Jonathan Duhamel Poker Strategy

Jonathan Duhamel is one of the rare examples of modern era WSOP Main Event champions who managed to stay successful and relevant after their massive win. The first Canadian world champion in the history of WSOP followed up his near $9,000,000 pay-day with great results in high roller tournaments like the one in Deauville in 2011 which he won earning $272,209. In 2015, Jonathan added two more WSOP bracelets to his collection winning two more high roller events.

He managed all of that facing a lot more adversity than your average WSOP champ, given how he got robbed and badly beaten during 2011 home invasion that was orchestrated by Duhamel's then-girlfriend Bianca Rojas-Latraverse. Jonathan is a great player with a proven track record and in this article, we're going to take a closer look at his poker game.

The Way It's Meant to be Played

Doyle Brunson pointed out a long time ago that the most important thing differentiating no-limit hold'em from other forms of poker with more conservative betting structures, is the fact that at any point in the hand a player can use his or her stack as leverage and push it all-in, putting a maximum amount of pressure on his opponent. Given how often poker hands end without a showdown, a result of any given no-limit hold'em spot often comes down to the willingness of one player to pull the trigger for the final time by going all-in. This is what makes no-limit hold'em the "Cadillac of poker" and it's precisely what Jonathan Duhamel did in order to win the hand against Antonio Esfandiari in the example link above.

While the preflop, flop and even turn were nothing to write home about given how WSOP champ was able to continue calling down on the basis of his showdown value, the river made the hand extremely interesting. It was a perfect moment for Jonathan to turn his hand into a bluff for two reasons. First of all, he no longer had any showdown value vs. Antonio's value range, second of all the fact that a King showed up on the turn meant that the Magician no longer had many of the Jx hands in his range for a triple-barrel value bet. Besides, both K on the board and more importantly Ace in Duhamel's hand blocked many second and top pair type combinations. Furthermore, Td even blocked some runner-runner straight combos allowing the Canadian player to make a great bluff vs. his opponent's range.

As Thin As Thin Can Get

If you ever see a beginner questioning the validity of the value bet oriented strategy, saying that thin value bets are no longer effective on micros given the increase in the skill level of an average player - show him or her this hand. Turns out that you can get plenty of thin value even when you're playing against one of the absolute best head's up players in the world, provided that you're good enough to recognize the opportunity and pull the trigger. This is precisely what Jonathan Duhamel did in this hand played against Olivier Busquet during the annual NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship.

The hand started with a standard raise by the WSOP champ with Q4o followed by an equally mundane call by Busquet with A2o. KJJ flop might have looked unassuming at first glance, but it was in fact fairly interesting given how in a HU match Oliver should be 3betting plenty more Kx and Jx combos than he would've in multiplayer formats. After a standard cbet and a call, the turn brought Th slowing down the action. The fact that Busquet was out of position in the hand and was forced to play in a fairly straightforward manner allowed Duhamel to greatly narrow down his range.

Pushing Tiny Edges

The last hand isn't the most flashy or exciting of the bunch but it highlights one important skill of the top players in the world. When we take the effective stack depth into account, going broke with top pair bad kicker on a Jh5h7c board is certainly not a winning proposition in a vacuum.

However, once you're playing against someone like Viktor "Isildur1" Blom the situation changes. Against someone capable of taking extremely aggressive lines with extremely wide ranges we should adjust our own range and play back with a higher percentage of our hands.