off his hand with the 5-bet, so he decides to go for the 6-bet, investing almost 50% of his stack.

Benny, somehow, senses that Foltyn is just playing "power poker" and doesn't have it, and decides to jam with KJ offsuit. It is unlikely that Foltyn ever calls with a worse hand and he has invested almost 50% of his stack, so Benny has to be extremely sure about his read, otherwise he could easily be putting in his money as a huge underdog and losing most of his stack.

 

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