Pocket aces is the best starting hand in hold 'em, and it’s usually pretty easy to play. At least before the flop, the player knows they have the best hand, and so aces get played aggressively. However, ICM can throw a wrench into that plan.

Padraig “Smidge” O’Neill eventually went on to take this tournament down as part of his two Unibet Open titles in a row during 2020, but while the table was still eight-handed, he ran into a very tough spot. Sitting to the left of the chip leader, he woke up with aces on the button, facing an open from the chip leader.

O’Neill was in second in chips, and while in normal situations, the aces would be a great spot with a chance to perhaps take over the lead, ICM loomed largely. O’Neill recognized he had a skill edge on the table, complicating the spot for the Irish grinder.

O’Neill flat out admits in the segment that he folded for ICM considerations. At one of the softest $1k final tables in the entire online pokerverse, he knew that going out in 8th place while he was second in chips would be a huge ICM mistake, but it seems his opponent may have had the same knowledge.

Faced with a decision for his tournament life on the river of a jack-high paired board, Smidge found a fold that many poker players wouldn’t have been able to find, mucking his aces to preserve his second-place position. In The Chip Race’s analysis of the hand, solver and ICM genius Dara O’Kearney confirmed that O’Neill made the right play, preserving his chance to go on and win the whole thing.

Check out the full video below to watch O’Neill make the biggest fold of the game, and perhaps one of the biggest of his life, and get an excellent look inside the head of a two-time Unibet Open champion.

For two years, as the pandemic raged and live poker was off the grid, Justin Bonomo sat in second place on the all-time money list. He took over the lead in March of 2019 after winning a Triton Series short-deck event at Bellagio's Five Diamond World Poker Classic in Las Vegas.

Bonomo lost the lead later that year after Bryn Kenney won the biggest buy-in poker tournament in the world, but during the same series, Bonomo was able to rack up another win as well to bring his lifetime total to $48 million. Then COVID-19 shut down the live poker scene, and Bonomo was forced to accept second place for a while.

He seemed relatively happy with the situation, admitting in a tweet in 2019 that he would likely stay in second due to his lower volume compared to Kenney.

However, with live poker back on again, Bonomo is also back to his winning ways, recently taking down Bellagio’s Five Diamond World Poker Classic for $928,200. The win puts Bonomo back in the lead on poker’s all-time money list, as per The Hendon Mob, with more than $57 million in total wins during his illustrious 16-year career.

Bonomo shows no sign of slowing down either, but he’s in a battle now. Kenney sits just a couple hundred thousand behind him in the standings, a pittance at the stakes they play, so Bonomo will need to be on his game to stay in the lead.

Kevin Martin’s latest YouTube vid for global online poker site GGPoker sees him tackling a $525 High Roller with over $7000 up top.

Martin signed as part of the GG Squad just over a year ago and has been a regular streamer for them ever since.

The Canadian pro runs deep in the tournament but still has time to talk about his early days as a budding live pro with some pics of big chip stacks which in this day and age, look somewhat less than scrupulously hygienic.

This is his first video since returning from the World Series of Poker in Vegas. Be on the look out for more from him soon.

The guys at DAT Poker Podcast gang are back, and they’re talking to Daniel Negreanu about the WSOP 2021.

Over the course of the 80-minute video, the group discusses a range of topics, including golf gambling, The rise of GGPoker's Club GG, and—almost inevitably—Phil Hellmuth.

And if you’re less than excited by the dilemma of where Daniel will park his RV when the World Series moves to the Strip next year, you should at least hang around for the NFT Giveaway competition.

Andrew Neeme’s latest vid is up on YouTube, and it’s one you won’t want to miss. The prolific vlogger is back posting regularly after a two-month hiatus while he concentrated on the WSOP.

After a few deep runs there, but no major cashes, he’s back filming the trials and tribulations of a mid-stakes live grinder.

Neeme gets the call to the game just as he’s about to board a plane and leave town. It’s clear from the comments on this tweet, it was always going to be a high-risk, high reward situation that he just couldn’t pass up.

While the title of the video kinda gives away the result, it’s still well worth a watch as Neeme gets involved in what he describes as “by far, the biggest pot that I’ve played so far in my career.”

Neeme has one of the longest-running poker vlogs on YouTube and has become a skilled practitioner of the form—with coherent, easy-to-follow analysis of his hands. If you don’t already know his stuff, it’s really worth checking out.