2011 was a solid enough year, but 2012 was very good. I won SCOOP #1-H, a $2k, for around $100,000. I had a short downswing afterwards, I went to the WSOP, where I went 1/20. The 1 was a mincash in a $1,000 tournament. I continued my moderate downswing until December, when I came second in the Sunday Million and lost heads up to some reg who I thought played terribly throughout the tournament, caecilius, whom you might know as Nick Petrangelo. After that I chopped an at the time big DraftKings contest, winning $50,000, and had enough money to comfortably travel to EPTs, and the rest is history. I remembered the key hands from the FT, but I recently found that someone had posted the highlights show on Daily Motion. So I was able to get all the specific details about some of the hands I punted with at that FT, and I’m able to analyze them with more modern tools to determine just how bad my play was at the FT.

December 9th 2012 Sunday Million
(200k/400k/40k) (SB/BB/ANTE) We are 7-Handed.
7th: $30k, 6th: $44k, 5th: $58k, 4th: $76k, 3rd: $110k, 2nd: $155K, 1st: $209k

Dailymotion Archive of the Stream (This hand starts at ~15minutes)

23noraB (10.5M) folds, R&O (7.6M) folds, Nick (11.05M) makes it 800k, le bison(11.7M) folds, I (17.79M) make it 2M on the button with K♥️7♥️, Borso (5.1M) folds, muratfb (4.1M) folds, Nick makes it 3.85M, I call.

Flop (8.58M) 9♠️8♥️6♠️: Nick bets 4.8M, I put him in for 7.2M total, he calls with T♦️T♠️. I lose on a 2♠️, 6♣️ runout.

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Let’s say the board is KQ237 and you have 88. If you bet quarter pot OOP, you can get called by as weak as ace high. Let’s say overall when you bet quarter pot and are called, you have 40% equity. Let’s say the alternative is, you check, you face a full pot bet, and you have 34% equity. Well, pot odds dictate you need to call that river bet, but of course you’d rather put in quarter pot with 40% than full pot with 34%. It feels counter-intuitive to try to get money in the pot with the worst of it, but it’s better than the alternative.

Years after Brian taught me that lesson, I started toying with solvers and learned another application of that lesson. When a pot has grown and the stack-to-pot ratio is small, pot odds dictate you’ll often need to stack off a hand with less than 50% equity. If you have 2x pot to play, stacking off anything with more than 40% is often necessary. My instinct in these spots is that when I get money in the pot, I am getting it in with the worst of it, and that’s something to avoid. I am not entirely wrong: If I could click a button that magically made us check it down, I’d rather do that than get all-in for 2x pot with 42% equity, but what tends to happen is something similar to what I described above. If I check, my opponent will usually value bet better, they’ll occasionally bluff, and overall I’ll put money in the pot hoping my opponent is bluffing. If I bet myself, I can fold out some hands of my opponents that have equity, or I can get called by second-best hands that would rarely bet themselves. So by betting, I play a more linear strategy that guarantees I get money in the pot vs. hands slightly worse than mine, instead of closing my eyes and bluff-catching with less equity than if I bet myself.

Today’s hand is one that gave me the chip lead in a big tournament, but as I was playing the hand, I knew that I was playing scared on the turn. I did not want to get all-in, so I prayed that my opponent would co-operate and check it down. The problem is, when he co-operates with me, I usually have him beat; fortunately, I ran into a bluff on this day.

2019 EPT Prague Event #12 €50,000 EPT Super High Roller
(5k/10k/10k) (SB/BB/BBA) 250k Starting Stack. Registration is closed. 18 Left 6 Cash.

Poker News Update

It folds to Kahle Burns (1.14M/114bbs) in the CO who makes it 20k, it folds to me in the SB with 8♠️8♣️ (788k) and I make it 100k, Kahle calls.

Flop (210k) 9♠️3♦️2♠️: I bet 125k, Kahle calls
Turn (460k) 9♣️: I check, Kahle bets 140k, I call.
River (740k) J♠️: I check, Kahle shoves for my 428k, I call; he had 6♦️5♦️ and I win.

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When I first started studying by looking at solver solutions, my play was too robotic. My goal in a given hand was to find the correct solver play, and there were times where my opponents’ strategy made this impossible. They checked in a spot where they were supposed to pure bet range, and I had to Frankenstein up some sim that forced them to do some checking. Then I didn’t find the correct solver play, but the solver play against an opponent I’ve forced to play differently. The mantra I started telling myself to make my play less robotic was “Once they go off tree, you can do whatever you want.” This is not quite true— I can’t (or at least shouldn’t) start jamming the turn for 8x pot on AA23 with 87— but it was freeing. We are off the game tree, and are no longer bound by solver equilibria, have fun.

Sometimes you are thrown off tree because your opponents pick a strategic option you don’t expect, like open limping preflop or donking when they should pure check, but the most common way to get off tree is when your opponent picks the wrong size. The simplest adjustment is that you get worse pot odds vs. a larger size and should continue less often, and better pot odds vs. a smaller size and should continue more often. Sometimes those sizes tell you something about your opponent’s hand: They three-bet to an extra big size because they have AKo, or they three-bet to an extra small size because they have AA. However, sometimes they are just mistakes. They just happened to pick the wrong size and it tells you nothing about their range. When that happens, you can make some loose continues vs. small sizes. Ignore what the GTO Wizard preflop chart says to do when you’re facing an 8BB three-bet and focus on the 5.5BB three-bet right in front of you. In today’s hand I faced a small three-bet, thought it was just small enough that I could make a loose preflop peel, and I did make the right adjustment, but preflop is just one street, and making a correct preflop play does not make a hand well played.

Triton Poker Monte-Carlo 2023 - Event #3 $125K NLH Main Event
(3k/6k/6k) (SB/BB/BBA) 250k Starting Stack. Registration is Open.

It folds to me (369k/61.5BBs) who makes it 14k in the HJ with Q♦️8♦️, it folds to Quan Zhou (424K/71bbs) on the button who makes it 39k, it folds back to me who calls.

Flop (93k) A♣️Q♣️8♥️: I check, Quan bets 23k, I call.
Turn (139k) T♥️: I check, Quan checks.
River (139k) 5♥️: I bet 110k, Quan calls with with A♦️8♣️ and I lose.

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Ironically, the person who posted this Patrick “Pads” Leonard was not posting about when he got fucked by a horrible ruling later in the WSOP, nor the decision I’ll be writing about later in this blog. The WSOP adding action clocks to the Main Event mid tournament, which also affected him as he was still in the Main Event when the ruling was made.

My Tweet was a riff on a famous article in The Onion about gun violence in the USA. At the risk of over-explaining my Tweet, the concept of this joke was simple: why is it that there are insane floor rulings, dealer errors or miscellaneous oddities that never occur on other poker tours, but constantly happen at the WSOP. I’ll start with the simplest explanation, one that extends grace to the WSOP. They have the longest series, the most tables and consequently the most dealers hired and the most hands dealt and the most hands reported on. If there was a €1k PLO at EPT Prague that left Jokers in the deck, it likely would never get reported. That being said, people who play the WSOP, who interact with dealers and floor staff every day, know the dealer standards are lower, and that this is not simply a case of more errors total, but more errors per capita.

On Day 6 of the WSOP Main with 72 people left, Loren Klein raised 97.5% of his stack, got jammed on, and tanked 15 minutes before calling all-in. He did this because the tournament was on a 20k pay jump and he was trying to ladder. PokerNews reported that his opponent Tyler Gaston, who put him all,-in said “I will let you stall for the pay jump.” This hand caused such a stir that the next day the WSOP decided to add time controls to the tournament. This was done, if you believe what Shaun Deeb said on stream, in part because Shaun lobbied for it.

First things first: I think action clocks and time extensions are Good For The Game. They increase the pace of play, which makes playing and watching poker more enjoyable. I think they should be added at some point in most poker tournaments. However, what we have here is not an issue that needs to be solved with an action clock. What we have here is dealer and floor incompetence. There are eight tables left in the biggest poker tournament of the year, and one player verbally declares that they are colluding with another player at the table. Any competent dealer would immediately call the floor. Any competent floor person would notice that there were a lot of chips in the middle of a given table and a new hand hadn’t been dealt in some time. One of— frankly, the only— defense for the WSOP’s consistent incompetence is that they have so many dealers and so many tables and it’s impossible to find enough good staff. Well, anyone dealing at the final eight tables of the Main Event should be a top 1% dealer. A top 1% dealer and active floor staff should be able to stop collusion when it was verbally declared. That their idea to fix collusion caused by their incompetence was to change the entire structure of the tournament is stupid, even if you are someone like me, who thinks the WSOPME should add time controls.

The main reason why these changes should not be made is simple: No one playing the tournament at any point in time believed that they would add an action clock to the tournament. It was not stated on the structure sheet and it is unprecedented for the WSOPME. You do not change the rules of a tournament in the middle without consulting the players in it. I have played tournaments that required unanimity from every player still in the tournament to play an extra level for the day or to move dinner break. The reason for this is simple: It violates game integrity to change rules midstream without any warning or consultation with the remaining players. I was not on the ground, but Pads was, and he Tweeted his thoughts:

The biggest thing for me is to just let us know earlier. There was a lot of edge first level today. I went from 6-15m so no bitterness, but people came in tired, no sleep, immediately with unprepared shot clocks. Asked floor for cocktails 6 times / one hour and nobody would come. Loooot of people busted that level.

Frustrations are normal with little sleep.

It’s equal for everybody though.

So they made a decision without consulting the players and didn’t tell them about the changes with enough warning. This is bad. It’s also bad because, as I’ll continue to repeat in this blog, there were other mechanisms they could use to prevent extremely egregious stalling. The EPT has rules about giving players time controls when a player puts all but one of their chips in the pot and faces an all-in. They could have just gone hand for hand, or round for round, on big pay jumps. They could have just told dealers to call the floor over whenever they suspected there was some sort of collusive stalling going on. Adding an action clock is a real “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” solution to a pretty simple problem.

What matters here is that instead of implementing a simple solution, they implemented a convoluted one, without warning the players, that probably broke gaming laws. However, since people are asking: “Who does adding time controls benefit? Pros or recs?” It benefits people who have experience playing with time controls. They know how to manage the clock and are less likely to blunder under time pressure. It also benefits people who have high cEV win rates because they get to play more hands. The latter camp are often pros, but this is often true of anyone playing a big stack. So It’s not so simple to say it will benefit pros. Pros are also often more willing to push stalling to an absurd extreme, so a pro with a short stack near a pay jump would probably prefer there not to be time controls. Overall, adding an action clock benefits big stacks and people with experience playing with action clocks. That can be, but is not necessarily correlated with, being a pro, and this whole debate feels dumb to me because the real problem is not who this benefits, but that the biggest tournament of the year made up rules mid tournament.

A way one knows they were really flying by the seat of their pants is they decided to give more time extensions after the first dinner break. Which meant the players played the first two levels, not knowing they had more time extensions coming. Once again The WSOP meddled and made an even bigger mess. Another way this implementation was haphazard, is as best I can tell they just copied the time extension format from the high rollers that ran previously during the WSOP. Once they decided to give out time extensions in The Main Event they could make the time controls whatever they wanted to– again, it’s the biggest tournament of the year– the only idea they thought of was copying and pasting what they already came up with for a different tournament.

Days after the WSOP implemented an action clock with 8 left in the $10,000 6-Handed No-Limit Hold’em Championship, the floor refused to go hand-for-hand on the final table bubble of the Main Event. The players agreed to come to “A Gentleman’s Agreement” where they would create their own ad hoc hand-for-hand to prevent egregious stalling. It’s fitting that even after the WSOP’s high-profile fuckup in the Main Event, they still were not able to come to the solution that could have stopped this problem in the first place. I’d say I was surprised, but of course I am not; this is the only place where this regularly happens.

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I made it to the end of Day 8 of my POTWSOPME and I tried sprinkling in some more general analysis of how these big field tournaments play and what the best adjustments to make are. If you want to read about the biggest punts of the Main Event, but also improve how to play in big field tournaments. I’d suggest you read the whole series.

There is no Sunday Special this week, mostly because I spent a lot of time this week going through the WSOPME footage and didn’t have time, but I am always looking for submissions. So if you have a hand from the WSOP that is really eating at your soul, feel free to send it over to me. Additionaly with the WSOP over I am looking to take on some more private coaching students. You can read all about my coaching philosophy here

Additional Sims For Premium Subscribers

Premium Subscribers are given access to a Google Drive folder where they will also be able to download the raw files of sims I used to write my POTDs, sims that are more accurate and appropriate than equivalent sims in the big public libraries. The past week I uploaded

• Three PIO sims looking at all the different ways I can punt in POTD #306

• An HRC Sim and a PIO sim for the Main Event hand I looked at for POTD #307

• An HRC sim and a PIO sim for the Main Event hand I looked at for POTD #308

Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers

Everyday Premium Subscribers get an extra bit of analysis not included in the main post. Today, I’ll share #onemorething from POTD #307 where I write about what happens if you force Trayner to c-bet.

POTD #307 ⁠onemorething

I’d be shocked if there is any poker game played between humans where the 3bettor would check the flop 70% of the time here. So I also ran a sim that does a better job of mimicking what Trayner was actually doing and I forced him to c-bet. In that sim the solver splits between b20 and b60 with options of 20/40/60/80 with range. QQ always c-bets the small size and this makes sense. You still want to have some hands that b60, but you want your needless bets that lose EV to be as small as possible. One thing that surprised me is that IP doesn’t raise all that much more often when I force a small c-bet in both sims it’s around 15%. I guess if the button has JJ or 44, they still want to let BB’s 96o turn some sort of equity.

Once his c-bet is called AA,KK,QQ pure check on the turn and KK/QQ mix vs b50 and pure call vs b30. He calls more often in the force c-bet sim than the normal sim because he still need to defend a lot of my range and when he pure c-bets he arrives at the turn with a lot more total air. Even when he pure c-bets the flop QQ calls the turn 84% of the time, compared to 55% of the time when he played checks on the flop. However with range he still folds the turn 48% of the time after pure c-betting the flop, compared to 44% when he doesn’t. The river remains a pure fold and the BB can call with top pair, Jx and even some bare 8x, but it doesn’t call QQ. I am generally a believer that calling with a credible bluff catcher is always a decent play, but I still don’t think this is the right spot.

Media

In an upcoming POTD, I tell a story about studying to write an exam instead of going to see a Prince concert. On a lark, I googled the concert and what do you know most of the concert has been bootlegged and is on YouTube (Prince played back to back nights and the show I found was the second night. I forget which night I was supposed to go to, but let’s say this is the show I was supposed to go to). So I guess I have a general recommendation, watch bootleg concerts on YouTube and a specific one, watch this bootleg concert on YouTube

As always, I can be reached on

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Bluesky

There are lots of poker hands that effectively play out like this. One player has an assumption about how their opponent plays and is willing to adopt an extreme strategy to exploit that tendency. One of the more interesting hands to me on day 8 of the WSOPME was in a four-bet on a board with four clubs on it, Malcom Trayner bet half pot with KcKs and Tolga Karakaya folded JcJs. One player value betting the second nuts for half pot and another folding the third nuts is not a stable equilibrium. In order to make this fold, either Karakaya had to believe Trayner was not bluffing, or Trayner had totally miscalibrated what a reasonable value bet is on this board. So I wanted to investigate the hand to see what should have happened.

World Series of Poker Main Event 17 Left (400k/800k/800k) Average ~32M 9-Handed

Winamax Stream

It folds to Malcom Trayner with K♣️K♠️ (63M) UTG/8 and he makes it 1.6M, one fold to Tolga Karakaya (41.4M) who makes it 4.2M with J♣️J♠️, it folds back to Trayner who makes it 9.2M, Karakaya calls.

Flop (20.4M): Q♣️6♣️2♣️: Malcom checks, Tolga bets 3.5M, Malcom calls.
Turn (27.4M) T♥️: Malcolm checks, Tolga checks.
River (27.4)M 3♣️: Malcom bets 14M Tolga folds.

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Malcolm gained his chip lead in part by making a daring and creative bluff, which you can watch with English and French commentary. That hand was fun to watch, but not all that interesting in my opinion. Jumalon’s strongest river value raise is 99, 9d8d blocks 99, Malcolm went for it. I bet if I ran a sim it would spit out an output that says Malcolm can three-bet the river whenever he has 9x— not all of the time, but some of the time with every nine. He’d bluff with a frequency such that Jumalon is indifferent to call with any flush, including the nut flush. Jumalon would mix every time he has a flush, and in game Jumalon folded after (presumably) deciding that Trayner wasn’t bluffing.

Which brings us to the biggest hand of the Main Event thus far, a hand where Trayner decided Jumalon was bluffing.

2026 World Series of Poker Main Event
(500k/1M/1M) (SB/BB/BBA) 13 Remain. Average is ~42.5M.

PokerNews Update
Video

It folds to Jumalon (67.1M) on the button who makes it 2M with J♠️J♥️, it folds to Trayner (83M) in the BB who makes it 9M with Q♥️Q♦️, Jumalon calls.

Flop (19.5M) A♥️J♦️4♣️: Trayner bets 4M, Jumalon calls.
Turn (27.5M) 8♠️: Trayner checks, Jumalon bets 8.5M, Trayner calls.
River (44.5M) 4♥️: Trayner checks, Jumalon bets 35M of his remaining 45.6M, Trayner calls and loses.

I am sharing this hand along with my POTWSOPME for free. If you’re a fan of this post or that longer blog post please consider becoming a paid or unpaid subscriber

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What I Thought When I First Watched the Hand

At first I was unsure if Trayner could three-bet/stack off QQ here. It feels right on the borderline; however, Jumalon has four -bet shoved K4s button vs. SB and ATo SB vs. BB. If this play is close vs. a solver, I think going for it is fine vs. Jumalon, especially because Trayner covers Jumalon by enough that he will still have 16bbs and a dream if they get all-in and he loses. The Main Event is a famously top-heavy tournament (and that’s ignoring any potential added future money up top for winning the highest profile tournament of the year). I think three-betting JJ here would be dicey, but QQ is fine. Sometimes in these “nuts or air” preflop spots, the solver prefers picking a really big three-bet size and might three-bet to a size as large as 15bbs here, but I think given the way most people play, 9bbs is a totally acceptable three-bet size.

Trayner’s three-betting range should have a lot of Ax in it, and Jumalon’s four-betting range should have a lot of Ax in it. This means that Trayner should have a lot more top pair than Jumalon, and he still covers him. I don’t know if this flop is necessarily an auto c-bet, but he should c-bet quite a bit, and QQ seems like a hand that never wants to bet big. A small c-bet size is fine.

There’s no reason for Trayner to bet the turn. He can’t get top pair to fold. I am sure a small bet is occasionally called by gutshots and Jx, but occasionally getting called by worse is not a good enough reason to bet. Once he checks, it feels like QQ-KK should be a lot of his turn checking range, and Jumalon should probably play a turn strategy that is built around making those hands indifferent to calling a turn bet (I doubt he can ever get top pair to fold). If Jumalon bet a little on the larger side, let’s say something closer to half pot or 2/3rds pot, I’d comfortably fold QQ or KK, but facing this size I think he needs to peel, but it’s not making much. I think folding to exploit a specific opponent you think might be underbluffing is totally fine here and probably best.

On the river, there is no reason to lead, and once Trayner checks I think he has a very easy fold facing this big bet. If I had to guess, I’d think the most common bluffs from Jumalon’s actual range are KQ, QT, KT, and having two queens in our hand makes calling very bad. Additionally, his most likely value bets are probably AA, JJ and AJ. Having any ace in your hand or any jack in your hand should be much better for potentially bluff-catching here. The way most people play preflop here, a huge chunk of the BB’s three-bet bluffing range here will have Ax in it. So it’s not even like Trayner should be concerned he needs to call QQ on the river or risk getting overbluffed.

So much money has gone into the pot that bad Ax should be indifferent to calling this chunky river bet. If you can fold Ax here, you certainly need to fold QQ. I am sure Trayner had a read or a reason for calling this bet, and Jumalon has been playing with a youthful indiscretion, such that I don’t think he’s someone who is systematically underbluffing in a chip lead pot in the Main Event, but QQ is not the hand to call him with. Just fold.

What I Got Wrong (What The Solver Says)

I underestimated how varied the offsuit trash that the solver three-bets from the BB is here. The solver three-bets hands like A2o and K4o, but also hands like 96o, 85o, 53s. QQ is the bottom of the BB’s value range and mostly three-bets. However, the BB has enough junk that it creates a situation where the BB has a massive range disadvantage on the flop. They have 42% range vs. range equity and check the flop 70% of the time with range. When the BB bets, they tend to favour a big polar size of 60% pot centered around AK. There is still a little bit of small betting, mostly centered around AA. KK-QQ c-bet small occasionally, but they mostly check. KK and QQ pure check the turn, and the preferred turn size for Jumalon is half pot. Half pot makes QQ indifferent to continue; 30% pot also makes QQ indifferent to continue, but it mostly calls vs. the smaller bet. On the 4 river, Jumalon can value bet AQ and better. Jumalon’s actual size is the solver’s ideal bet size as well— it leaves him with some chips left over in case he gets caught bluffing. KK pure folds on the river for Trayner and QQ rarely calls, but it’s a breakeven to do so. There is no real preference for which suits QQ would rather call with. The reason he occasionally calls QQ is because QQ blocks AQ. QJ, which blocks AQ/AJ and JJ, is an almost pure river call when Trayner has it.

So one way to view this hand is Trayner had a common preflop three-bet vs. an opponent capable of playing back at him and found it. Trayner had a hand the solver c-bets rarely, but when it does it picks this size, he had a hand that the solver mostly check-calls on the turn and occasionally check-calls on the river. Trayner didn’t make a single decision that loses significant EV vs. the solver and he did okay. I think the problem here is the way the solver plays this hand is nothing like the way most humans would. I’d be shocked if Jumalon called a three-bet with T8s here, floated the flop with a backdoor, and bluffed the turn and river. In this sim, KK folds the river and QQ mixes because AQ is a common value bet for Jumalon; in reality, I think it’s much more likely you’d see AK from Jumalon than AQ. I don’t think fixating on mastering the exact solver blocker mechanics here is very useful for the real-world hand in front of us. I think the more important factor is thinking about how often Jumalon is bluffing in general and if we have any live reads or sizing reads that might tell us he’s bluffing right now. I think he’s too tight preflop and too tight on the flop to be overbluffing on the river and if I were Traynor I’d stick to calling when I had an ace. If you really wanted to be a hero, you could call with some specific Jx.

Final Thoughts and Grade

One thing that surprised me about this hand is the solution was much closer to a cEV solution than I expected. It’s still tighter. If I ever failed to three-bet JJ from the BB vs. a button raise 70bbs deep in a cash game, I can retire from poker right then and there. However, Jumalon still calls the three-bet rather loose— he rarely folds a pair or a suited ace. He mixes calls with suited connectors, medium suited kings, and suited one- and two-gappers like Q9s.

Both Trayner and I had the wrong flop strategy: The correct strategy involves a lot more checking and a lot more big polar betting, which is similar to the cEV strategy in this spot. While they are two chip leaders in the Main Event, neither is above 2x average, and the payouts are top heavy. It makes sense you’d see a strategy that resembles what you’d see in a cash game.

The turn seems to be the easiest street to play. Trayner could fold and probably should fold if he doesn’t expect to see pocket fives or 65s in Jumalon’s range, and Jumalon should probably bet a little bigger, but betting too small is a problem everyone in this year’s Main Event seemed to have.

On the river, QQ is a mixed call against a very aggressive solver who is playing for play money on my laptop. QQ is also good around 38% of the time. In real life, I doubt that is the case. When I say that Trayner should fold, I am not suggesting Trayner “wait for a better spot,” but that this spot is bad. The remaining field is full of competent poker players who, if anything, lean towards being too tight when the money gets really big. If he could find a spot that would give him ~25% of the chips in play with 13 people left and still leave him some chips if he’s wrong, he should absolutely go for it. I just don’t think he’s seeing a bluff here often enough from basically anyone. This hand is not as punty as I thought it was at first glance, but I do think it features a couple of pretty clear mistakes, including the biggest decision in the hand, calling a 35M chip bet with second pair.

77/100

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The more I’ve investigated and toyed around with these plays, the more I’ve concluded they’re usually not worth it. The best-case scenario is one of these plays might let you make a tiny amount of EV, but in a world where people are giving up EV by simplifying their c-betting strategies, it feels weird that this is the area where people still feel obligated to squeeze out an extra 1%. One reason I’ve concluded these plays are usually not worth it is because I’ve gotten myself into enough situations where I don’t know what the fuck I should be doing. I am a very good poker player; I believe on average most decisions I make are correct decisions that make me money and that I should generally try to expand the game tree such that I have more opportunities to make good decisions. However, when one specific type of decision consistently gets me in spots where I am hoping and praying that I am not about to make the biggest blunder of the day, I’ve realized it’s simply not worth it. In today’s hand, I started the hand with 5.75bbs and somehow gave myself two extra decisions, which ended up just being two opportunities for me to punt.

€25,000 No Limit Hold’em (Event 48)
(4k/8k/8k) (SB/BB/BBA)
It folds to Juan Pardo (225k/28bbs) who makes it 20k, the SB (225k/28bbs) folds, I (38k after posting the BB) have Q♥️J♣️ and call.

Flop (52k): K♣️6♣️4♦️ I check, Juan bets 8k, I call.
Turn (68k) 8♠️: I check, Juan puts me in for my last 18k, I fold.

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Robert’s submission has been lightly edited for content and clarity

For my debut submission, I submitted a very complicated hand where I busted my first WSOP Main Event, and upon reviewing it with GTO Wizard almost a decade later, found several nuances I had never even considered. Unfortunately, the second year I played the Main, the most interesting punt was a 3-way pot, and thus I can’t get a concrete solution. While technically this is not my bust-out hand, I thought this stack crippling hand was the more interesting one to analyze from the tournament, because my actual bustout hand was losing jacks to AK at a shallow stack depth a few hands after this one occurred.

2021 WSOP Main Event – Day 2

1,000/1,500/1,500 on day 2 of the WSOP Main Event.

UTG (73k) opens to 3k, LJ calls (150k), I (120k) 3-bet SB with J♥️J♦️ to 16k, they both call.

Flop (51k) 8♠️4♦️3♦️, I c-bet 25k, UTG jams 57k, LJ tank folds, I call.
Turn: 3♣️
River: 6♥️

I lose to K♥️ K♣️. LJ told me later he folded queens.

What I thought during the hand

Preflop: My read of my opponents was that the opener was a very face-up regular, and the LJ was a very nitty recreational player. The LJ took a long pause before calling the open in a way that made me think he was pretty strong preflop, but I didn’t know if strong meant AQ or aces.

When it folds to me, I was unsure of whether to call or 3-bet. The case for 3-betting is obvious in that I can take control of the betting lead out of position and build the pot while I am ahead of their range, and can get a hand like KQo to fold that I am flipping against while getting a hand I dominate like AJs or TT to call. The con is that because I am at a stack depth where UTG’s 4-bet is a jam, I generally like to 3-bet very polar so that I either have slam dunk calls or folds vs. a jam1, and I felt like jacks was very much in no man’s land.2 At the time I intuitively thought I was supposed to call off a jam with jacks in theory, but was planning to fold to a jam as I think people don’t bluff enough in the main event.3 So, if I want to deviate from what I assumed was GTO, I thought 3-bet/folding is the better exploit than just calling the open, with the additional benefit that I can potentially lose the minimum vs. QQ-AA by finding out where I am at if he jams.4

Flop: The flop is a weird spot, because I assumed I should almost always be good here in GTO world as I mainly just lose to 88 and discounted QQ5, but in practice I think their range is much more nutted than theory.6 I decided to bet because I wanted to charge draws like AQss or KQdd and planned to jam most turns to realize my equity. When UTG jammed the flop, I thought it was very likely he had QQ-AA that he trapped preflop, because I think people mainly call their draws in position on the flop hoping the turn checks through.7 When the LJ tank folded, I was relatively confident that he folded exactly queens or possibly the last combo of jacks based on his physical mannerisms, because he was acting like he had an agonizing choice and was an extremely nitty player. So I thought that likely killed two of the four queens for UTG, and if so, I am only losing to the last combo of queens, KK-AA that slow played preflop and 888 and am getting around 5-1 and also have a backdoor flush draw and set outs, so figured if he can ever have a bluff or overplay TT9 I priced myself in to stack off.

What I learned from studying

Preflop: Obviously KK is an open for UTG. The LJ should be flatting QQ 25% of the time. I think in practice it is better to pure 3-bet queens because part of the EV of flatting queens comes from people squeezing behind, and people in the main don’t squeeze enough, but good to see there hasn’t been a punt yet.10

I should 3-bet JJ 100% of the time to 11 bigs so I picked a good size.11 My 3-bet range is pretty intuitive, with JJ+, AKo, AQs, KQs, and KJs all being pure 3-bets, and then hands like AQo, A5s, A4s, QJs, JTs, 76s, and 65s getting in the mix at lower frequencies.

Back to UTG, the solver never flats, and either 4-bets small or jams (I’m not sure if it’s because the solver doesn’t allow UTG to have the option to call to simplify the output, or because any hand that wants to continue wants to pure more money in the pot since the LJ is capped).12 KK makes the most sense as a jam for UTG, because most of my bluffs have an ace and therefore have ~30% equity vs. KK, so either getting it in ahead of my 3-bet range or taking down the pot without seeing the flop are both good outcomes. Whether UTG wants to have flats or min 4-bets, I do think the solver is right with the hand selection of AA/AKs as traps and using KK as a jam. In hindsight, I think he was exploitablely calling KK here because he thought the LJ was strong as well and wanted to keep the LJ in the pot, but given the fact that the LJ got away from QQ postflop anyway, I don’t thinks this was the right exploit.13

Because UTG is never supposed to flat, the solver doesn’t have a range for the LJ. While if UTG folds the LJ is never supposed to back-raise because we are deep and his range is capped, I am curious to know if UTG calls if the SB can have some back jams with AKo/QQ to try to pick up dead money from UTG.14

If UTG jams, I am supposed to call off JJ+/AK, but JJ is making close to 0 EV, so in the main event I think a breakeven bluffcatcher becomes a trivial fold in this spot.15

Flop: While I cannot use a solver multi-way, given the 5 years of experience I have had since this hand, I think I royally punted the flop. I think the size I picked is very bad, because it essentially turns my hand face-up for what it is.16 I think it is a very viable strategy to bet small given it is a multi-way pot to put AQ or 77 in a bad spot and give a cheap price to my bluffs, with the added benefit that if UTG jams and LJ calls then I can get away from a hand like JJ.17 Alternatively, I think I prefer actually jamming at this SPR, just trying to get the max from 99 or KQdd before the runout gets worse, and can also jam some higher equity bluffs to get max fold equity. 18Regardless of whether small bet or jam is best (I do prefer jam but I’m curious to see what Sam thinks), I think by betting medium I picked the worst of the 3 options.19

Once he jams, I need 19% pot odds to call, and I have around 10% against overpairs. I think it is close, because there is a chance that he is bluffing (especially because a flush draw is out there) or possibly could be jamming 99-TT, which would be a disaster if I fold. What leaned me to eventually calling is as I mentioned before, because the LJ tanked so long, I thought it was extremely likely they folded exactly queens (which he confirmed later), so that reduces the combinations of the most likely value combo my opponent has. In hindsight, given the future game edge my ego tells me I have, even getting 5:1 I think this is a spot I can let it go.20

If you made it to the end of the post and are interested in being the subject of a future Sunday Special, let me know. Do not be shy if you lack poker skill or accomplishments. No solver analysis is required from you and I’d much rather have hobbyist poker players, who are good writers that can produce clean copies and clearly articulate their thought process than editing the writing of 99% of accomplished poker players

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As I’ve become an op-ed writer, I try to resist the urge to find the stupidest take possible so that I can dunk on it. I have also resisted the urge to make the same point over and over again. Earlier this week, I began writing a blog about how Benjamin Rolle, Phil Hellmuth and Mike Matusow were wrong in their takes about how the system to award the WSOP Player of the Year should be changed. As I was writing about this, I realized that I wrote about this very thing almost one year ago. The reason I wrote about the same thing is because Phil Hellmuth once again made a very dumb and self-serving argument about the WSOP POY Race. Last year, Hellmuth argued that the POY formula should be thrown in the trash because Michael Mizrachi was obviously the real POY. At the time I wrote that

Phil Hellmuth sparked the debate with a tweet riddled with factual inaccuracies. Shaun Deeb is not embarrassed that he won POY, 90% of players would not have given Michael Mizrachi POY over Shaun, and Shaun did not influence the POY format. Phil later apologized for one of the things he got wrong. He did not apologize for the hypocrisy of him of all people, the guy who gets the clock paused for thousands of players so he can enter the WSOP Main Event, complaining that someone else might have gotten favourable treatment at the WSOP.

He also suggested that a panel of five people, of which he’d surely be a part of, can overrule who wins POY, a policy that could lead to all sorts of potential cronyism. Hellmuth’s argument is self-serving: The guy with the most bracelets thinks POY should value people winning bracelets. The POY points system might not be perfect, but it is objective. Complaining about who wins after the fact reminds me of people who suggest they re-award regular season MVP awards after the playoffs. It is a regular season award and that’s fine. The POY (like all player of series awards) rewards high-volume players who put up a lot of results (and pay a lot of rake) and that’s okay. Mizrachi had a historic year that will live on regardless of whether he wins POY; there is no wrong that needs to be righted, but top players putting their thumbs on the scale to get a desired outcome that feels right would be wrong.

This year, his argument is that if you lose money— that is to say your overall profit and loss for the WSOP is in the red— you should not be eligible for the POY. This is one of those “common sense” arguments that makes sense at first glance but doesn’t hold up to any real scrutiny. The POY award and leaderboard is a marketing expense to encourage more people to play more poker tournaments. Of course it should reward people for playing lots of poker, including the highest profile, biggest buyin (and most raked) tournaments. If someone wants to fire six bullets in a $100k to gain some EV in the POY race and you want to stop them from doing it, you have lost the plot. Someone max firing to try to win a trophy is good for everyone, except that person’s wallet.

Fundamentally, the goal of POY should be to promote people playing poker. Imagine if someone like Daniel Negreanu (who had a good tweet in response to Hellmuth) decided to skip a $1,000,000 One Drop because he didn’t want to disqualify himself from POY contention. Who is this benefiting? People who bet Mike Matusow to win POY? The POY criteria should be designed to increase field sizes and have top players in action as often as possible. This makes races more exciting. You don’t want to encourage people to make defensive strategic decisions, such as busting a tournament and choosing not to re-enter.

For those that argue you need to be in the black to win POY: Where do you draw the line? Why isn’t the POY just the player who made the most money? Which in almost every year would be whoever wins the WSOP Main Event (or the $1,000,000 One Drop when it ran). No one believes someone who busted eight bullets of the Gladiator without cashing had a better or more accomplished summer than someone who fired $2M in buy-ins, won three bracelets, and cashed for $1.9M. The goal of poker is to make money, and the person who wins the most is the ultimate winner. The purpose of ancillary prizes is to reward players who grind hard, play a variety of games and put up results. Suggesting that three days of grinding a $1500 HORSE tourney should be wiped out by one preflop cooler in $250k is a capricious penalty that will not lead to an ideal POY race, no matter what Phil Helmuth says.

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Additional Sims For Premium Subscribers

Premium Subscribers are given access to a Google Drive folder where they will also be able to download the raw files of sims I used to write my POTDs, sims that are more accurate and appropriate than equivalent sims in the big public libraries. The past week I uploaded

• A PIO sim with a c-bet sizing test on the flop for POTD #303

• A PIO sim with a c-bet sizing test on the flop for POTD #304

• A PIO ICM sim for POTD #305

Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers

Everyday Premium Subscribers get an extra bit of analysis not included in the main post. Today, I’ll share #onemorething from POTD #303, where I write about playing boards that are bad for aces in a three-bet pot.

POTD #303 ⁠onemorething I think a common mistake people make in three bet pots is they assume boards that are bad for aces are bad for the three bettor. This board is bad for aces, it’s very easy for Stevie to have flopped two pair or better and even his one pair hands after have 9+ outs vs AA.

AA still flops 74% range vs range equity. Boards that are bad for AA are troublesome for the three bettor when their range is made up of a lot of AA or big pair type hands and their other three bets rarely make strong hands. 654 is not a good flop for AA, but it’s a horrible flop for AQ or KT. The button raised and I three bet the SB, I do not have a ton of AA here, but this is a pretty good board for my non AA three bets.

I flop a pair a lot and when I don’t flop a pair I often flop a gutshot or flush draw. The reason I have a range advantage here is partially because I have AA and KK and Stevie doesn’t, but it is mostly because the bottom of my range is much stronger than the bottom of Stevie’s range. All my bluffs are mixed, I’ll have 86s or A7s sometimes, Stevie has them pretty much all of the time. I see the flop with 163 combos, Stevie sees it with 292 combos. Those extra 130 combos tend to be weak hands. I have stronger hands more often and weaker hands less often, it doesn’t matter that this is not my dream board when I have AA.

Media

No media appearances for me this week. Very little media consumption for me this week as well. I enjoyed watching the USMNT crash and burn in spectacular fashion. As a fan of sports teams who tend to be perpetually disappointing, it was very nice to see an entire country delude themselves into thinking their mediocre team was actually good, only to get trounced by a pretty mediocre Belgian team. I would have loved to see Canada beat Morocco (or to have scored a goal, or had a healthy Alphonso Davies), but this schadenfreude will tide me over for now. [I am American and did not enjoy it, but what can you really say after a game with multiple egregious, major errors? -ed.]

As always, I can be reached on

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Bluesky

I remember getting in, and losing, an argument with my brother over a decade ago. I was arguing that, on a JhTh7h flop, 3h2h was a better hand than 77. It’s simple, a flush is better than three of a kind. He was correct, as was his reasoning that even though a flush has a higher hand rank, it has no way to improve to a better hand and has less equity than 77 vs. most hands that will get all-in on the flop. If you wanted to check-raise a linear range on a JT7 monotone flop, you’d rather raise a set than a small flush because it’s a higher-EV hand. There are many such spots where hand rank and hand value are not the same; on the board we’re discussing you’d rather have Tc8h than QcJc even though QJ has a higher rank right now.

So when you’re playing postflop and face aggression, you need to ask yourself: Am I facing a range that is linear or polar? Should I play back with a linear or polar range? And what type of linear/polar hands do I want to play back with? One of the simplest mechanics I’ve learned in these spots is that you fastplay your strongest top-pair hand. If you have top pair vs. top pair, you want to get money in the pot as quickly as possible, and fastplaying your strongest top-pair hands can get max value while protecting a vulnerable hand. Today we will be looking at a hand deep in the Triton London Main Event where I applied this heuristic and fastplayed top pair top kicker, but it wasn’t until after the hand ended that I realized that while I had TPTK, I did not have my highest-EV top pair hand and perhaps I should have played it more cautiously.

Triton London 2019 £100K NLH Main Event
(50k/100k/100k) (SB/BB/BBA) 11/130. We are ITM. 250k Starting Stack.

Hand 17 of 18 Starts at 45:30

It folds to me (5M) in the HJ with A♠️J♦️, I make it 200k, it folds to Stephen Chidwick (1.9M) who calls.

Flop (550k) J♥️9♣️8♥️: Stevie checks I bet 125k, Stevie makes it 425k, I shove for his 1.795M total, he calls with J♠️T♠️.

Today’s Post is free for all. If you’d like to continue seeing posts like this please consider becoming a paid or unpaid subscriber.

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What I Was Thinking

I was riding high as one of the chip leaders as we were approaching the FT. I figured I’d get to open a fairly loose range here with mostly short and medium stacks behind. It’s always good to be aware of the fringes of your opening range. This seemed like a spot where I could open as wide as A2o, so obviously AJo is an easy open. Stevie defended the BB, and while this flop felt good for his BB peeling range, I reminded myself that these high-to-middling boards are often rather good for the preflop raiser, because I’ll have a lot of sets, two pair, straights, strong top pair, strong draws and overpairs myself. AJ with no backup seemed like the perfect hand to c-bet, so I c-bet it. Stevie check-raised, and I was not thrilled with my options. Even his lowest-EV bluffs have some equity— a hand like, say, Qc7c still has 7 outs vs. my hand— and I don’t want to let them see a turn. On the other hand, much of his flop check/raise calling range is two pair and straights and has me in very bad shape. I weighed my options, remembered that your strongest top-pair hands often play aggressively vs. a check-raise, and thought I could deny enough equity from Stevie that shoving to try to end the hand right away was the best play. I shoved, was called by JT, and unfortunately, Stevie turned a straight vs. me.

What I Got Wrong

I raise AJ preflop and I pure c-bet my range and my hand on the flop. I don’t mix any big sizes and just pick a small size like mine. When Stevie check-raises the flop he almost always has two pair, a straight or a set for value. The only hand worse than AJ that he check-raises for value is QJ. His check-raise bluffs are unpaired Qx and Tx, some flush draws, and some pocket twos and pocket threes with a heart. You would think that would mean that I never shove AJ. What’s the point? To get called drawing close to dead? And yet, AJ still shoves the flop around half the time, getting hands like KQ and KT to fold, and winning the pot around half the time is worth quite a bit, especially when I occasionally get called by hands like QJ, KhQh and AhTh.

So the solver is 50/50 to shove the flop, and I’m playing one of the best players in the world. I should be roughly indifferent, except Stevie did check-raise/call JT— a hand the solver never check-raise/calls— and a hand that I probably stack on a blank turn anyways. AJ is a good hand to shove because it’s often best and I can deny equity from Stevie’s bluffs. That makes it a pretty good hand to shove vs. a polar check-raise range, but a less good hand to shove vs. a linear check-raising range, when there are so many action-killing turns for my hand. This equilibrium is so sensitive, and KT and KQ are such large parts of Stevie’s check-raise bluffing range, that KJ mixes folds to a flop check-raise and AJ mixes shoving. With the benefit of hindsight, I know that Stevie is check-raise/calling for value wider than the solver, and since most of the EV of my play comes from getting Stevie to fold to a flop shove half the time, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that he’s folding less than that, and even though I have better equity when called, I should still just call and wait for a safe turn before getting all-in.

Types of Error

Tried to end the hand too early.

Grade

The actual output of this hand didn’t really resemble how Stevie or I were playing at the time f the actual hand. I don’t think Stevie is folding T7s or QTo preflop here, and I’ve already noted that the BB doesn’t check-raise/call with JT. This is fine; the PIO ICM output is a starting point, not a flawless solution, even if Stevie and I are both roughly trying to play in a way that the solver would play. The solver is indifferent between calling and shoving my hand versus itself, but I should not be vs Stevie. I was one of the chip leaders in a big tournament, and instead of risking 1/3rd of my stack getting all-in, I think I would have been better off waiting for a safe turn. My play is acceptable, but it is not the best, and given that Stevie was check-raising a different range than I expected, I think just calling the flop was the best play.

C+

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Generally the EV loss of playing only one size is small, especially vs. opponents who will only play one size as a response. For instance, if your opponent can not raise larger than one-third pot, c-betting small with a medium-strength hand should gain EV compared to a solver that is given a larger raise size. Another concern with simple strategies is that it’s easy to underestimate how much EV you could be losing. Let’s say your simple range strategy loses 0.05BBs compared to the optimal solver strategy. That might not sound like much, but it could add up to 1bb/100 hands, which might be the difference between being a 70th percentile reg and a 90th percentile reg.

What I tend to preach at POTD is that there is a lot of value in studying outputs with multiple sizes, even if your plan is to simplify in game. Studying multiple sizes will give you more tools at your disposal to best exploit your opponents. There are plenty of opponents against whom betting quarter pot with range doesn’t lose EV, especially versus a player type who under-defends and doesn’t check-raise enough. However, when you have a good hand versus that player, you’ll want to find ways to build a pot, because they’re not going to do it for you. Facing those players, you also might want to play a big c-bet size with certain strong hands. Well, you can’t just have a c-bet strategy where you bet big with your good hands and bet small with your bad hands. Even bad poker players will eventually figure out how to play back vs. that. So what’s the best way to exploit a tight passive player? Play a c-bet strategy with multiple sizes, just like the solver does. You do not necessarily need to play a strategy as complex as the solver, but a little complexity has never hurt anyone, and learning how to play a complex strategy will teach you the best way to exploit different player types.

On one side of the spectrum, the idea of only playing one size because it doesn’t really matter what size you pick can be lazy and suboptimal, but having a more complex strategy can also make your play lazy and suboptimal. There are times when I defer to randomizing instead of picking the best size, and I use the same logic as the simplifier: “Any c-bet size is fine, it doesn’t really matter. Let’s roll the dice and pick one at random.” I don’t care for this nihilism; every flop c-bet size decision you make is not critically important, but it does matter. If you lean too far into a philosophy of “everything is close and nothing really matters,” you will prevent yourself from finding the best line with your hand. Today, I had a pretty simple bread-and-butter c-bet spot, but instead of thinking it through, I threw my hands up and declared it didn’t really matter, and I should have done better.

EPT Monte Carlo 2023 € 25,000 No Limit Hold’em (Event #10)
(1k/1.5k/1.5k) (SB/BB/BBA)

It folds to me in the CO (90k/60bbs) with A♦️J♦️, I make it 3.5k, it folds to the BB who calls.

Flop (9.5k) Q♣️T♦️3♠️: BB checks, I bet 6k, they fold.

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Pocket jacks has earned its reputation, but at POTD, I think it’s too good a hand to warrant such negative feelings. If your opponents had no memory and were incapable of adjusting and you got dealt pocket jacks every hand, you’d be the biggest winner in your game. The same is true of AK and AQs. AQo is close, but we want a challenge at POTD. So this week, I’m going to write about three hands I played with a hand that you would not accept getting dealt every hand: the humble AJ. To make things even trickier, two of the three hands I played this week will be against Stephen Chidwick. The third hand will be against a forgotten opponent, and it occurred in a tournament Stephen Chidwick played, so it’s possible he was my opponent. Either way, let’s kick off AJ week with a three-bet pot I played where I wish I had a trouble hand like pocket jacks, but instead I flopped second pair with a hand that’s even more troubling, AJ.

Triton Poker Series London 2023 - Event #6 $60k NLH 7-Handed
(500/1k/1k) (SB/BB/BBA). 3 Handed.

Stephen Chidwick (195k) makes it 3k on the button, I (182k) make it 16k in the SB with A♥️J♥️, he calls.

Flop (34k) K♦️J♦️9♥️: I bet 18k, Stevie folds.

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Before I get to the thoughts of todays’ punter: Jonathan Wang. I need to apologize for posting this Sunday Special on Monday. It was a holiday weekend in Canada, I begun my Punt of the 2026 WSOPME, and I had a sick child. I wanted to get this Sunday Special out ASAP, so this week the normal punts will be posted Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. For today’s Sunday Special I am annotating a blog Jonathan wrote on his Substack. I have lightly edited his blog for formatting and clarity and deleted all the pictures. Since I do not post pictures of solver outputs on POTD because I decided that would be my policy and I am stubbornly sticking to it. On to Jonathan’s hand.

Hello! I’m Jonathan Wang and after spending 10 years working in tech I’ve chosen to join the ranks of poker tournament grinders for the indefinite future. I’ve been documenting my journey with the occasional post over on my Substack.

My table early in day 1A ended up being the first selected to go on the livestream. I had never been on a poker livestream before and overall the experience was a fun one! We had a good table dynamic - thank god the other pros were talkative and not hoodie wearing miserable regs. The thing that struck me the most was how eerily quiet and how bright the lights were. The livestream table was in a separate room from the other tables and it took a bit of an adjustment to go from the poker room white noise of chip shuffling and background conversations to the more or less complete silence of the stream studio.

In the middle of the 2 hours that we were on stream I played this hand vs tournament regular Eric Afriat. For those interested in watching the hand play out live, it can be found in the livestream VOD timestamped link here.

300/600/600 blind level, 80+% of field remaining. Justin Zaki (47.5k/79bbs) raises to 1200 from UTG9, there is one fold and Eric Afriat (55.5k/92.5bbs) makes it 3200 with K♥️Q♥️, it folds to me (68.6k/114bbs) in the CO with Q♦️Q♣️ in the CO, I make it 8,000 it folds back to Afriat who calls.

Flop: 3♣️7♥️K♣️

Pot: 18.7k (31bb)

Afriat checks, we bet 4k (6.66bb) / 20% pot, Afriat calls

Turn: 3♣️7♥️K♣️J♣️

Pot: 26.7k (44.5bb)

Afriat checks, we check.

River: 3♣️7♥️K♣️J♣️5❤️

Pot: 26.7k (44.5bb)

Afriat block bets 5.5k (9bb) / 20% pot, we make a small 17k (28bb) / 33% raise. Afriat folds.

Let’s walk through this street by street.

But before we do Sam is back here for one second chiming in to remind everyone reading this post to become a paid or unpaid subscriber. As I wrote in the Week in Review post, POTD has never had so many total subscribers, but paid subscribers are falling. If you like the free content provided on POTD please consider becoming a paid subscriber to keep POTD running in perpetuity.

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Preflop

This spot with QQ isn’t as much of a slam dunk 4bet as one might think. Yes, we have the third best starting hand in poker - however this configuration is meant to be really tight. We are cold 4-betting a player who has already re-raised vs the first to act player. This combined with the fact that there are so many other players left to act really restricts what each player can get away with in theory.

Looking at a similar spot in the sim you can see that re-raising QQ here is actually 0EV in equilibrium and JJ is meant to be a pure fold! In theory you are just facing two ranges that are very strong and you need a strong hand yourself to commit chips into a pot that you haven’t entered yet.1

That being said, we’re playing against humans and not the computer. 4-betting QQ here becomes a lot better when people are playing too many hands from early position. For example, Zaki’s open raise here with JTo is too loose, though probably fine exploitatively if he doesn’t expect to get 3-bet enough and if he thinks the big blind is a recreational player.2 This, in turn, makes our 4-bet with QQ a lot more straightforward as UTG9’s range just contains way more of these weaker hands which significantly reduces the chance that we “run into it”.3

Afriat’s call here is a blunder and makes our 4-betting with QQ even better. While K♥️Q♥️is a very pretty hand, this hand is dominated too often by my possible holdings and to make things worse he has to play out of position to me postflop with a 2+ SPR. This hand from both a theory and exploitative perspective should almost always be folding in this spot.4

Flop 3♣️7♥️K♣️

The flop clearly favors my cold 4-betting range which contains all of the strongest hands on this board. Afriat makes the procedural check to the preflop raiser and we make a very small continuation bet. In my opinion the theory approved small bet is always the preferred sizing because not only is it the solver’s preferred strategy, but it also ends up being a good exploitative strategy because human players don’t correctly respond to it in a way that benefits us.5

Afriat makes a standard call with top pair middle kicker facing this small bet as he is ahead enough of the time against our range of hands that c-bets small on this board.6

Turn 3♣️7♥️K♣️J♣️

The turn is an interesting one bringing in the front door flush and dropping a broadway card that interacts with both my and Afriat’s ranges.

Afriat elects to check here to the aggressor on the previous street, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the solver likes to build a leading strategy here because the preflop caller should have more suited hands and therefore flushes here than the 4-bettor.7

Our particular combo of Q♦️Q♣️ is improved by this turn to a 2nd nut flush draw. I think this makes for a pretty intuitive checking hand that we are looking to take to showdown.8 Afriat check calling our flop bet filters his range into made hands and flush draws which have now gotten there. Q♦️Q♣️ is now middling hand as we still beat a few of Afriat’s hands like TT, but are now far behind many of his other made hands. We elect to check behind and play a river.

River 3♣️7♥️K♣️J♣️5♥️

The river is a brick and here is where things get spicy. Afriat elects to block bet a very small 20% sizing. This is a very good price to call! From a pot odds perspective, I am being offered the chance to call 20% pot to win 140% pot getting 1:7 to call. I only need to have the best hand here ~15% of the time to make a profitable call.

However, In game I very quickly figured out that calling is probably not the highest EV line here. While I do beat some hands like AJs/TT9, exploitatively I think I lose too frequently to Kx that it is time to get creative.

After thinking about it for a bit, we find a very small 33% pot raise turning our Q♦️Q♣️ into a bluff. In game this was meant to be a maximally exploitative play versus an opponent who, in my opinion, is playing his range very face up on this board. I think these factors make raising in this spot against this particular opponent optimal:

• I had luckily stumbled upon a few hands that Afriat played in the WSOP Main Event this past summer and saw him make some tight folds to river aggression.10

• I just didn’t think Afriat was ever betting this small 20% sizing with a hand better than one pair11 and I didn’t think he was thinly betting enough with hands that I beat like AJs or TT.12

• Not that this is super relevant since as I said before I don’t think Afriat is ever betting a flush here for 20%, but I do have Q♣️ which greatly reduces the number of flushes that Afriat could possess. Specifically I make it impossible for Afriat to have A♣️Q♣️ which is a pretty good candidate to block bet and try and “induce” a bluff from your opponent.13

• I don’t think he is ever re-raise bluffing me. It would be a bit of a disaster to reopen the action only to have a hand like A♣️Jx bluff me off the best hand.14

• Finally, to make the point about raising being higher EV than calling we have to think about which hands I make money from when I call and which hands I make money from when I raise. When I call, I only win the pot against worse hands. When I raise (assuming that I never get 3-bet bluffed), I now win the pot versus those same worse hands + some better hands that fold.15 This is by definition a larger set of hands that I win the pot against. This is then weighed against getting called by a better hand, but since I’ve used such a small sizing my bluff doesn’t have to work that often to be profitable.

Luckily for us, Afriat waffles for a bit and eventually folds to cede the pot to us.

Of course, I could have been wrong here. There are quite a few assumptions that go into making a play like this and we could have very easily looked like an idiot. I still go back and forth on whether or not I should have used a larger raise sizing, but Afriat is definitely a player who might read too much into the small sizing even though he is getting an insane price to call.16

This hand is a special one for me - it was very satisfying to put all the pieces together and have the conviction to pull the trigger on an interesting bluff spot versus exactly the right opponent.17

If you made it to the end of the post and are interested in being the subject of a future Sunday Special, let me know. Do not be shy if you lack poker skill or accomplishments. No solver analysis is required from you and I’d much rather have hobbyist poker players, who are good writers that can produce clean copies and clearly articulate their thought process than editing the writing of 99% of accomplished poker players

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Last week, I wrote about four of the eight people on this year’s HOF ballot. I felt two of the nominees were clear yays, one was a clear nay, and one was a more respectful nay. I closed the post with a cliffhanger promising to write about four cases who I think deserve HOF induction, but I can only pick two. So here I am to write about Justin Bonomo, Shaun Deeb, Jason Koon, and Scott Seiver.

Justin Bonomo

I think all four of these guys are HOFers, I predict at least two of them will get in this year, and I am rather confident that ZJ will be the odd man out. Even before October 7th 2023, Justin has always been very vocal about his views on everything, including hot-button issues like politics and gender. Justin is a friend of mine, and I know firsthand how frustrating and exhausting it can be to argue with him. Many of the voters are not his friends. They also find rhetorical style to be frustrating and exhausting, but more relevant is that they find his worldview to be repugnant. I’ve seen some people argue that this means he does not have the “respect of his peers” and should not be in the HOF. This is a bad faith argument; it seems pretty clear that the criteria is that he should have the respect of his peers … at the poker table. If inclusion for the HOF starts extending to posts, takes, and political opinions, the whole HOF might need to be blown up.

So let me make the case for Justin: When I started playing SnGs, he had the biggest winrate at high-stakes SnGs. He got caught multi-accounting, and unlike the other people caught multi-accounting at the time, he showed real contrition, honoured the bans, and became one of the first online poker players to become a full-time live tournament grinder. After years of good behaviour, his ban was overturned, and he has since been a model citizen when it comes to following the rules on the felt. He has played online and live cash and tournaments and mixed games. He came second in the $50k PPC in 2016. In 2019, he had one of the greatest stretches in SHR history, winning SHRB Macau for $4.8M, SHRB IV in Vegas for $5M, and the $1,000,000 Buy-in Big One for One Drop for $10,000,000 in a four-month span. He is one of a handful of people who, post-Moneymaker boom, can say they were number one on the all-time money list. He has a ton of success, plays a variety of formats of poker, and is one of the indelible characters of the game. He should be in. However, in this exercise I can only vote for two of the four people remaining, and I am choosing to vote strategically. I think Justin would agree with me that it’s unlikely the committee would pick him, and he’d understand my decision to vote for people with a better chance of induction. Sorry Justin. You’ll have to wait until next year.

NB: The only player I know for a fact is turning 40 next year is Ben Tollerene, and that’s because his online screenname ends in 86. It’s possible Justin will have some more stiff competition next year, but if four people get inducted this year. Justin has my hypothetical vote nextyear.

Player Comp: A player who early in his career was punished for infractions that in hindsight were much more widespread than initially believed, infractions that have since become so commonplace that people don’t even really care anymore and they’re hardly punished. He had a peak where he was the best in the world and one of the most thrilling players to watch, but he ended up having a career shorter than expected (unless Justin ends up returning to poker full time in the future). The comp is Derrick Rose.

Jason Koon

Jason is #3 on the all-time money list and with a good year could pass Stephen Chidwick for #2. With two good years, he could conceivably pass Bryn Kenney and become #1. He’s won NLH, PLO, and Short Deck tournaments, and NLH and Short Deck cash games. When Short Deck was the game played for the highest stakes in the world, he was the best Short Deck player in the world. He’s a no-doubt HOFer, but once again there is a logjam, and I need to make some tough calls. He’s been an ambassador for several poker sites, and if you care about the “fame” of the Hall of Fame, he is as famous as any poker player of his generation. He has my vote on this hypothetical ballot.

Player Comp: A guy who was born and raised in a small town and became a pro at a relatively young age, but had some early career growing pains before he became a star. A famously hard worker who you would never want to get in a fight with. Nolan Ryan.

Shaun Deeb and Scott Seiver

And then there were two. [Hey guys! Come on the show! -ed] I’ll preface this by saying I am pretty sure both Deeb and Seiver will get in this year. While Isai Schienberg is on my ballot, he’s been denied induction by the Hall a couple of times already, and I doubt they’ll pick him this year. I would suspect Deeb, Haxton, Koon and Seiver all get inducted this year, especially because Deeb has three FTs at this year’s WSOP, including one finish in second place and winning his 9th bracelet. However, in my fictional bracket, you can only pick one.

Shaun and Scott are both naturally talented games players who have done relatively little off-table work after being top NLH players. They both found a second life as mixed-game players. They are two of the biggest characters in this generation and have always been at the centre of the discourse. Shaun has some memorable moments, like his weight loss bet with Bill Perkins, and some lowlights, like playing the WSOP ladies event, while Scott’s table talk is consistently enjoyable and has led to some highlight reel hands. In deciding between the two, I looked back at the HOF criteria and noticed that the first piece or criteria is “A player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition.” I think Scott has a clear edge over Shaun here. Scott played high-stakes cash online and in Bobby’s Room and was one of first Super High Roller regs. Shaun has mostly stuck to playing tournaments $10k and lower, and while he occasionally dabbles at the highest stakes, including his impressive win in WSOP $100k PLO in 2025, Scott has played against top competition more often, and he gets my final vote.

Player Comp: Someone who put up gaudy stats, won some MVP awards, but was never really considered best in the world. Some haters might have argued he was not even close. They both love playing garbage hands preflop in PLO. Shaun Deeb is Russell Westbrook.

Someone who is such a natural they earned baseball and basketball scholarships in college and were drafted into the NFL. He chose baseball and ended up having a HOF career where he was a 12-time all-star, and still his career feels like a slight disappointment, because the value of being naturally good at every game is not rewarded as much as being a specialist. Someone who “wants noise” at the table. Scott Seiver is Dave Winfield.

Those are my HOF thoughts, let’s see who the committee decides to induct

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Additional Sims For Premium Subscribers

Premium Subscribers are given access to a Google Drive folder where they will also be able to download the raw files of sims I used to write my POTDs, sims that are more accurate and appropriate than equivalent sims in the big public libraries. The past week I uploaded

• A PIO ICM sim using ranges I created for POTD #300

• A deepstacked PIO sim using these exact sizings for POTD #301

• A PIO sim using custom preflop ranges and lots of sizings for POTD #302

Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers

Everyday Premium Subscribers get an extra bit of analysis not included in the main post. Today, I’ll share #onemorething from POTD #300, where I wrote about how to analyze a solver strategy when you have a hand the solver almost never has.

POTD #300 ⁠onemorething

When a hand is supposed to have a pure or almost pure strategy on an earlier street to the point where it’s supposed to be zero reach at the node we are looking at. I tend to be wary of looking at the outputs. The solver often suggests an aggressive line because you are never supposed to have that hand. Take any river node and add 0.01 combos of 72o to your range and I bet the solver will bluff with it. It’s a rare an unpredictable bluff so it should be very high EV because the other player’s strategy barely accounts for you having 72o. In this hand Ah3c is supposed to pure shove the flop and it’s also supposed to pure shove the river. However, I think in this hand it’s a good bluff because of the properties of the hand, not just because it’s a rare combo. In this hand Dejan is supposed to check-call the river with 5.4 combos total. K3s makes up 6% of his total river check-calling range. Blocking one of those combos is worth so much that to me the EV here comes from blocking a common check-call and not having a rare bluff combo that the other player can’t account for.

Media

I watched the fifth and final season of The Bear and I liked it. I think one of the scourges of this era of prestige TV is that shows tend to spend too much time focusing on the trauma the characters experienced before the main action of the show and not enough time focusing on the actual drama in the present day. [I agree and probably feel even more strongly about this. -ed] I think The Bear, at its best, is either a sort of competence or chaos porn. It’s thrilling to watch everything at the restaurant click into place or go haywire. It’s less thrilling to be reminded that these characters are all here because the restaurant is their real family and their biological families are damaged. The later seasons of The Bear delved too much into backstory and they were tedious. The fifth season of The Bear takes place almost entirely over one day, and it was my favourite season since season 2. This season was almost entirely The Bear in hangout sitcom/sports movie mode, and that is when I think the show is at its best. I liked it.

Run It Once posted part 1 of my 10 WSOP Main Event Lessons for free on YouTube. Check it out.

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Bluesky

I think as a shortcut, it’s fair to say that this format would basically play like a cash game, but there are also some subtle nuances when it comes to optimizing your future game EV within the SnG. If you have two bbs UTG and are posting the BB ante next hand, you should still go all-in wider UTG than you would in a cash game, where you could sit out or top off before playing the next hand. Let’s say you were three-handed with another top player and a VIP, and you think you could beat the VIP heads up 60% of the time. Would you make a slightly losing call vs. the other pro to increase the likelihood you play the VIP heads up? These spots are all interesting to think about and add another fun wrinkle to a format that I hope is run again. The SnG was won by, who else, Jason Koon. He had a key hand that was to me the hand of the SnG: He made a big ace-high call down vs. Stephen Chidwick in a three-bet pot, and it was the type of hand that immediately had me thinking. I am not sure if this hand was masterful or full of punts, which made it a perfect hand to write about for POTD, so let’s get into it.

€100K INVITATIONAL - €1M WINNER TAKES ALL | EPT Monte Carlo 2026
(40k/80k/80k) (SB/BB/BBA). 1M Starting Stack. 5 Handed.

YouTube Video of the Hand

It folds to Stephen Chidwick (2.37M) on the button who makes it 160k, Jason Koon (2.12M) make it 480k in the SB, Chidwick calls.

Flop (1.12M) Q♠️6♦️3♦️: Koon bets 275k, Chidwick calls.
Turn (1.67M) Q♣️: Koon bets 325k, Chidwick calls.
River (2.32M) 6♥️: Koon checks, Chdiwck shoves for Koon’s 1.08M, Jason calls. Chidwick has K♣️3♣️ and Koon is good with A♦️5♣️.

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