Fedor Holz took an almost preternatural hammering in his latest Legends Showdown on Run It Once.
The matches, which serve as cheap advertising for the site, have been brilliantly designed. Six pros play a round-robin of heads up matches against each other. Each match is 750 hands of €50/€100 no-limit hold’em cash.
The players play at two tables throughout. The play is cut down to about half an hour of streaming content per match and can be found on YouTube for anyone who has missed the series so far. So far they’ve been pretty fun to follow, heads up matches have an inherent dramatic structure and these are some of the best players out there bringing their A-game.
The games tipped into serious drama yesterday during the showdown between Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz and Mikael “ChaoRen160” Thuritz.
Turning two tables
The pair had been playing for about 550 hands without much more than a 50 big blind swing either way.
Holz was down €1.6k, when he picked up AKos on the button.
He raised €240, and Thuritz re-popped him to €1,000. After another raise and a call, the pot was €5,500 going into the flop.
Holz was left with two overcards when the flop came out 2-8-J rainbow. After Thuritz checked, Holz c-bet for €1,415 and was called. The turn paired the 8. Check from Thuritz, quarter pot bet from Holz, min-raise from Thuritz, Holz calls.
The pot was then €20,130 going into the river. Holz had €8k and a little change behind. The board came a deuce, giving Holz the two pair on the board plus an ace kicker in his hand.
Thuritz shoved and Holz had to make a decision for that €8k and change.
While this hand plays out on the other table Holz loses €4k in a single hand. After tanking at this table he folds and lets go of another €10,065.
Downhill for Holz
With just 200 hands to go, the tide of variance was sweeping Holz out to sea.
He had the weaker kicker in unlucky ace v ace situation. He tried selling a bluff for €6.5k in a bad spot and got himself called. Then he ran 65os into Q5os on a Q-6-5-x-x board for a full €10k buy-in plus change.
Within those two hundred hands, Holz went from being down €1,635.78 to being down €53,738.43. A brutal run that dropped Holz from being a close second and profitable in the Legends league, to being a distant third and in the red.
Here' hoping the next match is as tense.
