Scotland's David Docherty is a veteran of the live poker circuit, with wins and deep runs at the European Poker Tour, UKIPT, France Poker Series and WSOP, among others. Docherty was named the UKIPT Player of the Year in 2023, and recently appeared in the BBC documentary 'The Four Rules of the Poker Kings'. Here he recalls an unforgettable hand he played at the 2009 Aussie Millions.
Picture the scene: it’s January 2009, barely anyone has a clue how to play poker well. One of the few exceptions is WSOP Europe Champion and all-round phenom Annette Obrestad, and she’s sitting opposite you: a 21-year-old kid who has just cashed in a live tournament for the first time – the $10K Aussie Millions Main Event. There are 31 players remaining, the tournament plays 6-handed from here, and you both have significantly above-average stacks, playing for the $2 million first prize. This is the setting for the worst hand of poker I’ve ever played.
Despite being born in April 1987, I was somehow the second-oldest player at a tough table that also included the likes of Zach Gruneberg, a strong reg who I’d battled plenty with online, and Kelly Kim, the elder statesman of the table who had finished 8th in the WSOP Main Event just six months earlier.
My attention is fixed firmly on Annette, though. I haven’t played much with her online, but I know how wild she can be and, given that I cover her, I feel it’s important to show her that I’m also ready to battle. It’s a mindset that will ultimately cost me six figures in equity.
The first few hands at the table pass without incident, then Annette opens the cutoff into my big blind where I look down at a powerhouse – 
offsuit. In my defense, it’s a reasonable 3-bet candidate to mix with in this situation in the solver era, but that was hardly in my thinking at the time.
I make a 3-bet that is almost certainly too small, trying to assert dominance with my ace blocker and my sunglasses, and the girl who was a poker millionaire aged 18 takes a flop in position with me. We’re now playing an unnecessarily large pot when we’re both probably 60+ big blinds deep.
The flop comes 
. I do not have the 
, but I’m not perturbed – I go for a small c-bet because no-one ever checked a flop in 2009 with the preflop betting lead. Annette quickly makes a small raise. Without going into too much depth about bet sizes or stack-to-pot ratio – the hand was 15 years ago so I don’t want to get those details wrong – I think it’s clear that we’re now in quite a pickle.
The 2024 version of me recognises that our hand is already very far down in our preflop range and is far from an ideal candidate to continue with here, especially so given we bet the flop. The only redeeming quality it has is its weak bluff-catch potential. It has no future playability versus a range that is already starting to polarize and an opponent who is unlikely to slow down. The blocker value of the ace diminishes greatly when my opponent is already representing a value range which is rarely going to contain an ace. The prudent thing to do would be to fold right here.
The 2009 version of me had top pair – how can I fold top pair yet to Annette? She’s nuts! She could have anything here! Let’s take a turn card first and see what happens.
The turn is the 
and I check to Annette, who continues her story with a turn bet that begins to leverage her stack efficiently for a river shove. I now have a decision to make. Well, I don’t – I should fold again, that much is clear, but I don’t.
It’s at this point in-game where I recognize that she is only really representing flushes and perhaps sets for value – even aces-up feels on the thin side. Could she have K-Q, K-J or even Q-J with a spade? For sure. Could she be turning a hand like 9-9 with a spade into a bluff? I’m pretty sure she could.
I then start to think of the value: she’s got, maybe, four king-high flushes, three queen-high flushes, two jack- and ten-high flushes and maybe one combo of the rest down to 5-high. All counted, that’s about 14 flushes. Then we count the sets – there are eight of those, and that’s only if she raised T-T on the flop. So she’s got 22 value combos, and then any offsuit broadway hand with a spade (18 combos) and any pair with a spade as a bluff (three combos per hand) – look how many bluffs that is! SHE’S BLUFFING.
So what do I do about that? Well, if I call the turn and the river is a spade, I’m going to have to fold to her inevitable bet. If it’s a J, Q or K I could have a very difficult decision. The pot is already very large, and if I jam and she folds and I get to show her the 
think of the confidence that will exude in 2009! I’ll be the table captain!
It’s at this stage, after four minutes in the tank, that I shove. In my head it was a bluff, because I was almost certainly going to be drawing dead if I got called, but equally I don’t think I was ever getting a better hand to fold. I ultimately decided it was more important to make her fold any equity she might have with a one-spade hand than to go into full ego bluff-catch mode and station her down with top pair. Or, you know, fold.
Annette snapped me off with 
– a hand I barely even thought she was opening let alone calling my 3-bet with, and my illusion of how her range was constructed was blown apart, along with my chip stack.
I had 9 big blinds left after the hand. I 3-bet shoved them with Q-J suited over Annette’s next open two hands later. She had Q-Q. I flopped a jack, but I didn’t dare call for another one. I was so embarrassed by the cataclysmic torch of a hand I had just played that I felt like I deserved to bust 31st – and I did, for $30,000.
I let one of the biggest spots of my career be sidetracked by an egocentric mission to show a far better player than me that I could be a dangerous opponent to play against – and in doing so, I gave her all my chips. I put winning a pot against Annette ahead of so many more important considerations in my hierarchical chain of decisions. There’s an argument that the only thing I did right in the hand was check the turn.
Most people celebrate their first entry on the Hendon Mob; mine haunted me for almost a decade afterwards. I was never really in a comparable life-changing position again until EPT London 13 years later. I even sought help from [mental game coach] Jared Tendler to help me break down and understand the trauma it caused me.
I’m over it now, but the next time you punt off a stack somewhere, take comfort in the fact it probably wasn’t as bad as this – I know I do!
Images courtesy of Manuel Kovsca/Danny Maxwell/Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd.
