Who says all the exciting poker action in Las Vegas this month is limited to tournaments? The World Poker Tour (WPT) Cash Game livestream has featured some epic hands, two of which Matt Berkey benefited from greatly.
Wynn Las Vegas is currently hosting the WPT World Championship festival, with Day 1b action of the $1,100 WPT Prime Championship taking place on Monday. More than 3,000 players had already entered the $5 million guaranteed tournament with two days of registration remaining. But there's also some juicy action taking place on the livestream stage at Wynn that has nothing to do with tournament play.
Poker Pro Wins Two Boards, Twice
Justin Young (l) and Matt Berkey (r)
Seven high rollers took a seat in a $100/$200/$200 no-limit hold'em cash game livestreamed on the World Poker Tour's YouTube channel. One player — "Rips" — bought in for $100,000, while everyone else started with $50,000. There were some additional dynamics in play beyond standard NLH, including the Squid Game, a more volatile variation of the Stand-Up Game.
The Squid Game came into play in brutal a bad beat hand between two prominent poker podcasters and high rollers — Berkey of the OnlyFriends podcast and Justin Young from the Table 1 Vegas podcast. But before getting into that pot, Berkey ran pure in a wild hand against Peter, who often appears on Hustler Casino Live.
Both players were all in preflop with $140,800 in the middle. Berkey held 8♦8♣ against Peter's J♠10♠, a classic race situation. They ran the board twice with the first flop coming out 2♣K♣J♣, giving the podcaster a flush draw, which he didn't hit on the 2♦ turn but did on the A♣ river, securing at least half the pot.
The second flop of 10♣7♠5♦ looked less promising for the pocket pair. But the J♥ on the turn brought some straight draw outs, and then he would again river a winning hand with the 9♣ to scoop the entire pot. That hand was nothing compared to one Berkey would play a bit later in the game against Young.
Action began with the Squid Game on and Xuan Liu calling the $200 big blind from the cutoff with K♣6♠ before Young looked down at A♦A♣ on the button and made it $1,400 to go. Berkey, in the small blind with 10♥10♣, three-bet it to $8,800. Liu had no choice but to throw her cards in the muck. But Young had pocket rockets and came back with a four-bet to $21,000, leaving $48,000 behind.
Berkey, who had his opponent covered, then moved all in and received a snap-call. There would be multiple runouts again, and the first board of K♥10♦5♠8♠2♦ gave Berkey a partial suckout. He'd need to do it again on the second runout for the full scoop, however, which he'd do when the community cards showed 4♣Q♠5♦10♠7♦, twice hitting a 10 to win the full $138,600 pot.
"Nobody runs like Berkey," one player at table said as the pot was being pushed in Berkey's direction.
Berkey explained to PokerNews on a break that he liked his decision to move all in given the Squid Game dynamics.
"I mean, it's Squid Game, so you can't really care — 10's are just way too valuable," Berkey explained. "So, it's like one of those things, if he wakes up with a bigger pair, great. It's just kind of the nature of Squid. It's very tournament-esque where you're risking a whole bunch of money to stave off these penalties."
Berkey, who has competed against Young in Las Vegas high-stakes cash games many times, said before he jammed he was confident "he wasn't bluffing there." But he was hopeful that he was up against ace-king or a lower pocket pair.
When the Squid Game is on, the last player to win a pot must pay a cash penalty to the other players at the table. This causes players who haven't won a hand to gamble more than they would during a standard hold'em game, part of why Berkey was willing to play for stacks with the pocket pair.
Berkey had tripled his starting stack at the time of publishing. Poker fans can watch the entire WPT Cash Game livestream below.
