Punt of the Day

POTD #350 Winning Wednesday Isaac Haxton Bamboozles Me with a 1BB Bet

Sam Greenwood — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 10:02:54 GMT

Something I have repeated to my students and in training videos is “once your opponent breaks the rules, you’re free to break whatever rules you want.” What I mean by this is, if you are trying to play solver poker and your opponent does something the solver would never do, you don’t need to respond in a balanced fashion. If you make it 2bbs UTG and someone playing 50% of hands makes it 5bbs from middle position, you don’t need to fold KJo because their three-bet is supposed to make you indifferent with some of your range. They are playing too loose and sizing too small; your minimum defense frequency can be a maximum defense frequency. The worse your opponent is, the more confident you can be in breaking the rules and doing whatever you want to exploit them. If someone never bluffs the river, you fold every bluff-catcher. Playing someone who might raise the river on JhTh9h3c2c and confidently table two pair when called? Don’t start folding straights to them.

The hardest hands to play can be trying to navigate when a very good poker player makes a blunder that you know to be a blunder, but you also know they are a smart thinking player and they are trying to balance their range. Let’s look at POTD #346. My river lead is not a play with my hand or my range, but that doesn’t mean my strategy does not represent an attempt to be balanced. I should not lead this river, but once I do, I should be bluffing roughly 1/3rd of the time with a goal of making a pair of kings roughly indifferent. When I’m playing an opponent whom I don’t respect and they lead all-in on the river in a spot where the range is supposed to check, I usually try to figure out what their two cards are in that moment. When a poker player I respect does something unexpected, I assume they are trying to be somewhat balanced, and I can’t just assume “they have it” or “they’re bluffing” and pivot to an easy max-exploit line vs. their unusual play. In today’s hand, Isaac Haxton took a weird (and solver unapproved) line vs. me; and I had to figure out what it meant.

Triton Poker Series Cyprus 2023 - Event #11 $100,000 NLH - Main Event
(1.5k/3k/3k) (SB/BB/BBA) 250k Starting Stack

It folds to me in the HJ with A♥️ T♠️ (62.5k/21bbs) I make it 6k, three stacks more than 200k deep fold, it folds to Ike (312k/103bbs) who calls.

Flop (16.5k) 9♦️7♣️3♠️ : Ike checks, I check.

Turn (16.5k) A♣️ : Ike bets 3k, I make it 16k, Ike jams for my remaining 56k, I call, Ike has A♠️ J♠️ and I am eliminated.

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PREMIUM POTD #350 Winning Wednesday Isaac Haxton Bamboozles Me with a 1BB Bet

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 09:59:32 GMT

POTD #349 Monte Carlo Monday: I Defend the BB and See an Odd Flop

Sam Greenwood — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 10:03:47 GMT

In the pre-solver era, I remember coaching a mostly six-max online cash game player who was dabbling in MTTs. They played a hand in an online MTT where UTG raised and they rejammed 18bbs next to act with A3 of clubs.1 I asked them why they played their hand that way, and they replied that they had seen me do something similar in a Run It Once video. I did not find the exact hand he was referring to, but my best guess was I did do something similar, but the details were all a little different— I was shorter stacked, I had a better suited ace, the raise was from a later position, maybe even all three. This hand has stuck with me because I think it’s a nice parable about why learning poker is so hard. You can learn about a basic play, such as bluff reraising all-in suited aces; you can understand why it’s a common play good players make; but then you need to execute, which means determining when versions of this play are winning and when they are losing.

Books could be written on when to go all-in preflop with A5s. If you want to always get these spots right, you need to be able to note every subtle detail in seemingly similar hands. The best players are adept at spotting the nuances in spots that are close but different. In last Monday’s post, I looked at a hand where I defended the BB with 15bbs vs. a deep-stacked HJ minraise and the flop came 753 flush draw. Today, I am looking at a hand where a deep-stacked button minraised, I defended the BB with 11bbs, and the flop came 753 flush draw. A short stack defends versus a minraise and hits a flop that’s good for their hand. The two BB strategies should look awfully similar, but the details— having 1.6x pot vs. having 2.4x pot, facing a button opening range instead of a HJ opening range— affect what the ideal strategy for both players are. If you can calibrate your strategy to these small differences, you will become the player correctly jamming A5s for 25bbs over a button raise, instead of being the punter jamming A2s for 16bbs UTG7 because you saw a top pro do something similar.

2022 PokerStars EPT Monte Carlo €100,000 Super High Roller
(8k/16k/16k) (SB/BB/BBA) 250k Starting Stack. 11 left 6 cash.

Poker News Update

It folds to Adrian Mateos (1.65m/103BBs) who makes it 32k on the button, Laszlo Bujtas (700k/44bbs) folds in the SB, I (159k/10bbs) call in the BB` with K♠️7♦️.

Flop (88k) 7♣️5♦️3♦️: I check, Adrian bets 22k, I make it 50k, Adrian jams for my final 143k, I call and and am eliminated by his A♠️A♥️.

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PREMIUM POTD #349 Monte Carlo Monday: I Defend the BB and See an Odd Flop

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 09:59:39 GMT

Weeks in Review #71 August 30th-October 17th

Sam Greenwood — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 16:36:09 GMT

So I kept putting off this Week in Review post because there were so many hands to catchup with from Jeju that I was afraid the whole post would be unwieldy. Well with each passing week, each potential post becomes more and more unwieldy and I finally bit the bullet and am posting it today. Next week’s Week in Review will be more normal, but before I post a bunch of links to what I have been up to at POTD. Let’s do a quick trip summary of my play in Triton Jeju II.

I played 23 tournaments and I cashed none of them. The trip was very bad, I lost myself and some other people a lot of money. It was not the return to live poker I expected. This is hard to say with when you go 0-23 and don’t even come particularly close to cashing a tournament— in tournaments with starting stacks of 200k-300k, I never got over a million chips— I felt comfortable and I felt that I played well. I made some mistakes, but it just felt like a week where every time I value bet my opponents folded and every time I bluffed they called. Every time I bluff caught, they had it and while I don’t know if my opponents had it when I folded, I bet some of the times they did bluff me.

From a theory perspective it did feel like I had a mixed decision in a lot of big pots I played, which is annoying, sometimes you wish you just had a set when someone shoved the river instead of having neutral EV one pair hand, but alas that’s how it the cookie crumbled. I’ll get them next time. I’ll keep the rest of this introduction brief because I have a lot of catch up to do, but next Sunday in this spot the Sunday Special will return, so if anyone wants to submit a hand, feel free to do so. I’ll list all the ways to contact me at the bottom of this post. If you’d like to help me recoup my losses from Triton Jeju, $1 at a time, you can also become a paid or premium subscriber by clicking the button below.

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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 month I uploaded (deep breath)

A PIO sim for POTD #328
A Rocket Solver sim from the turn and a PIO sim on the river for POTD #329
PIO sims from the flop and turn for POTD #330
A PIO sim from the turn and the #onemorehand sims for POTD #331
PIO sims from the turn after running three way flop sims for POTD #332
PIO sims using minraise preflop ranges for POTD #333
PIO sims with several c-bet sizes for Ben86 and where he c-bets 100% POTD #334
A PIO sim with 1k/1.5k preflop ranges for POTD #335
PIO sims that force Ike to use his exact bet sizes for POTD #336
A PIO sim using PF ranges that account for Ben Heath’s 3B size for POTD #337
A c-bet size test for and a complete sim for POTD #338
Flop and turn Rocket Solver sims for POTD #339
A squeezed three bet PIO sim for POTD #340
PIO sims that make Joao auto c-bet and one where he can check for POTD #341
A variety of HRC sims and one PIO sim for POTD #342
A PIO sims that forces the BU to c-bet and one that doesn’t for POTD #343
Rocket Solver sims for the flop turn and river for POTD #344
A PIO ICM sim for POTD #345
A PIO sim using inequal stacks for POTD #346
A PIO sim using inequal stacks PF ranges for POTD #347
A PIO sim forcing me to c-bet the size I picked HU for POTD #348

Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers

Everyday Premium Subscribers get an extra bit of analysis not included in the main post. In Jeju this feature was called #onemorehand and I looked at a second hand I played in Jeju, but did not write about in the main post. Most weeks this feature is called #onemorething and it’s a bit of extra poker analysis. I’ll include a #OMH and #OMT below.

The #OMH is from POTD #339

POTD #339 #onemorehand
HH: Triton App
This is another three-way pot where my c-bet strategy was off, but in this hand I made what I thought was a pretty easy decision and was shocked to learn it was an error. I raised K7o (I forget the suits) on the button and was called by the SB and BB. I figured this was a very good flop for my range and I had a hand close to the bottom of my range, so I bet half pot and got two quick folds.
In a heads-up pot BU vs. SB, this is not a pure c-bet board according to GTO Wizard at 30bbs (multi size) or 28bbs (single size) or 25bbs (multi size). At 30bbs, I check 65% of the time and bet as large as 124%. At 28bbs, I c-bet more often (90% of the time), but that is because the one size they pick is 20% pot. If you want to put in a lot of c-bet volume, but you can’t c-bet a big size, you usually increase your frequency. At 25bbs, I am back to checking 54% while betting as large as 125%. This is more or less a pure c-bet board BU vs. BB, but the lesson here is the same as the one in the main hand today. If you can’t c-bet often in one of the two HU pots you might play here, you can’t c-bet often when it goes multiway vs. more or less the same ranges.
However, my error in this hand was not a misunderstanding of multiway mechanics. It was a misunderstanding of HU mechanics. I just assumed that Adrian had so little top pair here that I’d get to c-bet range. I raise enough garbage on the button, and Adrian’s flatting range is so specific, that of all the sims I looked at, the most equity my range has on the flop is 51.8%. Blocking with my hand doesn’t lose EV, but the Kx hands that really want to start bluffing on the flop are K5-K2 with backdoor wheel draws and backdoor flush draws.

and the #onemorething from POTD #348

POTD #348 ⁠onemorething
A reason why HUNL can be so tough is because both players have nothing a lot of the time. If you have a deck of cards near you, deal out two random hands and a flop. There’s a good chance they both have total air. In ring poker, at least one player usually has something, which leads to strategies like pure c-betting on certain boards. Obviously today’s hand is one where both of us had something, but my play in the hand was poor because I had a HU strategy built around one player often having nothing. A less convoluted way to phrase this is, if both players often have nothing, how can you ever fold when you have something?
The way HUNL tends to deal with the problem of both players often having nothing is passive play on early streets. 25bb HU, the button checks QJT over 60% of the time. The only boards that are pure c-bet or close to it from the button are ace-high flops and flops with trips on them, because the BB almost never has Ax or a pocket pair. On most boards once a turn barrel or a flop check-raise enters the pot, ranges are tighter than you might imagine. They start off very wide, but even the decision to c-bet tightens up ranges dramatically. This doesn’t mean that if you get heads-up that you can never fold top pair or a straight or a flush. Of course you can do it vs. an opponent whom you might think is not bluffing enough, but you can even do it versus the solver. It’s a cop-out to think “ranges are wide, therefore, I can’t fold a hand with a value greater than X,” and that was my thought process in the hand. The better way to think of this hand was, a lot of money entered the pot postflop, Fedor is never value betting worse, I don’t meaningfully block value bets any more than I block bluffs: I should fold.

Media

Since I left from Jeju Run It Once posted several videos of mine

Playing big ante cash on GG and another one
A video looking at hands that Checks down multiway and Part 2
Looking at an old GG Million$ FT of mine

Octopi has began posting Punt of the Weeks hands I wrote about using their vault.

I was on Jared Alderman’s Seeking Balance Podcast

As always, I can be reached on

Substack
Instagram
Twitter
Bluesky

POTD #348 FT Friday: Heads Up vs Fedor Holz in Barcelona

Sam Greenwood — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:02:14 GMT

In May 2016, Fedor Holz got heads-up in the second Super High Roller Bowl, where he lost to his friend Rainer Kempe. Four days later, he chopped an Aria $50k with Dominik Nitsche; he had a slight chip lead and took home the trophy. One week later, he beat Joe McKeehen heads-up in an Aria $25k. One week after that he chopped heads-up with Stephen Chidwic…

PREMIUM POTD #348 FT Friday: Heads Up vs Fedor Holz in Barcelona

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:59:34 GMT

PREMIUM POTD #347 Winning Wednesday: Everyone’s Nightmare An Ace High Flop with Pocket Queens

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 10:05:02 GMT

POTD #347 Winning Wednesday: Everyone’s Nightmare An Ace High Flop with Pocket Queens

Sam Greenwood — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 10:04:55 GMT

A format I’ve occasionally returned to on POTD is “Winning Wednesday,” where I write about a small hand from the early levels of a tournament I ended up doing well in. A problem with finding hands that fit this format is that on long poker trips, days tend to blend together, which means it can be hard to remember what tournament a certain hand took place in. Today’s hand is one I definitely remember playing, but it felt like a hand from one of the first tournaments of a trip, a $25k, maybe a $30k. I think part of the reason it felt this way is because the Triton Main Event is a deep-stacked tournament, which means in my memory, a hand that I started with under 40bbs probably did not take place in a Main Event.

I don’t remember how I lost half my stack leading up to this hand and I don’t remember how I busted my first bullet after this hand. It looks like I had the nut flush draw in a three-bet pot, check-raised, bet the turn, and gave up when I whiffed. Then I lost the pot I am writing about today, and then I made top pair with AT vs. Isaac Haxton’s AJ in an interesting hand that I’ll write about in this space next week. After busting bullet 1, I re-entered and lost 1/3rd of my stack on the third hand I played, and things were not looking good for me. Then Orpen Kisacikoglu raised the button, Sosia Jiang flatted the SB, I shoved Th9h for 40bbs from the BB, Orpen folded, Sosia called 88, and the flop was AhKh5h. That double-up would lead me to the end of day 1, into the money and to the final table, where I’d come in second place to Jason Koon, but before all that, we had a hand that reminded me a little of POTD #307.

In that hand, Malcom Trayner called down Lucas Jumalon with pocket queens on an AJ4 board in a three-bet pot. The consensus around that hand followed conventional poker wisdom: If you have KK or QQ and the flop is ace high, do not get married to your pocket pair. A good hand preflop is not the same as a good hand postflop. However, my conclusion in that hand was that Malcom’s call was not all that bad. If you always fold QQ-KK on ace-high boards, especially if you regularly c-bet with them, you’ll probably be leaking EV with them. Today’s hand is one where I’m looking at a spot where I folded QQ on an ace-high board in part because I defaulted to a basic heuristic of “don’t call with QQ on an ace-high board”, but the hand turned out to be much trickier. My fold might have been a punt, a mistake or neither, but that’s something you’ll find out about at the end of this post.

Triton Poker Series Cyprus 2023 - Event #11 $100,000 NLH - Main Event
(1.5k/3k/3k) (SB/BB/BBA) 250k Starting Stack

Chris Brewer (279k/93bbs) makes it 7k in the LJ, it folds to me (112k/37.5bbs) in the HJ with Q♣️Q♥️ and I make it 19k, it folds back to Chris who calls.

Flop (45.5k) A♠️7♠️7♦️: Chris checks, I bet 9k, Chris makes it 22k, I call.
Turn (89.5k) 3♥️: Chris shoves for my final 71.5k, I fold.

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POTD #346 ITM of the GGMillion$ I Flop Second Pair

Sam Greenwood — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 10:04:14 GMT

In January of 2023, I entered a “Last Chance” flight in the GG $10k Super Million$. These tournaments are usually pretty tough tourneys and have big fields and lots of variance, but there used to be some hidden EV in registering “Last Chance” flights. All of the flights, last chance or not, played down to x% of the field or X number of levels, but the Last Chance flights were turbos with shorter level times. Last Chance flights play fewer hands, so they bust fewer people, and thus they tended to end day 1 after a certain amount of play. This meant that, while ~12.5% of players cashed normal flights, ~15% of players cashed Last Chance flights. The Super Million$ usually had a pretty big min cash, so any edge I might gain from playing +EV poker for a couple hundred more hands is more than made up for by making the money 20% more often. I had fired up this Last Chance flight on a Monday morning with dreams of having $1.5 million on Tuesday night. The big winner ended up being Asher Conniff; however, I still cashed the tournament and ended up making the final three tables, cashing for $77k. Not bad for a day’s work.

I had two notable punty hands from that tournament, one of which I will be writing about later, but the other is a nice hand to pair with POTD #318, a hand with four remaining in the WSOPME where Lucas Jumalon doubled up Lauri Saaskilahti. In that hand, Lucas defended the BB vs. a CO raise with a questionable hand, led the flop when he had second pair, and ended up bluffing the turn when it looked like he might have turned two pair or a straight. My hand matches his in a lot of ways, except I checked the flop when I could or maybe should have led, and my big punt was on the river. I suppose one could say that Lucas punted on the river by not sucking out, but that’s a little unfair to him. Either way, Lucas ended up winning $10M, and for him, all’s well that ends well. I had to settle for high five figures, which is not too bad, but not the low seven figures I was hoping for.

GG SuperMillion$
(50k/100k/12.5k)
We Are In The Money. 7-handed.

It folds to the HJ (4M/40bbs) who makes it 200k, it folds to me in the BB (1.4M/14bbs) and I call 8♦️5♠️.
Flop (537.5k) 7♥️5♥️3♣️: I check, he checks.
Turn (537.5k) K♣️: I check, he bets 269k, I call.
River (1.075M) 6♠️: I shove for 1.06M, he folds.

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POTD #345 FT Friday: Defining Edges with Jon Jaffe Part 2

Sam Greenwood — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 10:03:57 GMT

Yesterday I wrote about a hand I played vs. Jonathan Jaffe, someone I’ve played poker against for ~~years~~ decades (god I am old). I had a sense of his play style; he was always a max exploit player who put lots of pressure on you, but he is not all gas, no brakes. He is a very creative player who takes you down odd lines and is capable of showing up with a bluff or the nuts in almost any line. It’s been very fun to read him document his rise in poker on his Substack Defining Edges, because while I never regularly played his main game, Heads Up Sit n Gos, reading about his unique style of play from his perspective confirmed the broad strokes of what I knew about his game, while also giving me a lot more information about his approach to poker, as well as his life and his background.

There are people I have played so much poker with that I have spent more time with them than with friends I’ve known since high school, and I do not know the answer to questions such as “Do you have any siblings?” or “Are you married?” In Jon’s case, I know he has a wife and kids, I do not know about any siblings … I sure hope I did not forget about any references to his siblings in his Substack, and I know he has some great stories about his dad in there. It’s nice to get a full portrait of someone I’ve spent so much time with but know relatively little about. All of this is to reiterate my endorsement from yesterday: If you want to read a well written series about Jon’s rise in poker, if you have nostalgia for the early Wild West days of online poker and want to read war stories, or if you want to see some introspection from a high stakes player or you want to mine some gems that can help you with your own mental game, subscribe to Jon’s Substack.

Today’s hand is a very creative hand Jon played vs. Aleks Ponakovs at the $150k Final Table in Jeju. He discussed the hand with Dan Dvoress and Nick Petrangelo on the GTO Lab podcast in an episode I’ve yet to watch, because I want to give my analysis before hearing Jon and Co.’s thoughts, but if you want to watch it before reading my thoughts, I am not going to stop you. Watch it here.

Triton SHRS Montenegro 2026 $150K NLH 10th Anniversary Special – Event #12
(50k/100k/100k) (SB/BB/BBA) It is 4-Handed
1st: $3.027M, 2nd: $2.103M, 3rd: $1.390M, 4th: $1.088M

YouTube Video

Aleks Ponakovs (4.48M) makes it 200k, Jean-Noel Thorel (4.03M) folds, Jon Jaffe (3.98M) calls A♣️J♣️ in the SB, Matthias Eibinger (2.5M) folds in the BB.

Flop (600k) K♥️T♣️4♥️: Jon bets 100k, Aleks makes it 450k, Jon calls
Turn (1.5M) 9♠️: Jon bets 100k, Aleks calls
River (1.7M) 6♥️: Jon bets 650k, Aleks folds 7♣️6♣️

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PREMIUM POTD #345 FT Friday: Defining Edges with Jon Jaffe Part 2

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:59:52 GMT

POTD #344 Defining Edges vs Jonathan Jaffe

Sam Greenwood — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 10:03:20 GMT

Run It Once just published a video of mine where I go through a common but tricky type of hand, multiway hands that check down to the river. It is behind the paywall, but if you’d like to subscribe and watch it, remember to use code: POTD. In that video, I specifically focus on what hands the BB should be bluffing with in those nodes. It’s a tricky spot because very little has been done to narrow the BB’s range, so they have so many potential hands to bluff with and not all that many value bets.

Today’s hand is a hand that checks down to the river in a three-way pot, but it does not involve figuring out what hands the BB should be bluffing with, because, in addition to promoting my RIO video, I am doing some more cross promotion here with another poker Substack, Jonathan Jaffe’s Defining Edges:

Defining Edges is a serialized memoir that Jon is publishing on Substack, where he is recounting how he got started in poker and thus far has tackled his early days rising the ranks in Heads Up SnGs. If you like good poker writing, stories about the early days of online poker, and some thoughtful introspection about Jon’s own psychology and what made him tick, I really recommend you read his Substack and subscribe. Tomorrow I’ll be reviewing a hand Jon played at a FT that he played in an extremely Jon fashion, but today, I’ll be looking at a hand where I successfully bluff caught vs. him. Hey, I’m plugging his Substack, I can at least pick a hand where I bested him.

Triton Vietnam 2023 - Event #3 20,000 NLH 8-Handed Mystery Bounty
(500/1k/1k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack. No bounties yet. Registration is open

Chris Brewer (208k) raises to 2.5k in the CO, I (142bbs) call in the SB with A♣️9♦️, Jon Jaffe (197bbs) calls.

Flop (8.5bb) J♦️5♣️4♥️: I check, Jon checks, Brewer checks.
Turn (8.5bb) 8♦️: I check, Jon checks, Brewer checks.
River (8.5bbs) A♦️: I check, Jon checks, Brewer bets 5bbs, I call, Jon makes it 30bbs, I call and beat Q♦️T♠️.

For some further reading: You can read POTD #275 where you learn how I ended up with 142bbs so early in the tournament.

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PREMIUM: POTD #344 Defining Edges vs Jonathan Jaffe

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 10:00:02 GMT

Triton Vietnam 2023 - Event #3 20,000 NLH 8-Handed Mystery Bounty
(500/1k/1k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack. No bounties yet. Registration is open

Chris Brewer (208k) raises to 2.5k in the CO, I (142bbs) call in the SB with A♣️9♦️, Jon Jaffe (197bbs) calls.

For some further reading: You can read POTD #275 where you learn how I ended up with 142bbs so early in the tournament.

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PREMIUM POTD #343 Monte Carlo Monday: A Float, a Donk and a Value Bet

Sam Greenwood — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 18:30:46 GMT

I have caught up with all my hands from Jeju and this week will be our first normal week in POTD in almost a month. So I figured, let’s start with a normal hand in a normal format: a Monte Carlo Monday hand from the middle levels of a $30,000 tournament. I recently wrote about how the best poker players are ones who have strong fundamentals and rarely punt themselves; if you don’t make big mistakes and play well on the margins, you’ll succeed in the long run.

Playing well on the margins is a tricky concept in poker, because when you have a marginal spot, there are often alternative strategies that have the same EV. If you’re between c-betting or checking on the flop, your hand might be a mix and all your fretting might be for naught. However, if you’re thinking of value betting the river and you’re shoving one pip too wide, it can be very costly; if you’re facing a preflop shove in a spot that’s supposed to be called by QQ+, but you call JJ, it can be very costly. In today’s hand, I had three marginal spots, I made a couple errors, but also I didn’t lose all that much EV. Was my hand poorly played, or was I just dealt two cards where it was hard to make a large EV error without doing something really foolish like shoving for 10x pot? It’s tough to say, but I think “any play is fine” is a cop-out when you are in a marginal spot; you want to find the best play, even if it makes you pennies.

Triton Monte-Carlo 2023 - Event #7 $30K NLH 7-Handed
(2.5k/5k/5k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack. Registration is Open.

It folds to David Yan (259k/52bbs) on the button who makes it 12k, it folds to me in the BB (300k/60bbs) and I call with Q♣️8♠️.

Flop (31.5k) K♠️6♣️2♠️: I check, David bets 9k, I call.
Turn (49.5k) 6♠️: I lead 12k, David calls.
River (73.5k) Q♥️: I bet 15k, David calls with K♣️7♦️ and I lose.

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POTD #343 Monte Carlo Monday: A Float, a Donk and a Value Bet

Sam Greenwood — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 18:28:26 GMT

I have been told that the premium content, cannot be seen in e-mails and only in the app. If you are a premium subscriber who has been missing this content please follow the link here

Triton Monte-Carlo 2023 - Event #7 $30K NLH 7-Handed
(2.5k/5k/5k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack. Registration is Open.

It folds to David Yan (259k/52bbs) on the button who makes it 12k, it folds to me in the BB (300k/60bbs) and I call with Q♣️8♠️.

Flop (31.5k) K♠️6♣️2♠️: I check, David bets 9k, I call.
Turn (49.5k) 6♠️: I lead 12k, David calls.
River (73.5k) Q♥️: I bet 15k, David calls with K♣️7♦️ and I lose.

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POTD #342 My Punt of Jeju

Sam Greenwood — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 18:37:14 GMT

To honour my return to Triton Jeju, I am running a sale. If you’d like to become a paid subscriber, you can do so for one month at the cheapest rate I’ve ever offered, $1, here. If you’d like to read about how the POTD schedule will be changing when I’m in Korea, you can do so here. If you’d like to become a Premium Subscriber and see what you get for $300/year, to see all the Premium Content I post every day, you can do that as well.

I am back from Jeju, but still have a backlog of posts to catch up on. My plan is to get all the posts finished ASAP, and once I catch up to the backlog, I will resume the normal MWF, Saturday Week in Review, Sunday Special schedule.

One of the hardest things about playing a big poker series, whether it’s a Triton, a WCOOP, the WSOP, or the festival at your local casino, is that by the end of the festival, the stakes are usually the highest, but you are the most fatigued. Of course, this is also true of most individual tournaments. I’ve won tournaments at 3AM, but I don’t think I’ve ever registered one at 3AM.

One of the most important skills a poker player can have is playing your best at the end of a grind. This is not so much about playing your A game when tired— to me that is by definition impossible— but the skill of playing your B game when everyone else is playing their C or D game. The ends of Triton trips have a loopy feel; even the best players in the world are regularly playing hands terribly. Phil Ivey, normally a salmon with broccoli and white rice guy, grabbed a bag of pretzels from the poker room buffet. I said “You normally aren’t a pretzel guy,” he replied “I’m fucking steamed” and kept eating his pretzels. (NB: I was 0-23 on this trip and ate several bags of these pretzels. I took a picture for POTD subscriber and salty snack enthusiast Steve O’Dwyer because they were very good. That picture is the header image of this post).

One reason I have always leaned on having a strong technical game is because, if I am tired or tilted or otherwise unable to play my A-game, my autopilot game will be based around strong fundamentals, which will allow me to play poker that might not be great, but usually won’t be terrible. Given that this post is titled “My Punt of Jeju,” you can guess that despite this preamble, today’s hand is not one where the high floor of my game— a high floor that I’ve built through studying and preparation— prevented me from punting. In fact, I tried to do a fancy play that I had recently been doing some independent study on, and I totally miscalibrated what sorts of hands can play like this. Fortunately, I got lucky and doubled up, which is not really within my control, but if it were, it would be just as valuable as playing your A-game.

Triton Jeju II $50K Turbo Bounty Quattro
(5k/10k/10k) (SB/BB/BBA). 200k Starting Stack. Registration is closed.

I (180k) am UTG7 with A♣️9♦️ and make it 20k, it folds to Daniel Rezaei (545k) in the HJ who makes it 45k, stacks of 133k, 361k, 150k, 176k fold behind, I call.

Flop (115k) K♥️9♣️6♥️: I check, Daniel bets 20k, I call.
Turn (155k) 3♠️: I check, Daniel bets 35k, I call.
River (225k) A♦️: I check, Daniel shoves for my final 80k, I call and beat A♠️J♥️.

This hand is free to read for all, if you like the analysis below please consider becoming a paid subscriber to POTD by clicking the link at the top of the post or the button below.

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What I Was Thinking

Raising first in with A9o is a standard play off 18bbs from EP. Once I get three-bet, I usually have an easy fold. There are two reasons for this: One is that A9o is not a good hand, the other is that Danny’s three-bet range should be very strong. However, since he is deep and there is a 36bb stack behind for him to worry about, I thought that he might not be playing any shoves here, which weakens his three-bet range quite a bit. It gives him more hands like AKo and 88. That means he has very strong hands like AA or KK less often, and his range is relatively weak given the circumstances. Facing a linear three-bet range and a small three-bet size, I thought I was priced in and could call a three-bet.

On the flop, I knew I had flopped such a strong hand that I needed to stack off, given we only had pot to play. The only question was if check-calling was higher EV than check-raising. I thought that I was either way behind hands like AA or AK or way ahead of hands like AJo or A8s and decided to slowplay. On the turn, my logic remained the same: If I am behind I often only have two outs; I’d occasionally have five outs vs. hands like KQ or KJs, but that’s a best case scenario vs. his value bets. I remain in very good shape vs. his bluffing range, so keeping his bluffs on the hook made sense. I rivered a very strong hand and snap called, doubling through a turn bluff that turned into a river value bet.

What I Got Wrong

I am generally right that I get to call small three-bets wider when his range is linear compared to when it’s polar. However, I am not actually sure if his range is linear here. There are three sub-18bbs stacks behind, four if you count me, and the “deep stack” is still only 36bbs. I could totally see Daniel shoving hands like AQ, 99, or KJs here. Deviating because I am against a linear range, when I might not even be up against a linear range, is not ideal.

So I made a pretty wild deviation based on a pretty specious assumption, but let’s say that I was correct. Daniel doesn’t play shoves here; he doesn’t have a split three-bet size where he three-bets to 4.5bbs with big pairs and bluffs, while pulling a big three-bet size from hands like 88 and AKo. He doesn’t split his range so his 4.5bb three-bet includes hands like AQo, KQs, and 88, and I can call. Well, in the sim I ran where Daniel three-bets to 4.5bbs with every hand he continues— he can’t shove and he can’t flat— ATo pure folds and calling A9o loses 1/4 of a BB. And that’s the best case scenario for me! What’s more likely is Daniel is playing some flats, playing some larger three-bet sizes, and my A9o is running into AA more than the “Prove Sam Right” sim I ran. The “Prove Sam Right” sim still declares calling A9o a -0.22bb loser.

If Daniel makes it 4bbs, I still fold A9o; if he makes it 3.75bbs, I mix calls with it; and if he makes it 3.5bbs, I pure call it. Calling a raise when you’d call a raise one BB smaller is never the most expensive play, but there is no way my call here is winning, and my logic while playing the hand was off. My postflop line is okay. I could raise-call the flop or shove over his turn bet, but calling twice is the most common play. However, the problem is, in order to make my preflop call good, I need Daniel to have a lot of hands like QJs/JTs/77. My preflop play is designed to exploit a tendency, that I think he is too linear preflop and sizing too small, well on the flop if he’s too linear and sizing too small, I should raise to make hands worse than mine put more money in the pot or fold equity.

He probably thinks he can size so small preflop because he’s repping KK+ a lot, which means he will c-bet this flop. The more combos of hands like QJ/JTs that c-bet the flop, the more inclined I am to play my hand so aggressively, since those hands have so much equity vs. me. If I want to call preflop, I should probably assume he’s c-betting the flop too much and raise the flop. However, this opens up another inconsistency in my thought process: Calling my entire opening range preflop probably does not work out too well vs. someone who will c-bet too often when we have pot to play on the flop. Basically, I called preflop because I didn’t think he had KK+, AK as much as he should, and then I played postflop as if he had AK+ a lot, the kind of piss-poor logic that creeps into your head on day 13 of a long trip.

Grade

Sometimes, you make a good read on your opponent’s hand and can outplay them by doing something crazy with a weak hand. “I think he’s bluffing the river, so I’ll call him down with king high.” But sometimes you’ll just be dealt eight high on the river, and there’s not much you can do with you read except to wait for a better hand. Similarly, sometimes you make a good read on your opponent’s range, but you need to wait for a better hand. I think I was right that Daniel’s small, polar three-bet size was actually full of too many linear hands and he didn’t have enough very strong hands in his range. The problem is, A9o is still getting a bad price, is still dominated by many of his bluffs, and is simply not the right hand to fight back with. I could call with suited hands like Q8s and try to outflop hands like AK, but A9o is dominated far too often. Calling is lighting money on fire.

This hand is about learning a concept— Daniel should three-bet to a larger size, and when he doesn’t I get to call wider— but blindly applying it without calibrating for his actual size or range. Yes, I was right about his range, because him sizing down and showing down AJo confirms my overall thesis rather well, but being right about his range doesn’t make calling with A9o good. I am still putting in ¼ of my stack dominated and behind, but I’ll be dominated by AJo instead of KK or AKs. That’s not much better. My postflop line is fine; even if I think I should have check-raised on the flop. For every other hand I wrote about this trip, I screenshotted the hand in the Triton App and shared it with you all, for today’s hand I appear to have deleted the screenshot and can’t find it anywhere. This was likely a subconscious attempt by me to “burn the tape”. A stupid hand.

C-

POTD #341 In The $150k NLHE I Play A Limit Hold Em Hand

Sam Greenwood — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:46:12 GMT

I wrote about this earlier this trip, but there are times when you max late reg a tournament where you just kind of hope to get dealt some good preflop hands, win some all-ins and get back in contention. When I max late regged day 2 of the $150k, that very much did not happen. I started the day with 20bbs and proceeded to play a bunch of intricate technical poker hands that began with me having under 12bbs and somehow involved me having several postflop decisions in pots that were not blind vs. blind.

These hands are understudied and surprisingly common. When many people look at preflop or postflop ranges where one player has under 10-15bbs, they often mistakenly use preflop ranges as if all players have under 10-15bbs. When that’s the case, the preflop raiser is usually playing open jams, which means their raise first in range is split into a polar AA/bluff type range, and postflop plays out as if both players are aware that the other player has an overpair a large percent of the time. Several of the hands I ended up playing on this day involved hands with one deep stack and one short stack, and that’s when things get much trickier.

If you have 12bbs and raise the CO, you are never supposed to have KQo or JTs or 55 postflop. If you have 50bbs and raise the CO into a BB that has 12bbs, you are almost always supposed to have KQo or JTs or 55 postflop. So even as you’ll have a range advantage on most boards, you still need to figure out how to play 55 on T92fd or KQ on 852r. You usually have the best hand, but how do you feel about putting 1.5x or 2x or 2.5x pot in the middle? Betting because you have a range advantage does not automatically cut it if it might lead to you regularly bet-folding hands with 25% equity. Checking and letting your opponent see free cards when your hand is often best and you don’t have much money behind is also not great.

Of course, since I was the late registrant, these hands that I played are not ones where I had to worry about playing a linear range vs. a short stack, but ones where I was the short stack and needed to determine how to best play vs. my opponents who might be playing too linearly. I had four of these sorts of tricky hands, and after running the numbers, I was able to find the one where I punted the most. The answer surprised me.

Since I played this hand recently vs. a real opponent, I will not be sharing my hole cards before the paywall. If you’d like see my hole cards, you can pay me $1 at the link in the introduction.

$150K NLH 10th Anniversary Special – Event #15|Triton SHRS Jeju II 2026
(5k/10k/10k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack. Registration is closed.

HH: Triton App

It folds to Joao Simao (946k) in the CO who makes it 22k, Danny Tang (719k), Alex Ponakovs (517k) folds, I call with BB with ??

Flop (59k) T♦️5♣️2♦️: I check, Joao bets 15k, I call
Turn (89k) 9♠️: I check, Joao bets 15k, I fold.

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POTD #340 The Toughest Tournament of the Triton Jeju Puts Me in a Difficult Spot

Sam Greenwood — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 15:49:56 GMT

To honour my return to Triton Jeju, I am running a sale. If you’d like to become a paid subscriber, you can do so for one month at the cheapest rate I’ve ever offered, $1 here. If you’d like to read about how the POTD schedule will be changing when I’m in Korea, you can do so here. If you’d like to become a Premium Subscriber and see what you get for $300/year, to see all the Premium Content I post every day, you can do that as well.

When I have spectated Triton in the POTD era, one tournament I always focus on is the $150k NLHE. The Main Event usually has the biggest prize pool, and The Invitational usually has the biggest buyin, but the $150k usually has the toughest field. Normally when I write about Triton hands on POTD, I am not writing about hands where a Chinese billionaire misses a tricky solver check-raise, I am writing about poker pros battling vs. each other for high stakes, and the $150k is the most likely tournament to provide me with a hand I am interested in writing about.

As a player, the $150k has the smallest field, which means outside of some Short Deck or PLO tournaments, it’s also the tournament where I am most likely to appear on stream. While playing on stream can be tedious, it’s still fun, especially because you usually get to play on a stream table the hard way, by making the final two tables of a tournament. The way this trip has been going, the best way for me to get on the stream table was the fast track of playing a high-buyin small-field tournament, where I could hopefully show off the poker skill that I possess but has not been reflected in my results this trip. So I made it to the secondary feature table, faced a river shove, and had a chance to make a big play. I ended up losing the pot, but figured that at least my consolation prize would be the pain of seeing I was bluffed or– more likely just because of how pot odds work– the validation that I made a great fold. Unfortunately, today’s hand took place on the secondary feature table as it took place while Nick Schulman was three-handed vs. Bernhard Binder and Gytis Lazaunakis in the Main Event. So in addition to folding the river in a big pot, I did not even get to see the good or bad news about my play. This trip continues to find novel ways to frustrate me while I am losing money. Onto the hand.

$150K NLH 10th Anniversary Special – Event #15| Triton SHRS Jeju II 2026
(1k/2.5k/2.5k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack

HH: Triton App

Miroslav Atanasov (230k/102bbs) makes it 5.5k UTG/7, I (142k/57bbs) call next to act in the LJ with ??, Punnat Punsri (174k/70bbs) make it 24k in the BB, Miroslav folds, I call.

Flop (57k) 9♦️4♠️2♣️: Punnat bets 19k, I call.
Turn (95k) 3♥️: Punnat bets 32k, I call.
River 7c (159k) 7♣️: Punnat shoves for my final 68k, I fold.

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POTD #339 “Spicy Turn Action” vs a Poker HOFer

Sam Greenwood — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 10:02:10 GMT

I am back from Jeju, but still have a backlog of posts to catch up on. My plan is to get all the posts finished ASAP and once I catchup to the backlog I will resume the normal MWF, Saturday Week in Review, Sunday Special schedule.

The plan when I went to Jeju was that I would get a post up every day after play ended and roughly be on a post per day schedule. As you can see, I did not hold up my end of the bargain. I have a hunch that I could do one post a day in Europe, because in Europe I finish playing and have the “can’t fall asleep until 4AM” jetlag, instead of the “Fall asleep as soon as I enter my hotel room and wake up at 6AM” jet lag. So if I could not fall asleep, I feel I could crank out a post every night. I also did not pack to set myself up for success. I forgot to bring a small travel monitor (I need a small travel monitor myself. Any suggestions? - ed), which would speed up my writing process. I should have tried to write more often while seated at the desk in my hotel room instead of being propped up by some pillows in bed. Finally, I was beaten down by my poor performance in the actual tournaments, which meant when I busted a tournament, I was more interested in going straight to bed than writing about my failures. Sometimes I did not even set up sims to run overnight, which would allow me to write in the morning, and some nights I went to bed without even anointing a Punt of the Day. If I go to Triton Cyprus or WSOP Bahamas, I will see if my one post a day plan was foiled by time zones or a pipe dream from the jump.

The other thing that happened was, one of the first days in Jeju I got some water stuck in my ear in the shower. I figured a few days would pass and the problem would go away, but it did not. By the time I busted my second bullet of the $200k, I was as steamed as the steam in the shower when water got in my ear. I could not control the fate of my poker tournaments, so I decided to take control of another problem in my life. I got some cotton swabs from the pharmacy at Shinwha World and tried to open up my ears. If any ENTs are reading this, they know what happened next. I made the problem worse and throughout day 1 of the Main Event could barely hear and had a large earache. Which meant before day 2 of the Main Event, when I could have been writing POTD posts, I had to go to a local ENT. My one (and hopefully only) trip into the Korean medical system was excellent. I did not have an appointment, but I was seen immediately, and they fixed my ear problems for the low, low, price of around 50,000 KRW which is around $40 USD. Perhaps the water in my ear was a metaphor, and by unblocking it I could hear the whole world: My poker reads would be sharper, luck would flow through my newly opened body, and I could finally cash a tournament. I entered the day with around 10bbs, but I was feeling better and hoping that my trip to the real doctor would prevent me from needing any future visits to the poker doctor.

$100K NLH Main Event – Event #12 (Day 2) | Triton SHRS Jeju II 2026
(6k/12k/12k) (SB/BB/BBA) 250k Starting Stack. Registration is Closed.

HH: Triton App
PokerNews video

It folds to me (167k/14bbs) in the HJ with 5♥️5♦️and I make it 24k, it folds to Patrik Antonius (821k/68bbs) who calls in the SB, and Wiktor Malinowski (357k/30bbs) calls in the BB.

Flop (84k) 9♥️4♣️4♦️: Patrik checks, Wiktor checks, I check.
Turn (84k) 8♣️: Patrik checks, Wiktor checks, I bet 26k, Patrik makes it 85k, Wiktor folds, I shove for 143k, Patrik calls with Q♦️9♦️, and I am eliminated on the 2♣️ river.

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