Gus Hansen makes a big laydown in this sit and go tournament against Daniel Negreanu

Who is at the table in this Poker After Dark winner-take-all $120,000 sit and go format.

Howard Lederer, Erik Lindgren Daniel Negreanu, Gus Hansen, Tuan Li, all in a winner take all poker After Dark sit and go tournament six players started and Michael the grinder Mizrachi has already been eliminated.

These are how the chip stacks are at the beginning of the hand:

Howard 41,000
Lindgren 25,000
Hanson 20,000
Negreanu 18,000
Li 16,000


The blinds are 300 and 600 and Tuan Lee is the big blind. Lindgren and Lederer fold and Daniel Negreanu coyly limps in with pocket aces, so Gus Hansen naturally fills the small blind with Ace of diamonds and eight of hearts while Lee checks his four of spades and three of diamonds.

The pot before the flop is now $1800.



Here is where it gets tricky because the flop is the seven of hearts, eight of spades, and two of diamonds giving Gus Hansen top pair top kicker. Hansen obviously thinks this flop is good for him because he checks as first to act, and Tuan Lee who is really no where on this board also checks to Daniel. You can sense that Gus Hansen already has a plan to check raise anybody who bets at this flop.

And that's exactly what Daniel does by betting $1500 making the pot $3300. That's response here the way he should and raises the pot $5,200 now making it $8,500 in the pot. All of a sudden this has become a huge pot and both players have their sights set on winning it.

Daniel seems to be legitimately struggling with what to do here, putting on a show for Gus. I think he does a good job at it really because I've seen Daniel in the spots in other hands and he has been easier to read than he is right now. So far Daniel has invested $2100 of his $18,000 stack and is only slightly out stacked by Gus Hansen. But now with the pot this big Daniel decides it's the best time to show the rest of his $16,000 stack into the middle.

"Not only did he show one card, but Daniel
let Gus Hansen choose the card that he
could see. This was Daniel's biggest
error in the hand... the other was the push."

That makes the pot slightly more than $24,000 and Gus is faced with calling the rest of his tournament in the hand. Gus has slightly less than $14,000 left in his stack and needs to call with about $12,000 of that to see what Daniel is holding. He is getting 2-1 odds, he is orange mzoned with the $14,000 in chips, Gus has a chance to knock out a good player, and it's a winner take all event. I think that most players would call here given all those factors.

However there are two extraordinary circumstances, which contribute to making this an easy fold for Gus Hansen.

The first one was that Gus Hansen and Erik Lindgren had a side bet giving Gus four to one odds to win this tournament. It seems $120,000 isn't enough to gamble with for these guys and who knows how much that side bet was for.

The second factor contributing to a fold here was that Daniel decided to show one of his cards to Gus Hansen while Gus Hansen was contemplating the all in play by Daniel and what to do about. Not only did he show one card, but Daniel let Gus Hansen choose the card that he could see. To me this was Daniel's biggest error in the hand... the other was the push.

That kind of confidence had to get Gus's radar up as it seemed obvious Daniel had no preference as to what card just would see. It now helped confirm that Gus was a long shot to win his hand. Now that Gus new that one of Daniel's cards was an ace, it would seem unlikely that Daniel is forcing Gus out of this hand with two over cards, like Ace King suited so either Daniel had pocket aces, or Ace-Eight.

Gus Hansen is an astute professional poker player, and he shows it by laying this down - but after Daniel showed the card, I think this is an easy lay down. After that I think Gus was just getting some TV time really because he knew he was beat. Possibly, the only delay on his part came from the fact that Daniel limped into the pot. On some other days Gus Hansen may very well have called this bet. Even the pros are not perfect, but both of them played very well enough in this hand.