Avi Freedman: The High Stakes Poker Player

Avi Freedman is a relatively unknown character in the poker world. With only a handful of live tournament cashes you could be forgiven for never having head of him.

That said, he has been a regular guest on shows such as Poker Night in America, The Ultimate Gamble: Cash Poker with the likes of Phil Galfond, and more recently Live at the Bike.

Freedman is now the CEO of a tech firm that specialises in “visibility into infrastructure performance, availability, and security issues” and is a self-confessed nerd. He’s also clearly made some serious money over the year judging by the stakes he plays against some of the world's best poker players.

In his latest appearance before the cameras, Freedman fell headfirst into the aggression of Doug Polk who clearly knew how to deal with him.

Crazy Bluff

Doug Polk has run an insane bluff against Avi Freedman on the latest episode of Poker Night in America. 

The blinds are $25/$50 and Polk straddles UTG for $100. Freedman opens Q10 for $300. Polk calls.

The pot is $675 and the flop comes down 769 .

Polk checks and Freedman bets $600. Polk senses weakness of some sort and raise it up to $2,100. Freedman calls.

The pot is $4,875 and the turn comes the 2 ; a complete blank.

Polk leads out for $5,300 and Freedman calls.

The pot is now huge for these stakes at $15,475. The river is also a blank 4 which completes no draws.

Polk now bets $20,300, well over the size of the pot. His thinking can only be that Freedman would have reraised him earlier with anything that can call a bet of this size. 

That said, this is insanely risky against players who know what they are doing. Bluff catching in TV games is far from rare with players not wanting to appear weak to an audience.

In this case, however, Polk clearly knew who he was playing against. Freedman folded as he was, of course, expected to do.