Charlie Carrel Rates Garrett Adelstein's Play
Garrett Adelstein, he is working his way up. I could see, in 20 years’ time, him being on the Mount Rushmore of poker. He’s such a staple part of the live poker scene now, famously known across the world for not getting cheated by Robbi, allegedly. You know she didn’t cheat because she took a lie detector test that she definitely didn’t pay for herself, after hiring a PR team to cover up the shenanigans of a poorly executed heist.
Anyway, nobody’s suing your boy Charlie today, I’ll tell you that for free. Let’s get into it. I’ve got a couple of very exciting videos, a bunch of hands I haven’t seen. Rest assured, these are going to be good, exciting hands.
We’re raising, sitting on 400K, playing ridiculously deep. This is after he made a comeback from not being cheated. She definitely didn’t cheat, because she gave the money back like an innocent person would.
So we got David calling small blind versus button, and Garrett opening. A fun, normal opening size ($3,000).
Flop:
There are a few sizings you can use here, a few styles, and a few reasons to do them. I’ll explain once I see what he does.
Damn. Gareth is betting 6,000—maybe knowing his customer. David’s range is going to be a bunch of A-x, a bunch of pocket pairs, flush draws, and pair plus straight draws. He’s obviously playing pretty loose. Betting 6,000 here is essentially saying he thinks David’s going to call with ace-jack offsuit, ace-ten offsuit, ace-nine offsuit—which I think is a good read, considering the look of this guy. The fact he called 7-3 from the small blind says a lot.
David raises to 19,000. He’s probably quite an aggressive player, just from what the commentators were saying.
Garrett has a slight equity advantage here. Very professional play. Let’s see how good Garrett really is. I haven’t seen that many of his hands, just some of the big ones, but I imagine he’s top of the top. This is already a very testing scenario, where a lot of people would end up making the wrong decision.
Turn:
Did he just go all-in? 53,000. Wow. So you’ve got ace-three, king-three, queen-three, jack-three, ten-three—all these. Eight-three maybe, but that probably wouldn’t shove. Then three-deuce, six-three of clubs, maybe five-six, four-six, four-deuce. You might have the odd king-nine of clubs. I don’t think he’s shoving eight-x of clubs, although that’s a scary possibility. He might just have something like eight-seven offsuit.
Here’s what you do in this situation: you turn over your cards after a while and see how they react. See if they relax. If he shoved with 8-7, he might be crazy nervous, but then he sees your cards and relaxes. It gives you more data to work with. If you show your cards instantly, it’s harder to do. It’s a nuanced live tell thing. Stop that while you’re 40-50 big blinds deep. I’ve seen Garrett play hands like this and never fold.
Garrett’s one of those players who always plays on his A-game. Players like Mariano and Ram feel like they have to punt around to get invited back to games. Garrett plays such a crazy style anyway, people just love playing against him.
I don’t know if that’s David’s normal tone of voice, by the way. It sounds like he sucked some helium. That could just be his voice, but it sounds a little bit nervous—or that could just be base level.
If you ever want to get fantastic at live reads and you don’t want to buy a course, watch yourself, number one. Watch other people, number two. Watch where the people who are good at live reads are looking. Even more subtle: look where they pretend not to look.
Something I used to do is I’d have a read on somebody and I’d make sick hero calls against them. They would know I was getting these reads. So I’d stare at a person’s hands even if their tell was something else—shoulders, feet. I’d focus them on their hands so they’d stop moving, while I observed other things. When you’re watching players like David, Chance Kornuth, Phil Ivey, and Garrett Adelstein, see where they’re looking—or pretending not to look.
Another live tell: when you can get somebody smiling, that’s very powerful. Again, it’s in the course, I’m not going to explain it too much—too much free information. There’s another one where it looks like he’s about to call, and David literally says, “Oh, I like my hand.” You know, that level of desperation.
Garrett’s really paying attention. Truly impressive hands here.
Truly impressive. To make that kind of call, you have to have both theoretical reads—like calling the flop check-raise—and live reads to call the turn shove. Truly impressive hands. You won’t see any of the other players I’ve reviewed make these calls consistently right. I’m giving the a 10 out of 10 for sure.
Garrett opens 600 on the button, David calls in the small blind. Again, in these kinds of games, if you ever want to be super successful in poker: get into private games. Holy schmolley.
What would you do here as Garrett? First thing: if you call, is there any chance your opponent shoves on a brick turn? Because that’s a disaster. Imagine your opponent has only 25,000 behind. Calling could be awful because if the turn’s a deuce and he goes all-in, you have to fold. You don’t want to fold a hand with 50% equity against value hands.
Stack size is the first thing most people don’t consider. Secondly, do you have fold equity if you raise? Probably. Third, do you have implied odds if you hit? Almost definitely. At this SPR, people find excuses to blast off. They check back the turn sometimes and trap; if they have an overpair, you’re getting their stack anyway.
People said in my last video, “Don’t slow down your poker theory, treat us like adults.” So I will. Tell me if it’s too much. At this SPR, they’ll blast off with king-queen with the queen of hearts, etc. The worst outcome is raising into queen-jack of hearts and getting a fold. That’s truly disastrous.
Flop:
Han bet $4,200, David raised to 20,000. David raising with king-four—typical David. Han Raised all-in for $52,400. This hand got less interesting.
Garrett has to shove. There’s no two ways about it.
You have to tank here so David doesn’t think you have only a nut flush draw. You want queen-high and jack-high flush draws to stay in.
Garrett shoves. David folds the disciplined fold of the century.
We’re off. 140K pot.
Not a bad start for Garrett. I guess they run it once. Congratulations, Garrett – winning a house!
Flop:
All right, so what’s happened here? We’ve opened button, checked back flop. Sexy check-king with this guy. It’s sexy stuff. Three kings for Garrett.
You’re actually allowed to get away with these checks. One for deception; one, you kind of own a repping hand. You’re only going to get two streets pretty often out of an ace anyway. You do end up letting a flush draw realize his equity, but you’re also getting cooler versus king-queen, king-jack, king-ten less often by checking back. We’ll see how he plays the turn. I don’t want to just be sucking a guy’s balls all episode, but already I like it.
I would probably c-bet and just go for three streets of value here, but it’s very creative.
Turn:
Eric bets 3,000. I only like it if Garrett is about to raise here to about 10,000—maybe 12,000. Eric’s bet 3,000. He’s got an ace or he’s got a bluff. We can really hammer it home.
Eric Pearson, the king of speech play, or at least he sees himself that way. I’d say he’s more of a jester of speech play. Shout out to Eric Pearson, by the way.
Garrett raises to 8,000. Small raise, just trying to do exactly what is about to happen. Now, Pearson—when he three-bets here—I don’t expect him to have an ace very often. I expect him to have queen-ten, jack-ten pretty often. This is exactly why you can check back the flop sometimes. A very creative line against specific types of players. I wouldn’t do it against someone like Tang, because Tang isn’t the type to take this line when he smells perceived weakness.
Pearson three-bets to 22,000.
Eric, you should definitely get into more leveling wars and speech play wars against Garrett Adelstein and Phil Ivey. That’s definitely your forte. Keep it up, buddy.
Garrett knows he has the best hand here. Eric doesn’t know it, but his size on the turn has already given away the strength of his hand. No amount of speech play is going to change that card.
River:
Eric has to check here. Anything else would be abysmal. The play isn’t so bad; I actually kind of enjoy it. His assumptions are just incorrect. If Eric assumes Garrett is bluffing on the turn, his three-bet on the turn and check on the river is actually bad poker but intelligent poker. Bad because his sizing gave away his hand strength, but intelligent because given what he knows, he thinks Garrett might be bluffing. In that case, three-betting turn and planning to check-call river is pretty smart.
Eric could be putting Garrett to a decision now. Always think what you would do. The obvious non-finesse answer is to just go big and target a king. The finesse answer is to think maybe Eric is doing this with an ace or a bluff. Most of the time, you won’t get a penny from him if he’s bluffing. But if he has an ace, how much will an ace call? If he has a king, how much will a king call?
The finesse play is to go like 20K–22K. The non-finesse, and probably better play, is to go like 60K and target a king, with the upside of sometimes an ace calling too. If you’re thinking about blockers and bluffs, you’re playing a different game.
Garrett bets 15K. Man, I’m becoming a Garrett fan overnight. Sexy, sexy poker.
The nice thing about the finesse play is that if Eric has king-queen and somehow plays it tricky, he might raise here. Having a boat obviously makes it easier. I was hoping the seven wouldn’t come. The finesse play is even sexier because if Eric has a king and raises to 50K, you can tank, reraise to 200K, and win a massive pot.
I probably would have gone big in this spot, forgetting the upside of the finesse line. But Garrett found the 10 out of 10 play. Knows that 15K is about all he’s going to get here.
I like that reaction from Eric. Funny and humble.
Charlie's Verdict on Garrett Adelstein: Elite
So how good is Garrett Adelstein really? By far, Garrett Adelstein is the best player I’ve commentated on.
I feel like I might have to make a new ranking system just so I can put him in a rank of his own. Sorry, Hungry Horse—you’ve been demoted. This is truly a master of the game. His understanding of live tells, the psychological element, the social dynamics of the game, and just getting invited and maintaining an attitude where people like him, want to play with him, and find him fun to be around is incredible.
At the same time, he’s quite quiet. It’s almost Patrick Antonius-esque in that sense. And then there’s the pure theoretical side of the game: range analysis, not getting lost in all of the blocker nonsense. You can tell by the way he’s playing—he’s not playing theoretically sound poker. He’s not playing GTO-balanced, unexploitable poker. He’s playing pure exploit. He’s playing purely masterful poker.
I would disagree with him on some very specific theoretical nuances. That’s mostly about using bigger sizes in different spots. But I’m humble enough to accept that he also knows things about poker that I don’t. There are things for me to learn from the way he plays, as well as vice versa. Once you get up to a certain level, you can criticize and analyze as much as you want, but he’s playing the same type of poker I specialize in and coach. We’re in the same field, just in different countries.
He’s just a master of the game. There’s truly a lot to learn from the way he plays. I would absolutely recommend going to watch more of him. It doesn’t get much better than that.
