The Pros Speak: Ali Nejad

Posted by The Captain | Filed under The Pros Speak

Watching the pros play in televised tournaments like Poker After Dark, everything seems to play out according to a master plan. After hours of footage have been edited and put out for mass consumption, we get a slick presentation of the best of it – which makes for some pretty entertaining poker TV.

But what’s it really like to be there, in front of the cameras, knowing that every move you make is going to be put out there for everyone else to watch? Recently, Ali Nejad was good enough to share his recollections of his first appearance as a player on Poker After Dark and what it was like for him. While he’s got years of experience giving professional commentary on the game, that experience at the table didn’t play out the way he hoped. Here’s what happened – in his own words:

Even though it didn’t end up the way I planned, my first appearance on Poker After Dark was quite an experience. Just to set things up, it was pretty early in the second level with blinds at 150 and 300. All six players were left and Gabe Kaplan was the chip leader – I was behind him in second place.

Gabe had been raising a lot of pots and playing aggressively. I’ve played a lot with him, and I know that he plays a lot of the deck and is very capable of gambling. In this hand, he made it 800 to go – just a bit over big blinds – which was pretty standard. At that point, I looked down and saw pocket 4s. I had chips to play with and he was the chip leader, so I figured that since it was early I’d peel off 800 and see if I could spike a set. So I called and everyone else mucked.

With the blinds and 800 from each of us, there was a little over 2,000 in the pot. The flop came Qc-10c-4; I’d flopped bottom set and was heads up with Gabe. He led out with 1,600 – about ¾ of the pot. I took my time and thought about how I wanted to play it. With some big draws on the board, I decided that it wasn’t a hand that I was going to slow play. I announced a raise and an interesting thing happened: before I could say how much the raise was, Gabe just chimed in and said “Okay—how much, how much, how much?” in a really nonchalant fashion.

In hindsight, especially the more that I think back, it was a pretty good indication that he had a big hand. I really didn’t think that was the kind of thing that would come out of his mouth if he was weak because it was too relaxed and – apparently – intended to get me to put money into the pot. And that’s exactly what I ended up doing.

After he’d just bet 1,600 – that made 3,650 in the pot – I raised it 4,500 more. This was well over the size of the pot and I figured it was enough to push him off of a naked club draw and gave him less than 2:1 to call. After I made the raise, the pot was almost 10K, and I had about 15K or 16K in front of me. Really calmly, he asked me if I had a Queen. Again, in hindsight, that was another indicator that his hand was pretty strong. After asking that, he took a few minutes and asked me how much I had in front of me – and moved all-in.

I was really shocked to see this, especially this early in the tournament. Of course there were a handful of hands I started to think about him having – Ac-Kc, Ac-Jc, Q-10, Q-Q, pocket 10s, etc. The more I started thinking back about how he’d played in the past, the more I thought that this wasn’t the type of play that he’d make at this juncture. At the same time, Poker After Dark is unique in that it’s a winner-take-all format and you’ve got to take chances.

So I was sitting there staring at a set of 4s for at least four or five minutes (even though they edited it to look like only a minute or so), for what seemed like a lifetime, thinking to myself “I am so beat here.” I can’t explain specifically why it was that I decided that my pocket 4s were no good. I knew that set over set was unlikely and I also knew that if I laid down a set here that it was going to be a question of “what am I going to wait for to get my money in?”

I also thought that in a winner-take-all format, this was a way to double up through the chip leader, send him into sixth place, and put pressure on the blinds for the next four or five rounds. In the end I didn’t love it, but I called. He rolled over 10s and I showed my under-set.

Every player at the table was shocked. They all know me as an announcer and they didn’t think that I was capable of not snap-calling with a set. Of course the only reason that I didn’t was because I started thinking that my set was no good. At the same time, I was compelled to call in that spot. Even though I was sick to my stomach about it, I knew that in that format I couldn’t wait on a hand much better than that. In any case, that sent me to the rail in a most humbling fashion and ended my first Poker After Dark appearance.

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