Antonio Esfandiari Poker Strategy

Antonio Esfandiari is one of the most interesting characters in the poker world. The professional magician turned professional poker player. The Big One for One Drop 1,000,000$ buy-in tournament winner with three WSOP bracelets to his name, 27,000,000$ in tournament winnings and countless appearances on famous televised poker shows Antonio is a well-established player.

He's sometimes criticized for his antics (recent EPT prop-bet incident comes to mind) and while he's considered a solid player he usually isn't named among the best in the game.

Tight is (Still) Right

Antonio Esfandiari might not be the most exciting player to watch. His style of play is closer to Doyle Brunson than Tom Dwan. That being said he's also an incredibly smart poker player. He realizes that in the metagame full of aggressive opponents, making sure that your rangesare strong (particularly on the turn and river) is a pretty damn good strategy.

There are no judges in poker, you don't get additional chips for style. You can, however, get plenty of chips by playing your premium hand passively against a habitual triple barrel bluffer like Dan Colman. Esfandiari showed a great deal of discipline refusing to raise post flop and risk turning his hand into a bluff. He stuck to a simple game plan and executed it without hesitation. While this wasn't the flashiest of hands it was certainly very profitable.

Great Hand Reading Skills

The one thing that all the old school live poker pros seem to have in common is this uncanny ability to read other player's holdings. While Antonio isn't on a level of someone like Daniel Negreanu, he's very good in his own right.

Playing with the Best of Them

Playing a set on a dry board texture might not seem like a particularly tough task... unless your opponent is the one and only Phil Ivey. The flop is a case of a very disciplined approach by Antonio. He avoided the fancy play syndrome and started the hand with a cbet like he would with a vast majority of his hands on such a dry board texture.

He also correctly reacted to Ivey's aggression by recognizing the fact that he shouldn't really have a range for going over the top on a K25 rainbow flop. Check on the turn was super standard. As for the river, it looks like Esfandiari picked a perfect sizing for a value bet in this situation.

Mining for Information

This is a brilliant little play most players wouldn't think of making. It can also be considered angle shooting by some, though it's safe to assume that in the context of High Stakes Poker where entertainment is the whole point of the show and where players know each other very well Antonio's behavior was more friendly than nefarious.

That being said he figure out a brilliant way of getting a bit more info from his opponent even if he couldn't see the showdown. He used the fact Daniel was distracted to fake the all-in play after releasing his hand (which he was technically allowed to do since his hand was already considered dead) which caused Negreanu to display a whole range of physical reactions.

One Magical Moment

While we can't control variance and not everyone can be born on the 'good side' of the standard deviation it's hard to argue with the fact that being in the right place at the right time can define one's career no matter the profession.

In the case of Antonio, he catapulted himself near the top of the all-time money list by winning the first Big One For One Drop 1,000,000$ buy-in tournament. This one magical moment guaranteed him the place in poker history and while it might not seem significant from a strategy point of view Antonio put himself in a position to win this tournament by having a long successful poker career.

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