Brian Rast Poker Strategy

Brian Rast is a legendary vegas pro. While his name isn't as immediately recognizable as it is in the case of many other notable US based pros, his results certainly put him up there with the best of them. With the 11th place on the All Time Money List (over $20,000,000 in tournament winnings), three WSOP bracelets and impressive cash game results, Brian almost doesn't get enough recognition, which is a real shame given his attractive playstyle.

A Real Hero

This is a great little hand showcasing what Brian Rast is all about. Preflop action starts with a limp by Phil Laak with Q7s and a standard value isolation raise by Rast with A8s. The flop came 3d6s4d which should hit the pre-flop limper far more often than the pre-flop aggressor. Laak wasn't interested in donk betting and Rast opted not to do anything stupid with his showdown value and both players had the chance to see the 10c on the turn.

Another check from Laak didn't really change much as far as the dynamic of the hand goes and Brian was happy to check behind once again and try to realize his showdown value. The river brought in ten of diamonds and then the real fireworks started. Laak decided to make a humongous overbet, almost ten times the size of the pot which - while strange - was bound to put an enormous amount of pressure on his opponent simply by the virtue of how math works.

It's easy to say that Laaks line doesn't really make any sense, we can point out how unlikely it is for him to hit Tx, we can speculate that Phil surely would've played both flopped monsters and draws much faster than this, but at the end of the day it was still a matchup between $300,000 bet (with around $180,000 effective stacks) into $36,000 pot and Brian's Ace high. Rast recognized that he has to be right really often to make this call profitable in the long run and the fact that Phil might be doing this with a hand like A6 or 88 was a real consideration for him. He also decided to engage in a table talk which was somewhat uncharacteristic for him, but it was also a way of gaining some additional information in a spot that really called for it.

As Aggressive as the Cool Kids

Analyzing hands like this one is fairly tricky given the huge role history and table dynamics play in giant 4bet and 5bet preflop wars. In a vacuum 3betting and then 5betting with J9o in middle position against a random early position open raise should be -EV but both Brian Rast and Sorel Mizzi are far from random players.

What's particularly interesting in this hand is the fact that even someone like Phil Laak - who we've seen featured in the previous hand - had absolutely no idea what was going through his good friend's mind when he made that epic 5bet which means that Brian's game is certainly very robust and he cares a lot about balance.

Soul Reader

When we analyze the hands played by notable, experience live poker pros who enjoyed long successful careers there's usually one recurring theme that connects all of them. Experienced live poker players are usually amazing at using limited information, and their superior intuition to make extremely impressive reads on their opponents.

It's not just something Hollywood writers love to put in their movies, it's a legitimate and powerful tool in poker player's arsenal, and Rast is certainly great at using it. If the same hand played out against two different players we would've most likely witnessed a preflop call vs. 3bet followed by a call on the flop, check on the turn and another standard call on the river by the player holding Ah6h. However, countless of hours of playing poker at the highest level allowed Rast to soul-read his opponent which he himself was even slightly surprised by.