POTD #65 (Almost) FT Friday: David Peters's Big Bluff vs Martin Kabhrel
and I reference everyone's favourite poker columnist Jackpot Jay Lovinger
I recently read an Op-Ed in the New York Times by Will Leitch titled I Can't Believe We Are Still Arguing About This, and it opens by talking about how, 35 years after he was banned from Major League Baseball for betting on baseball, an evergreen debate in North American media is “Should Pete Rose be eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame?” Even as MLB has recently changed their policy and reinstated Rose; the public debate remains unsettled and is not progressing. No one has changed their mind, but people still love arguing about it.
Poker media as I know it has not been around for 35 years, but it’s passed the two-decade mark; while there has been a lot of progress, there are a lot of old arguments being recycled. I remember reading an ESPN article by Jay “Jackpot Jay” Lovinger in 2004 that wrote about a newcomer to TV poker who he hopes is not the “Future of Poker”:
a poker pro who earned his nickname the old-fashioned way -- via his wardrobe. He always wears a gray, hooded sweatshirt while he plays; and often, while under duress, he hides inside it like a relationship-phobic turtle.
Okay, I know what you're thinking: Oh, Jay, relax already. Don't be such a tight-ass. So the guy's a little colorful, maybe a touch flaky. What's the matter, there aren't enough expressionless embalmers playing, we need one more?
and of course this column would not be complete without a slippery slope argument about the legion of imitiators this man will inspire
You've got a point. But here's the first problem: The guy is setting a bad example for the kids. How long do you think it'll be before the poker rooms of the world are run over by mobs of Junior Unabombers?
For those who did not click through the article or did not intuit it from context, the man who is hiding in his hoodie is not Christoph Vogelsang; it is Phil Laak. Phil is as nice a guy as I’ve met in poker, and while I haven’t played with him in quite some time, he has mellowed with age and is no longer as manic a presence at the table.
While he has mellowed, the debate around how other players should modulate their personality to the exact degree that best grows the game of poker has persisted and is tiresome. Like the Pete Rose HOF debate, “Is X good for the game?” will never go away, and the best we can seem to hope for is that instead of arguing about Phil Hellmuth1, we will occasionally get new blood to argue about; Will Kassouf held the mantle for a brief period of time, and now the mantle has been passed to the new bad boy of the WSOP, Martin Kabrhel.
The central debate around these characters is: Are they good for the game or annoying? Or both? One thing that irks me about this debate is it means instead of talking about something I love-- poker-- so much time is spent talking about something I do not like-- the personality defects of attention-seeking narcissists. Before I discuss Martin specifically, I must mention that Martin has been accused of cheating, and if those allegations are true, then it does not matter if his personality “grows the game.” The easiest way to shrink the game is to destroy game integrity. Getting away with cheating on a high profile stage can never “grow the game.” Even if Martin is not cheating, but feigning cheating to stoke paranoia at the table and gain a competitive edge. That is a bridge too far and does not benefit the long term health of poker.
With that caveat out of the way, let’s focus on Martin’s antics and how I feel about them. As someone who themselves has been described as an oddball, Martin is an oddball. He can be very funny, intentionally and unintentionally. I thought about writing down some of the funnier moments I’ve had at the table with him, but I am not a good enough writer to make them funny on the page. A lot of his humour comes from his delivery and timing. He has an off-kilter table presence and frequently makes me laugh.
He plays extremely slowly; it is unclear to me if he is doing this because this is how he chooses to play, or because he’s trying to tilt people with his slow play, or because he’s trying to stall. Given he plays extremely slowly in all tournaments, even when he has a chip lead on the bubble, I don’t think he’s doing it to stall. I think it’s a combination of trying to tilt people and make himself the table’s main character (or villain), while also naturally aligning with the speed he likes to play poker at. He does not shut up; once again, I think he’s naturally a chatty guy, but I also think he’s trying to tactically annoy or distract people. He’s the type of guy who, if he senses he is annoying you, would rather double down than leave you alone. He wants to get a reaction out of you: If he doesn’t, he views it as a challenge; if he does, he smells blood and wants more. To me, this is where to me he crosses the line and his antics become a net negative.
Poker is both a competition and a customer service business; you do not want a patron of your business who tries to annoy all your other patrons for sport, but the big problem that I’ve noticed from watching the 2025 WSOP streams is something that has befallen all of the big characters who play poker. They become self-aware, they develop catchphrases, they repeat the same bits. They are hacks. Martin had one funny viral moment from this WSOP, where he was all-in vs. Alex Foxen and yelled “Not like that!” as Foxen was rivered out of the tournament. Then throughout the rest of the high rollers, he kept yelling “Not like that!” Martin is clever and quick-witted; he can surely do better than repeating “Not like that” for four days straight. Even “Nine high like a boss” would look better on a t-shirt than “Not like that.” In streamed and non-streamed poker games, having a variety of characters and play styles makes things more interesting. What is not interesting is when individual players start living the gimmick and become meme machines, regurgitating the same tired bits. It’s good for poker to have villains and characters, but the best characters are grounded in reality. Wearing costumes, repeating catchphrases, and annoying everyone around you with contrived bits is artificial in the way the actual characters of the game are not.
With that long introduction out of the way, we will now look into the hand of the WSOP thus far. On the bubble of the $250k, David Peters, Daniel Negreanu, and Martin Kabhrel played a thrilling three-way pot. If you’ve read this far into the article, you’ve probably seen the hand. Read my analysis below.
2025 WSOP 250k 11 Left 10 Cash. Mincash is $516k. Average stack is 8.6M
Martin (8.4M) has T♥️8♥️ UTG and raises to 400k, Daniel Negreanu (6.725M) calls in the CO with A♦️J♦️, David Peters (8.725M) flats A♠️J♣️ in the BB
Flop: (1.5M) J♠️8♠️8♦️: Peters checks, Martin bets 200k, Daniel calls, Peters raises to 750k, Martin three bets to 1.425M, Daniel folds, Peters calls
Turn (4.55M) 3♠️: Peters checks, Martin checks
River (4.55M) 9♣️ : Peters checks, Martin bets 2M, Peters jams for Martin’s final 6.6M and Martin folds.
What Martin Was Thinking
Guessing what Martin is thinking at any given point in time is very difficult, but this all seems pretty simple. He had T8 suited and opened it preflop, c-bet when he flopped trips, then three-bet the flop on a drawy board when he got action from two players. He slowed down when the flush filled on the turn. He felt he still had the best hand often enough on the river to value bet, he got shoved on, and folded.
What Sam Thinks (No Cheating)
On such a big bubble, opening as a midstack into a BB who covers you and the chip leader on the button is a little too loose, but defensible. The flop is interesting, because Daniel has the strongest preflop range, but he almost never flats 8x preflop, so he has the lowest reach of trips on the flop and is covered by both players. I suspect Daniel’s flop strategy should involve checking a lot, so Martin putting out a small bet to charge the other two players makes sense. Once Daniel calls and Peters raises, Martin is not going anywhere, but I think three-betting the flop is a pretty large mistake. It makes it much more likely that he stacks off to Peters, if he’s beat. His three-bet will likely get Peters to fold some straight draws that would put in a lot of money on a ten turn, and Martin should not be that worried about letting Daniel put more money in the pot. Daniel seeing a turn card with a flush draw is not ideal,but every decision has costs and benefits. The cost of letting Daniel see a turn with a flush draw is small compared to letting Peters fold bluffs or keeping the pot smaller if Martin is beat.
The turn check looks sound to me. I am not sure if Peters should play leads on the turn, but it seems like he should have more flushes and boats than Martin. If you think your opponent should be playing leads and aren’t sure if he is, you should check with a middle of range hand. The river is Martin’s second big mistake. With a 2x mincash and three starting stacks in the middle of the pot, there is no need to make a thin value bet in position. Checking a flush, straight, or better 8 on the river is not unlikely for Peters here, and in order to get value with T8, Martin needs Peters to have exactly this type of a hand a lot: a jack that check-raises the flop, calls a three-bet, and then will still frequently call the river. Once you get check/shoved on, I think you should have a pretty easy fold. I wouldn’t be shocked to see Peters bluff with a bare 8 on the river here; if you’re blocking some of your opponent’s most likely bluffs and don’t beat value, you have to fold.
What The Solver Says
Well, the solver would never three-bet the flop for chips, and I didn’t run a three-way ICM flop sim, but if you’re never three-betting the flop for chips, you are almost certainly never three-betting it while covered on the bubble. Since the solver never three-bets the flop, I am out here playing some guessing games on what their turn ranges look like, but whatever approximations I use, I end up getting the same conclusions.
Martin’s river bet is far too thin. Martin should be occasionally bluffing with hands like Jx and a spade, which means AJ with a spade is not a great hand for David to bluff-shove, but also not a great hand for him to bluff-catch with. If all that is the case, what is Martin hoping David calls with? Exactly 87-82s (not counting 83s); those are 5 total combos of hands, and as I wrote about in POTD #21, a bad 8 is probably the best bluffing combo for Peters. Enough money has gone in the pot that when facing a 75% pot bet flushes and straights are indifferent for David. If Martin bets the river, it should be a big bet that can get better hands to fold; that is not his plan with a 40% pot bet. Martin got greedy and David punished him for it.
Grade
Martin’s flop bet and turn check are fine, but three of the other five decsions he made in the hand were bad. Some, like the preflop open weren’t that costly, but the the flop three bet and the river bet combined to have Martin put in way too much money in the pot in a spot where he should be playing defensive poker near a big bubble. Making several errors that compound on themselves near the bubble is never good and it’s especially rough when you get bluffed by a hand that’s not even a particularly great bluffing combo. It’s hard to give this hand any better than a
C-
Took sponsorship money from a site that cheated and stole money from its customers.