It’s down to the last three players at the inaugural World Series of Poker Europe Main Event in 2007. Blinds are 10,000/20,000 with a 3,000 ante and John Tabatabai (3.5m), Annette Obrestad (1.1m) and Matthew McCullough (2.6m) are all battling it out for the £1 million first place prize. The final table has been one of the most aggressive and interesting in WSOP history.
Obrestad raises from the button to 60,000 with Qd-Js and American pro McCullough calls in the small blind with Kd-9d. John Tabatabai looks down to find pocket Jacks, a veritable monster in three-way action, and decides to raise to 225,000.
(Watch the hand – the action starts at 3m15s)
It takes just a couple of heartbeats before Obrestad announces she’s all-in for around 750,000 more. Tabatabai looks a little sickly but makes the call pretty much instantly. The board runs out harmlessly until the river where a Queen pops up to save Obrestad and put all three players back to level.
Schoolgirl shove?
Obrestad’s three-bet all-in for her tournament life may look amateurish to an outsider but it's actually far from it. The action had been incredibly aggressive and Obrestad had been raising from her button a very high percentage of the time. So when Tabatabai played back at her she knew he was capable of executing a squeeze, especially given that McCullough had shown weakness by flat-calling in the small blind and that her opening range from the button was huge. She decided to define her hand as a premium one and move all-in over the top, causing Tabatabai to pass many of the hands she had in his range including smaller pairs, medium Aces and complete air.
Tabatabai, however, had pocket Jacks and never intended to drop them against Obrestad, whom he knows is unrelentingly aggressive and therefore has a wide shoving range, particularly against someone like him who three-bets so often. The speed with which he called shows he was already committed to getting his whole stack in preflop if he could.
It’s great poker from both players and Tabatabai is unlucky to get rivered, especially as Obrestad went on to knock him out heads-up and win the title.