BBZ Picks: Our favourite Twitch Poker clips

BBZ Picks is a series of articles in which our coaches and streamers select their top pick for different categories.

Where we used to watch patched-up poker veterans on TV, we now tune in to Twitch and watch the latest breed of poker professionals ply their trade.

Twitch poker allows us to follow a streamer on their journey through a tournament, with all the ups and downs, huge pots, and massive scores that come with it.

This week, we asked BBZ coach Jonathan “apestyles” Van Fleet, as well as BBZ Twitch streamers Conor “ccOOnnOOrr” O’Driscoll, Andreas “derbegott” Ponath and Lukas “RobinPoker” Robinson to browse through their archives and find their favourite Twitch clip from their own streams.

APESTYLES’ PICK

While apestyles has many to choose from in his short time streaming, his favourite Twitch clip comes from four-handed play on a $530 Bounty Builder final table.

One player has just two big blinds and apestyles has the chip lead. Surely everyone else is going to fold and make the pay jump, right?

Wrong.

“There have been many fun bluffs, calls, and spews on my stream,” says apestyles. “This one I like the most because I thought I had just done something really bad.

“There was a player with only two big blinds and a massive bounty so I figured I would just go all in until I got a chance to try and bounty the heads-up player. The other players can’t call with nearly anything because they don’t want to go out before the player with two BBs.

“I thought I made a huge mistake but when I looked it up in ICMizer after playing it turns out I can shove 80% of hands there. The villain can only call TT+ but that’s only if I’m shoving 80% of hands. I think the villains call with JJ is probably fine, but as I said, you probably can’t call that.

“The emotions I felt in that hand were pretty wild too. Pure horror at being called for 60 BBs and then absolute glee at sucking out in a crazy spot like that. That player had sucked out on me in a huge pot in the very beginning of the tournament. I said ‘That’s what you get!’ but I was mainly embarrassed to have sucked out in such a goofy way. Sorry, buddy!”

CCOONNOORR’s PICK

BBZ Streamer Conor “ccOOnnOOrr” O’Driscoll’s favourite clip from his Twitch channel comes from a $5K tournament he played on PokerStars.

It’s a hero call he’s particularly proud of.

“As the buy-in of the tournament was so big, a lot of people might just click the fold button in this situation. But even with a few hundred people watching me, I was able to stick to my read and find the bravery to make the call.

“If I was wrong in this situation I may have looked stupid in front of a lot of people so it made me feel so good when I was right. This call proved to me that I am well within my rights to be playing at this level.”

DERBEGOTT’S PICK

BBZ streamer Andreas “derbegott” Ponath’s pick involves some deep analysis, so we’ll hand it over to him.

We had some fun hands yesterday 😁 pic.twitter.com/IsCxCWE4Qq

— Andreas Ponath (@derbegott) January 24, 2021

“I had a lot of things going on in my head in that spot,” says Derbegott. “It’s a very exploitative play that I could never do versus a good regular.

“On the flop when he check-raised he is repping pretty thin as he doesn’t flat anything better than two pairs pre-flop, aside from A8 and Q8. He’ll have a lot of combo-draws given the preflop range. The turn is where my play becomes questionable as it’s a very clear fold in GTO. Overall, I’m aware my play is out of line and impossible against a regular.

“Another factor–aside from my assumption of his preflop and turn range–was his timing. Usually when an opponent snap jams on the river on a card that changes equities a lot (bringing in a flush, for example) people will have an easy decision still. That means they will have a very polarized range (either a flush or a bluff) and therefore far fewer top pairs, two pairs and sets as those would have a tougher decision deciding if they should go for value.

“There’s some stream equity included when you can call out an opponent’s exact hand, so it was extra nice I was able to do it here. It’s not often you get to win a bounty with just king-high!”

ROBINPOKER’S PICK

BBZ streamer Lukas “RobinPoker” Robinson’s choice for his favourite Twitch clip really needs no introduction.

Just make sure you have some tissues ready as it might set off the waterworks!