Flashback Fridays: Looking Back At Fedor Holz: 1 Million Drop

Written by Tony Elliott | Published December 15, 2023

What a tough Spot For Fedor Holz in the Big One for One Drop

Welcome to the new segment “Flashback Friday’s” here we will look back at Tournament defining hands, hands that make you question just what was he doing? and everything in between. First up we have this huge spot for Fedor Holz on the Final table of the $1,000,000 Big one for One Drop. It took part in the 49th WSOP back in 2018. Five Players remained with the blind level at 300,000/600,000. There was considerable ICM spots to take into account with the pay-outs being as follows:

1st $10,000,000
2nd $6,000,000
3rd $4,000,000
4th $2,840,000
5th $2,000,000

The action began with Byron Kaverman (8,025,000 jamming all in with A5. Next to act was Holz (28,675,000) who was in a sticky spot with pocket Ten’s 1010 with three players to act behind. He elected to just call Kaverman’s jam. A play that could be conceived as being very strong e.g trying to induce action. Or on the other hand in this spot it could be a hand like he had. Strong enough to call against the UTG jam, but not strong enough to re-jam in case someone behind woke up with a monster. Both the button and small blind folded. In the big blind was Rick Salomon (27,450,000) who jammed all in with AK.

What happened next was highly unexpected

It was now on Holz to figure out exactly what to do here. With the amount in play he could not rule out his opponent jamming all in with AA KK etc, as opposed to 3-betting. Realistically the hands he would be up against in this spot would be: JJ,QQ,KK,AA,AK. Only one of these hands he would be good against, and even then the margin is fine. What happened next was highly unexpected, more so due to the nature of what was at stake. The Ace of Hearts had accidentally been exposed, meaning it had to be shown to the table. This was vital information for Fedor, who could narrow down Salomon’s possible hands drastically. It was either Ace-King or Aces, Ace-Queen or less would be unlikely given the magnitude of what was at stake.

The Floor stepped in to deem an exposed card

Another thought that was most likely going through Fedor’s mind is, it is probable that the UTG shove from the short stack will have an ace in this spot a fair amount of the time. In turn reducing Solomon’s number of outs. After a lot of deliberation and the use of a number of time cards. Fedor did eventually make the call. The pot stood at a huge 62,700,000.

Nightmare Flop For Holz

After the flop AK2 Holz was drawing incredibly thin, Solomon had flopped top two. The Q on the turn gave Holz a glimmer of hope, his out’s had now increased. The river was probably a card no one was expecting, not even Holz himself regardless of how much he hoped. The 10 gave Holz trip Ten’s in the process he knocked-out two opponent’s and was guaranteed third place money. Fedor ended up finishing in 2nd place for $6,000,000, Justin Bonomo was the eventual winner.