Day 2 in Jeju did not go as planned. Well, it did in that I had an outcome that I should regularly expect to see: fired two bullets and did not cash. However, I was very, very, very tired. I was falling asleep at the table and definitely did not play my best, but I pride myself on having good fundamentals, such that my C or D game is still rather good. I busted my first bullet, took a nap and felt like a whole new man. I registered the tournament and played well on my second bullet, although I never really got above 20bbs, so all the hands were pretty easy. Once again, I did not have an easy hand to pick as my Punt of the Day, but I had several potential options. Many of them were deep-stacked hands that I was not even sure I had misplayed, so instead of writing a POTD when I went to my hotel room at 1AM, I cooked up a couple multiway sims and woke up with a clearer idea of which hand I should write about.

After reviewing all the hands, I once again didn’t make any huge blunders, but when you have poor results and are very tired, it doesn’t feel great. Naturally, you wish you did better, but there is also a Dunning-Kruger effect: The more tired you are, the less competent you are at judging your own play. So maybe tired Sam thinks that tired Sam played okay, but rested Sam will review tired Sam’s play and tell a whole other story. It’s important to study and practice such that your fundamentals are strong even when you are not at peak mental capacity. Ideally you’d never play tired, but playing while tired is a skill every poker player needs to develop. When you are tired, you have less ability to emotionally regulate, which means the ups and downs of making small errors or having bad results will likely cause you more distress, which makes playing well even harder. Review your play in a sober, rested headspace will provide clarity into your actual performance. Sometimes you made errors, and sometimes you are just being results-oriented and grumpy because you lost a hand you could have won if you did something different. In today’s hand, I bluff caught with what I felt was a pure call that I didn’t really consider folding. Could a fresh Sam have come to a better conclusion?

Since I played this hand yesterday 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.

HH: Triton App

$20K NLH 8-Handed – Event #2 Triton SHRS Jeju II 2026
(1k/2k/2k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack. Registration is Open.

It folds to Gytis Lazaunakis (190k/95bbs) who makes it 4.5k in the HJ, it folds to me (270k/135bbs) in the SB who calls with ??, Joe Hindry (160k/80bbs) calls in the BB.

Flop (15.5k) 7♥️6♦️2♥️: I check, Joe checks, Gytis checks
Turn (15.5k) 6♣️: I check, Joe checks, Gytis bets 5k, I call, Joe folds
River (25.5k) A♦️: I check, Gytis bets 35k, I call and lose to A♣️Q♠️

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Whether I was excited to be back in Jeju playing some Triton tournaments or just jet-lagged, I fell asleep around 1:30 local time and woke up around 5:30. Normally when I wake up well before I want to, I immediately take melatonin and try to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, it’s been so long since I travelled that my normal packing routine was rusty and I forgot to pack melatonin, as well as my flip-flops and a small satchel / crossbody bag / man-purse that I bring to the tournament area. (I hope tomorrow’s report doesn’t include more things I forgot to pack.) Either way, I got less sleep than I wanted. At least I woke up to see the Blue Jays had won.

I managed to briefly nap between 11:00 and 11:40 and was more or less prepared for the first event, a $15K NLH that started at 13:00 local time. I made sure to show up to the tournament room to say my hellos to all the staff, I had not seen in over a year and to make sure registration went cleanly. My day went the way many tournament days do: It started promising, I ran hot, made a lot of good hands and won some preflop all-ins, and I had turned my 200k starting stack into 750k at my peak. Then I made some second-best hands, lost some preflop all-ins, and ended up getting knocked out of the tournament before we reached the money. At least I’ll be able to get some sleep tonight (fingers crossed). (Update: I slept from around 1:00-5:00, hopefully I can nap before the tournament at 15:00)

Another positive is that I only fired one bullet, and in reviewing my play today, I felt I played rather well. No major mistakes, and most of the plays I questioned as I was playing turned out to be approved by the solver when I looked them up later. However, I did not travel all the way to Korea to not write about a poker hand because I played so well, so I have a hand to share with you (and #onemorehand to share with premium subscribers). Enjoy.

$15K NLH 8-Handed – Event #1 Triton SHRS Jeju II 2026
(5k/10k/10k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack. Registration Just Closed.

HH: Triton App

It folds to me (312k) in the CO with 7♠️7♦️, I make it 20k, Huang Yuxi (115k) folds the button, Jamil Wakil (186k) folds SB, Dan Dvoress (206k) calls in the BB.

Flop (55k) T♠️6♣️3♦️: Dan checks, I check
Turn (55k) A♠️: Dan checks, I check
River (55k) 2♠️: Dan checks, I check and beat his Q♠️4♦️

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There are all sorts of reasons one might feel nerves at the table: They’re running a big bluff, they flopped the nuts and they’re thinking of “Vegas and the fucking Mirage,” or they’re about to flip a coin for the largest pot they’ve ever played. I’ve felt nerves in those situations before, but as I’ve played more and more live poker, my nerves have calmed. There is one specific type of nervousness I feel still remains, and those are the nerves I feel when I fear my hand looks faceup. Sometimes this occurs literally— I peel my cards too high and I’m concerned my opponent saw my eight of hearts and am nervous until the hand is over. Other times, I am thinking “of course they know I have it here” or “of course they know I’m full of shit here,” but I think this is the right play anyways. At least this nervousness is somewhat balanced.

A reliable source of nerves for me is when I feel it looks like I can never be bluffing. I am value betting, my opponent is in the tank, and my opponent vocalizes my internal monologue for me. How can you ever be bluffing here? Sometimes after the hand, my tablemates confirm my suspicion: Of course you’re never bluffing there. So I thought back to a hand I played deep in Day 6 of the World Series of Poker Main Event, where I had a full house and it felt like I could never be bluffing, but I did not care because I had a full house and value bet it anyways. After the hand, there was table talk about what I could have been bluffing with, and I sheepishly said maybe I could have turned top pair into a bluff, but I was not sure if I believed it. So today, we’re going to look back at this hand and see what could I have been bluffing with, but also determine if my lack of bluffs was due to errors in my flop and turn play that created a situation where I’m never bluffing on the river.

2019 World Series of Poker Main Event Day 6.
(100k/200k/200k) (SB/BB/BBA)

YouTube Video of the Hand

It folds to Mihai Manole (10.23M/50bb) who makes it 500k in the LJ, it folds to Corey Burbick (5.49M/27.5bbs) who calls in the CO, it folds to me (7.175M/36bbs) in the BB who calls with J♣️9♥️.

Flop (1.8M) Q♥️9♦️9♣️: I check, Manole checks, Corey bets 600k, I call, Manole makes it 1.8M, Corey folds, I call.

Turn (6M) K♦️: I check, Manole checks.

River (6M) J♠️: I bet 4.98M, he calls and mucks with Q♣️T♣️.

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What I Was Thinking

I thought preflop was a pure defend and I did so. It’s interesting that nowadays I’d mostly call the flop here, because I know that the BB rarely raises with the preflop raiser still to act in a multiway pot. However, I did not know that in 2019, so I am not sure why I chose to just call the flop. My best guess is that this deep in the Main Event I wanted as much information as possible about my opponent’s ranges before playing a monster pot, and I thought that I was underrepresenting my hand by just calling and might be more likely to induce some bluffs.

Once Mihai checks, Corey bets, I call, Mihai raises and Corey folds, I was between clicking it back and calling. I figured that I’d rather fastplay 9x that didn’t interact with any straight draws, and specifically wanted to slowplay a hand like J9 in case he was check-raise bluffing the flop with KT or T8. The turn looks okay for my range; I should have a decent amount of JT and 9x, but I figured I’d have enough Qx that I’d mostly check range on the turn. I’ve also witnessed enough crazy Main Event blowups that I wanted to check in case he was running some sort of crazy “Dirty Diaper” bluff. The turn checked through and I rivered a full house. I was not sure what my bluffs would or should be, but I was not sure if he’d bet all-in with a straight when checked to, so I did not want to leave things to chance and decided to just value shove with my full house and hope to get called. And I did.

What I Got Wrong

There are times when I select a hand for POTD where when I begin to write about the hand I truly don’t know if I punted or not. So I was curious to dive back into this hand, and the first thing I saw was a clearly losing preflop call. A 2.5x is a big preflop open; Corey is probably not flatting ATo or 65s in the CO with 27bbs. I am getting a bad price; I am out of position vs. two players, both of whom have strong ranges; and I have a hand that is likely to be dominated and does not have low-card value that a hand like 54o or 75s might have in a multiway pot. It’s a bad preflop call for chips, but a worse one deep in the Main Event, and even worse when the metagame in most Main Events tends to involve too much flop betting from my opponents.

Preflop is bad, but let’s dive into the postflop plays I was unsure of. I played the flop as a pure call, but the 2.5x preflop and the tight preflop ranges for me and my opponents mean I have a trips advantage, and I raise most of my continues on the flop. Had the board been QQ9, I’d call much more often with my range, maybe even pure, but on Q99 I do a lot of raising. If I raise this board and Manole chooses to continue after my check-raise, I’d be in a tough spot, but that happens sometimes and I need to be prepared to play poker. My exact hand is about 50/50 to raise vs. Corey’s bet. Once I call and Manole raises, I mix calling and raising, but T9 pure three-bets. I don’t think the specific kicker effects matter too much, but I probably should have given more credence to three betting the flop. Raising the flop at either decision point is a fine play, and I should have been doing it more often than the 0% I was doing it, but my line is fine.

Which brings us to the turn and the river. On the turn I regularly lead with my hand and range. I have trips or better more than 60% of the time, and even if I made some generous assumptions, I doubt that’s true of Manole’s range. If I force myself to check the turn, Manole pure checks back the turn with his entire range. The more he checks back the turn, the more incentivized I am to shove my hand on the river, because the more likely it is that he has trips or a straight.

So what do I bluff in this spot where I “can’t be bluffing”? Almost all my bluffs come from Qx, usually Qx with a backdoor flush draw that makes a loose flop peel, but also exactly QJ with the Jh that blocks J9s. Ranges are narrow enough here that any hand that blocks even one full house combo makes that hand a very valuable bluffing combo. When I shove the river, I am supposed to get straights to fold; when I check the river, I am supposed to induce bluffs from hands like AQ. So regardless of what the solver prefers here, I think the river is a pretty easy street to play. It’s more likely Manole calls with a straight than bluffs with a queen, so I should shove myself.

Types of Error

Loose preflop play
Range error: Did not play the flop or turn aggressively enough with my hand or range.

Final Thoughts and Grade

A loose BB defense can rarely be too bad, especially when I am only one pip off, but it probably loses around 1/10th of a BB, and I am in a spot in a tournament where I am really not interested in playing large multiway pots. My flop play is fine; I could have raised either time, but calling twice is acceptable, and if it’s vs. an unknown in the Main Event I tend to err on the side of letting them do something stupid vs. a range they might think is capped or face-up, rather than getting in a click-back war vs. them. The same logic applies to my turn play: I don’t know what Manole’s check-raise range is supposed to look like here, but I am more than happy to let him keep putting money in the pot. I could see an argument for raising the flop or for leading the turn, but I feel most confident in my river play. I think he might occasionally have QQ or KK, but the best way to get all the money in the pot with my hand, which is likely best, is to bet with it myself. Letting him check back or bet-fold with a straight is a disaster, and while it’s a very hard spot for me to bluff, it’s also a hard spot for him to bluff. I also was correct in identifying the type of hand I might bluff, a hand like Qc2c. So after all this multiway trickery, the only clear mistake I can say I made in this hand was my preflop defend, which is clearly a losing play.

B-

POTD #295 #onemorething

I’ll expand a little bit on why I think preflop is such a clear fold. I think there are three reasons to expand your preflop range vs specific opponents.

1. They are so bad that if you make a very strong hand you’ll get paid too often. This allows you call a button raise with K2s

2. They are so loose preflop that you have more equity than you’re supposed to. If someone is opening 98o UTG, you should not fold A2o in the BB, just because the solver does.

3. They won’t put enough pressure on your postflop. If someone will never three barrel 22 on AKT and never c-bet larger than half pot postflop. Defending K2o becomes much more appealing. You’ll showdown weak top or second pair a lot more often.

In this hand the first condition is certainly not met. I don’t know Mihai that well, but he seemed competent. Corey is a long time MTT pro and even if was not up to date with the latest solver strategies, he is not such a weak spot that I could expand here. The second condition is also not met, Mihai is not opening all that wide and Corey has a very tight and specific flatting range. I should not have more pot equity here than versus the solver. Number three I am less confident about, but my general rule of thumb is multiway pots do not get checked around often enough in big field main event tournaments, which means when I call preflop here, I’ll face a c-bet too often. This is bad. Especially when I might be facing c-bets from hands like QQ on K92 more than I should be. I think too many players decide to alwas expand their preflop ranges in softer tournaments, but just as you exploit a nitty fish by bluffing more often and a calling station by bluffing less, sometimes the correct preflop exploit is just to fold, even if you’re better than you’re opponents.

My philosophy in poker is that good early street fundamentals provide the foundation for improvising on later streets. It’s much easier to exploit someone who underbluffs on the river in heads-up pots (fold!) than to exploit a tight CO when you’re opening UTG. Even if you do add a couple extra preflop opens to exploit a tight CO, the additional opens aren’t making very much, but folding to an underbluffer is printing money. Even in a heads-up pot, there are fewer ways to exploit a weaker player on early streets than on later streets, which is why it’s important to resort to solver baselines.

A strong solver foundation helps you master early streets, but you still need to do your part and make the right decisions once the pot gets bigger on the turn and river. It’s easy to find some odd preflop three-bet or solver check-raise; it’s much harder to play tricky turns and rivers once the pot gets bigger. This week, we will be looking at three hands where I find a pretty normal flop check-raise and then end up lost on the turn.1 Sometimes it will be because an odd turn rolls off, sometimes I’ll have misgauged my hand strength, and sometimes I won’t even know that I am facing a tough decision or made an error. I pride myself on having strong fundamentals that set me up for success and make future streets easy to play, but in this week’s hand, all the off-table work did not prepare me enough to execute when I check-raised the flop and whiffed on the turn.

Triton Monte-Carlo 2023 - Event #1 $200K NLH Triton Invitational
(1k/1.5k/1.5k) (SB/BB/BBA) 300k Starting Stack

It folds to Dan Smith (332.5k/222BBs) in the HJ who makes it 3.5k, it folds to me (307k/205bbs) in the BB who calls 7♣️4♣️.

Flop (9.5k) K♥️6♣️5♦️: I check, Dan bets 2.5k, I makes it 12.5k, Dan calls.
Turn (34.5k) 6♠️: I check, Dan bets 14k, I fold.

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What I Was Thinking

Unless you’re under extreme ICM pressure or facing a very large raise, you defend the BB with 74s, but it’s too weak to three bet. On the flop, I knew this was the type of hand that often check-raised the flop: an open-ender with a backdoor flush draw, but also an open-ender that I only have suited combos of preflop and my opponent never has. I picked a larger raise size because I knew my flop value raising range here was mostly top two and sets, so playing a big polar raise size seemed appropriate. Dan called, and I was unsure if the 6 turn was good for me. On the one hand, it gives me a full house a bunch, and I also occasionally turn trips, which Dan shouldn’t do all that often. On the other hand, it decreases the number of combos of K6/66/65 that I can have.

I decided I’d play a mixed strategy with all my open-enders and decided to check. Dan bet a size larger than I anticipated and I did not think I could chase an open ender with seven high on a paired board facing a 40% pot bet. So I just folded.

What I Got Wrong

My hand is basically a pure flop check-raise. I am not sure if I picked the right size; running 200bb deep sims with multiple flop check-raise sizes is pretty onerous. However, given that in the sim I ran, hands like TT and AJ with a backdoor still call my check-raise in Dan’s shoes, I would not be shocked to see that the ideal check-raise size is even larger.

My turn strategy is 1.5x pot or check. My bluffs are almost exclusively straight draws, and there is no real preference toward any particular straight draws, beyond the fact that I bet all of them a lot of the time. A 1.5x pot turn bet is enough to get Dan to fold a whole host of top-pair hands. Checking the turn is fine and might even be the best play if I don’t think Dan is folding enough top pair on the turn. It’s also possible that betting the turn and shoving the river is the highest EV play, if Dan is never folding top pair on the turn but frequently folding it on the river.

What is not the best play is folding to a turn bet. I got a little confused by Dan’s size, which was bigger than I expected, but I am basically getting direct pot odds to call and try and improve to a winner. That’s before accounting for the implied odds that I can win an even larger pot when I river a straight. The solver almost always raises 74 on the turn, but that’s in part because I bet the turn with 74 so often that I rarely have the opportunity to check-raise the turn with it. Either way, raise or call, 74 is too strong a hand to check-fold. Folding loses around 3.5k chips; by comparison, folding 43 loses around 1.5k chips, and folding 87 loses around 2.5k chips. An open ender is just too strong a hand to fold to this action, even vs a bet size that I felt was a little too large.

Types of Error

Tricked by an odd bet size
Folding too strong a hand

Grade

Check-calling seven high out of position never feels great. and double check-raising often feels overly fancy, but in this hand both of those plays were better than just check-folding. I underestimated my pot equity, the value in being able to make a sneaky straight, and the fact that my turn bluff works more often with a 4 in my hand, and I say all that knowing the highest-EV play may have just been to bet 55k on the turn and shove 240k on the river and dare Dan call me down with top pair. My preflop and flop play were solid, but I made one questionable turn play and one bad turn play.

C

POTD #282 #onemorething

I wrote that

My hand is basically a pure flop check-raise. I am not sure if I picked the right size; running 200bb deep sims with multiple flop check-raise sizes is pretty onerous.

But not for Premium Subscribers. I ran a sim that had r70, r120 and r170. R170 is never used, but r120 is used quite a bit, it’s about a 50/50 split and the composition of the r70 and r120 range aren’t all that different. So maybe an r95 size where I raise to ~16k would be ideal. When I use r120 it’s enough to get top pair to start folding right away, especially top pair without backdoor flush or straight draws. KQo mixes, but even Ks7s with no backdoor flush draw pure calls. Facing a larger checkraise the IP player get’s rid of all the A high backdoor floats, but still floats a little bit of QJ,QT,JT with backdoors. As for pocket pairs, the shape is pretty similar to the other classes of hands we’ve discussed. 99-77 can turn straight straight draws so they pure call, but QQ-TT mix folds. Practically I like busting out the bigger checkraise size here, it’s a good way to get money in the pot with great hands and your opponents will likely respond too linearly, they won’t call pocket pairs enough and call too much top pair, which will make them easier to play against later in the hand.

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The difference between encountering an idiotic play live vs online is quite stark. Live, you might get an eyeroll out of me or some grumbling. If you come talk to me ten minutes later I might not be paying attention because I am in a fugue state still thinking about that moronic play from last orbit. Online, I’ll be more demonstrative, no one can hear me yell in my home. However I don’t have time to dwell about the idiocy of my opponents. By the time I finish bellyaching I’ll have a fresh hand vs a fresh idiot waiting to take my money. It’s imperative to lockdown and focus, you can tag your opponent as a fish and save the hand history for further study. You might even have enough time to send the HH to a friend to say “get a load of this moron”, but you need to keep playing.

Today is a hand I remember well, I went to my cottage in Quebec to play WCOOP events on Pokerstars. It was a beautiful fall day outside and I was surrounded by nature, so I did what one is supposed to do on a day like that and chained myself to a desk so I could play online poker tournaments. One would think that being surrounded by serene natural beauty would prevent me from thinking ill thoughts about my fellow man, but you lose one pot and your primal instincts come out. It was a small stakes hand in a small stakes tournament, but one that I vividly remember two and a half years later.

This is the first Friday without a Final Table Friday post. The reason for this is because this Idiot Week hand was supposed to be POTD #255, but then I wanted to run POTD #257 the Octopi hand vs George this week and I had one too many idiot week hands and had to do some shuffling and decided POTD #255 worked just as well in Wrecked Week. I tell you this to remind you that starting next week I will be writing three punts per week and I do not intend to have 1/3rd of my hands be Final Table hands from now on, so get used to seeing some mild format changes as Punt of the Day enters its second year.

Poker Stars Replayer

PokerStars Hand #246233000558: Tournament #3650077788, $1000+$50 USD Hold’em No Limit - Level VI (250/500/50) - 2023/09/28 14:51:14 ET
Table ‘3650077788 2’ 8-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: Sam Greenwood (10200 in chips)
Seat 2: kevenppn (39965 in chips)
Seat 3: berny9623 (22690 in chips)
Seat 4: Lrslzk (18832 in chips)
Seat 5: TEENageTuRtL (27446 in chips)

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Sam Greenwood [Ts Qc]
kevenppn: folds
berny9623: folds
Lrslzk: raises 500 to 1000
TEENageTuRtL: folds
Sam Greenwood: calls 500

*** FLOP *** [Kh 7h Kd]
Sam Greenwood: checks
Lrslzk: bets 500
Sam Greenwood: raises 875 to 1375
Lrslzk: calls 875

*** TURN *** [Kh 7h Kd] [8s]
Sam Greenwood: checks
Lrslzk: checks

*** RIVER *** [Kh 7h Kd 8s] [8d]
Sam Greenwood: checks
Lrslzk: bets 2750
Sam Greenwood: calls 2750

*** SHOW DOWN ***
Lrslzk: shows [Ad 3d] (two pair, Kings and Eights)
Sam Greenwood: mucks hand
Lrslzk collected 10750 from pot

What I Was Thinking

My hand is not quite the right hand to three-bet shove preflop and is much too strong to three bet bluff BU vs BB 20 BBs deep. On the flop I figured that I would mostly raise with my continues here and rarely call. I thought that any hand that had two overcards to a 7 and some backdoors would mix flop raises. I’d have rather had a heart in my hand or a hand like JT that can make straight with the K and the 7, but I also figured that vs a button raise QT and QJ high would have enough high card value that they’d mostly continue. So I raised. I got called, I turned nothing and as I usually do when I check-raise total air and don’t improve on the turn. I gave up. On the river I figured my hand was far too strong to bluff and I could start by bluffing hands like 7x with a low kicker, 65, low flush draws or even hands like Qd2d before I started bluffing QT, so I checked.

I checked, faced a half pot bet and figured that I beat all his bluffs, mostly counterfeited two pair, and blocked some potential value bets like Q8,T8,QQ,TT so I called. When I saw Lars turn over A3 I stared at my CPU in a state of confusion. Was he value betting or bluffing? Once I calmed down, I came to the conclusion that he was value betting, but it was clearly a stupid value bet and I should start checking strong to him on the river in the future. So I can punish his obviously stupid and bad value bets.

What I Got Wrong

If we are all 20bbs deep, Lars shoves the button from time to time with hands like A8o, A2s, 22, KQo and QTs and open folds hands like K6o and T8o. Which means I shove less often from the BB, when he can’t play open shoves and minraises tighter. When he doesn’t play shoves and minraises first in with a linear range QTo actually becomes a very high frequency bluff shove all-in from me that is specifically trying to target QJo. The flop resembles POTD #253 in that I play raise or fold with all my continues and QT is a pure raise on the flop with or without a heart. JT is my worst pure continue, while every hand with two cards larger than a 7 and a heart mix raises as well.

My default logic on the turn of if I check-raise total air and don’t improve to a draw I check-fold does not apply here. QT prefers betting the turn with a heart, but every combo bets a good amount and the preferred size is quarter pot. Quarter pot is enough to get some ace high to fold and if the river is a a queen or ten I can comfortably value bet. and hope to get called by a 7, 8, pocket pair, some ace high or a rivered pair that QT likely has pipped. That being said, checking is totally fine. When the river double pairs I mostly stick to bluffing hands that play the board including missed flush draws and counterfeited 7x, but the occasional ten high and nine high combo sneak in there and bluff. When the river goes check-check queen high has over 50% pot share at showdown. It’s far too strong to bluff. Once I check and face a bet every combo with two cards over a 7 mix calling, even T9 high. and 97 high. His most common bluffs are 22-66 so if I don’t have a 6-2 in my hand, I can comfortably call any bet.

Which brings me to his bet. I thought it was a terrible bet, I wasn’t sure if he was value betting or bluffing. Every single ace high hand with a kicker less than 6 pure bets the river for value. A hand like his has 83% equity when I check the river , the only mistake he made on the river was not betting bigger. The solver splits between betting 70% pot and 90% pot on the river. His measly half pot bet left 2-4bbs on the table. It was the type of hand that made me so mad that I immediately copied and pasted the hand history and I could not wait until the end of my session when I could look up the hand and see how poorly this Finnish idiot played this hand. After looking it up, I realized he had played the hand great and I had nothing to be mad about outside of having lost a pot and threw a mini tantrum while losing half my stack in a $1k.

Types of Error
Didn’t consider betting the turn
Didn’t give my opponent credit for finding a great play

Grade

This hand resembles a few of the previous idiot week hands, I missed several tricky plays, but mostly played the hand fine.I could have shoved preflop as an inequal stack bluff and barreled on the turn with queen high nothing on KK87, but my flop checkraise and river call are good. Normally when you call down with queen high it’s in a nuts or air situation. You’re way behind all the value bets, but you beat his six high bluffs. It didn’t seem possible to me that I could call down queen high in a spot where he’s value betting ace high, but I shove so much Ax preflop that I rarely have it to this action and I need to call with some hands that aren’t full houses. I thought that I could never call with queen high if he value bets ace high and he was an idiot for betting so thin, but I should have looked at it from his perspective. He can only value bet ace high, because I can call him with queen, jack, ten and nine high. I think if I were playing A-level poker, I’d have given more thought to jamming preflop or betting the turn, but the rest of this hand is well played, but if I call someone an idiot, even if I am just muttering to myself while playing online, and they found an A-level play themselves, I deserve a demerit

C+

POTD #260 #onemorething

If you look at this in equal stack sims whether it’s GTO Wizard, Lab, or Octopi— QT no heart mostly folds the flop. There are a variety of different reasons for this: in my inequal PIO sim QT has 36% equity on the flop. In GTO Lab inequal it has 34% equity. So even facing the same pure range 20% pot c-bet strategy the extra 2% is enough to push QT into being a check-fold over raising to 3bbs. In GTO Wizard the button plays limps and the limping range is weak enough that QT bounces back up to having 36% equity, however the c-bet size used in GTO Wizard is 33% pot, which is large enough that IP mixes checks and c-bets a slightly polar range. QT still has 36% vs a betting range, it doesn’t want to raise to 4.8bbs on the flop into a more polar c-betting range. The Octopi sim combines both qualities that makes QT an unfavourable continue. A linear preflop range with no limps, which gives QT 34% equity and a larger c-bet/check-raise size to 4.7bbs, so QT no heart folds in Octopi as well.

If you are studying your own play it can be a little tedious to create bespoke sims for each individual hand. If something is a play in some sims and not in others, it’s probably close enough in EV that either play is fine. However, if you have time or if a specific hand is really gnawing at you, I’d recommend doing a personal deep dive beyond what is listed in the big public libraries. My sim today gives a different output than GTO Wizard, Lab, and Octopi. Most importantly it justifies that my flop play is actually a good play :).

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In case you missed the most recent episode of High Stakes Poker Andrew Robl folded the second nuts to Justin Gavri. The board was not KQJT2, this was not PLO, it was a two card queen high flush vs a two card king high flush on an unpaired board with the ace of trump on the flop and no straight flushes possible. If you have yet to see this hand, The video with the time stamp is embedded below and I will transcribe the hand history later in this post.

Moments after the fold, a very impressed Nick Schulman said “that’s the best fold I’ve ever seen in my life. That’s the best fold of all time. I don’t give a fuck what anybody has to say, that’s the greatest fold of all time in a cash game. That’s unprecedented.” Others were less impressed, Fedor Holz called the fold “kind of trivial” and Len Ashby wrote that “I’ve made probably a hundred bigger folds in my life”. I of course, rushed to my computer to broadcast that Robl’s river size was suboptimal, we all play our parts. So what was this fold: The greatest fold of all time or a trivial fold that anyone could find so long as their mind was sufficiently primed? Let’s dig through some solver and exploitative analysis and see if we can make sense of it.

(500//1k/1k) (SB/BB/BBA). 6 Handed.

Brown folds LJ, Eric Wasserson (430k) straddles to 2k in the HJ, Gavri (325k) makes it 5k in the CO with Kh9h, Madden (176k) folds on the button, Senor Tilt (166k) calls in the SB with QcJs, Robl calls in the BB with Qh7h, Wasserson folds.

Flop (18k) AhTc2h: Tilt checks, Robl checks, Gavri bets 8k, Tilt calls, Robl raises to 35k, Gavri calls, Tilt folds.

Turn (98k) 9s: Robl checks, Gavri checks

River (98k) 6h: Robl bets 125k, Gavri shoves for 290k total, Robl folds.

What I Think (No Cheating)

The optimal strategy in these games do not involve perfectly executing solver strategies, however when I look at any poker hand I do like thinking about how the hand would play if it were played by three experts. My guess is that, Tilt and Robl’s preflop calls are too loose, Gavri’s c-bet size is fine, but probably should be a little bigger or a little smaller. Tilt should fold to the c-bet and Robl’s check-raise is fine. Once we get to the turn either player can take an aggressive action, betting a flush draw after check-raising the flop is always a fine play from Robl. Gavri’s turn decision is closer, but he should be able to get Robl to fold some Ax or Tx, while potentially getting Robl to stick it in with a worse draw like Qh8h.

Once we get to the river, I think Robl has a polarized range he rarely checks the turn with two pair or better and he rarely checkraises the flop with one pair. His river range should have a lot of flushes, but also a lot of missed straight draws. When your range has a lot of air and flushes betting with flushes and bluffs makes sense. However I don’t care for Robl’s size because he has a good enough hand that he wants to play for stacks, but he picks a size that makes it very hard to do that. His size is so big that he makes it less likely Gavri raises worse for value or bluff raises himself. Robl should pick a size that’s small enough that Gavri will always raise the river with 5h4h or just try to beat Gavri to the punch and go all-in himself. I don’t think the solver would ever overbet shove the river here in Robl’s spot because Gavri should have a flush a lot, but Gavri doesn’t know that. If I think Gavri would never fold a flush or bluff raise over a block, I’d shove myself. If I think he might fold a flush vs a jam, I’d block to try and induce a raise. I am not tempted to check-shove because I think Gavri’s average bet size facing a check will be too small and I want to let him call with top pair.

Once Robl bets his size and get’s quickly shoved on, it’s to put it mildly a pretty sick spot. The first question you need to ask is, does Gavri ever value shove worse? If he does, it makes folding rather difficult. Gavri has at most seven combos of the nuts and if he has three combos of worse flushes, you need to call. The second question is, does Gavri ever bluff? It might seem impossible, but AK,KQ,KJ with the nut blocker all seem like totally reasonable bluffing combos. It’s a daring fold, one that I would not have made myself, but I can understand the logic behind it, especially if you had a live or timing read on Gavri.

What The Solver Thinks

Preflop is too loose from Tilt and Robl. Gavri’s c-bet is fine, but he’s supposed to only c-bet 30% of the time with range, and he’s almost certinly c-betting more often than that. Tilt’s flop call is too loose, Robl’s check-raise is fine. Ranges are already supposed to be tight enough that Robl is supposed to start folding hands like 6h5h and As9s to a bet and a call on the flop. When Robl check-raises the flop Gavri is supposed to fold 60% of his top pair combos including certain AK combos such as AcKs. Gavri almost always continues with KQ and KJ with the Kh.

Robl pure bets his hand on the turn for 75% pot and it’s enough to get bare nut flush draws to start folding, JhTh and AK to start folding. Robl begins the turn with a set or two pair just over 40% of the time and once he bets he has one almost 60% of the time. Gavri can make some very big folds here if Robl bets, but he did not. Robl checked and Gavri made a good turn check behind. Gavri doesn’t get Robl to fold a better hand enough to make betting the turn appealing, which brings us to the river. The solver either picks a small block size (30% pot in my sim) or goes all-in for 3x pot. The all-in range is exclusively nut flushes and nut blocker hands like KhQ,KhJ,KhT. A 3x pot shove makes some non nut flushes indifferent to calling. Some flushes like 5h4h pure call, but some queen and jack high flushes as well as AK,A9,A8 with a heart mix calling the river and are neutral EV. Shoving a queen high flush is greedy from Robl and might lose EV if Gavri misses hero calls with one pair or hero folds too often with a flush. The block size is very appealing to me because Gavri is supposed to fold top pair vs a block quite a bit and Gavri is supposed to just call a block with hands as strong as QhTh and Jh4h. If you think Gavri will always raise a flush and might bluff raise KhQ, KhJ or AcKh over a block, I find it hard to believe that blocking isn’t the best exploitative play, in addition to being the solver play. If you think Gavri might save you some money by raising smaller than all-in with a king high flush or if you trust yourself to know when you can go for extra value and three bet shoving over his river raise, even more reason to block. I think too much analysis of this hand has revolved around a simple framework of “you have the second nuts vs an unsophisticated player you should bet big”, but the solver shows us that betting a large size is almost certainly not the best way to get max value versus an unsophisticated player who might always raise a small bet with a flush.

If you don’t give Robl a river bet size larger than 125k, Gavri responds by jamming the nuts and some bluffs with KhQx, KhJx and AxKh. However there is a fundamental problem with the river solution, Robl only picks this size with the Kh in his hand and Gavri only shoves with the Kh in his hand. So this river betting sequence should happen… never. When I did some messing around to make Robl bet this size with hands in between nuts and bluffs and Gavri shoves, he has the nuts 78% of the time. Robl is still supposed to call and calling is making himself 13k, blocking two of Gavri’s flush combos and none of his bluffs is still too valuable.

What Sam Thinks

I gave the technical breakdown above, that is (I hope) interesting to read about it, but in this section we get down to brass tacks. The question we’re asking here is not: does the solver call a river shove with second nuts, it’s should Andrew Robl call vs Justin Gavri? Normally, when I analyze a hand I do it chronologically because the decisions made on early streets create the ranges that shape river strategies, but the only question here is does Justin ever bluff and will he ever value shove worse? Robl has played with Gavri a lot, if he rarely played with him I doubt he’d have the confidence to make such a big fold. When playing an unknown you need to account for uncertainty in your ability to range your opponent. In this case I’ll defer to Robl’s expertise and even though there is pretty big chasm between never bluffing and bluffing 9%1 of the time you have the nut blocker in your hand. I do believe that results matter quite a bit when making a big hero fold, except that the results don’t tell you quite enough here because if Gavri has the nuts here 75% of the time, Robl would still need to call with a set of twos given his pot odds.

The people who have chimed in about how this is an easy fold, seem to be making a pretty common mistake that happens in the discussion of viral poker hands. The goal in a poker hand is to make as much money as possible, the goal on social media is to be right. If this fold is -EV, you’ll be losing money, but you’ll usually be right, there are not pot odds in the discourse. This is why I think Nick Schulman’s claims of it being the greatest fold of all time are much more in line with the reality of the play than Fedor’s claim of it being “trivial”. This hand is not just about having the discipline to fold the second nuts when your opponent has the nuts, but having the confidence to know he won’t shove a jack high flush or bluff in a spot that’s pretty easy to bluff.2

This hand begins with a preflop call from Tilt that is too loose, it’s followed by a preflop play from Robl that is too loose. Gavri likely c-bets too often, Tilt makes a losing flop peel. The next couple plays, the flop check-raise, the call of the check-raise the turn checking through are all fine plays. However the meta in these games involves extremely loose play preflop, on the flop, and on the turn. On the river many people replied to me saying they like Robl’s bet size because they think he’ll get looked up by top pair too often. Gavri is an experienced poker player to understand the third nuts is not worth raising to this action, but people seem so confident he will massively overplay top pair? The worst type of poker player you can be is one that is too loose on early streets and too tight on later streets and it feels like everyone is suggesting this is the way to play. Viewers of HSP see that everyone’s strategy is too loose everywhere, until the last bet goes in on the river when everyone turns into Allen Kessler, I’m not buying it. This is not my first day analyzing a poker hand, I understand there is a class of player who is too loose everywhere, but will never bluff raise the river. Gavri might not be Alan Keating and I don’t think either of these bluffs are similar to bluff raising the river for practically a minraise over an overbet, but he’s shown that he has some moves in his arsenal, even if it’s not this exact one.

I think it’s easy to look at Gavri’s timing and conclude that he’d think a little longer with a worse flush and that he’d never bluff so quickly. I think the first point is valid, but it’s hard for me to say because I’ve never played with him. The second point is tough to say, some people like making big bluffs quickly because it looks strong, other’s do it because they don’t want to give themselves a chance to chicken out, so they shove before they can have second thoughts about it. Ultimately, I think the timing is enough that I’ll defer to Robl’s expertise playing with Gavri and the fact that Robl was right and conlclude, Gavri probably had the nuts enough here that Robl’s fold was the right one.

Final Thoughts and Grade

A normal pot on HSP involves several players making extremely loose, unsolver approved play. I tend to not write about these sorts of hands because while I am interested by the drama of these hands, I am not that interested in them on a strategical level that would fit what I’m going for in POTD. What drew me into writing about this hand was that I was shocked by the confidence of to use Nick Schulman’s term the “civilians” that this was fold was easy. In games like the ones on HSP that are too loose at every single node, the idea that folding the two card second nuts would ever be obvious or easy is crazy to me. If you think folding the second nuts in a spot like this is easy, you should probably follow Nick's advice and start bluffing more yourself. You also might want to consider the possibility that other’s in your game are constantly bluffing you and are shocked by all the huge folds you’re making. To me Robl did make one of the best folds of all time, he also picked the wrong size on the river. So I’ll give him an A+ on the river fold, combined with a B- in the rest of the hand, which averages out to what I believe is the first A in POTD history an

A-

POTD #265 #onemorething

So the solver analysis I used today is admittedly a bit of a Frankenstein solution. The hand is CO vs SB vs BB, but given QJo and Q7s are supposed to pure fold preflop and these games play very loose preflop. I made is BTN vs SB vs BB so we’d get something a little closer to the actual ranges being used in the hand. I still don’t think these are close to the “correct” ranges in the hand, but it’s closer. Even shifting preflop positions one spot over, Q7s does ’t sneak into Robl’s range, but I added a little bit of it to see how the solver would want to play it. The solver plays it very aggressively, but this is in part because it’s such a low reach hand for Robl. If I gave him all the Q7,Q8 and Q9s combos I suspect we see some overcalling on the flop with Qh7h.

To make the tree smaller, I only ran the flop with the sizes actually used, which I felt were incorrect. I thought that Gavri would have a small c-bet size, but upon further reflection it makes more sense he c-bets rarely and pretty polar. This is not like a PFR vs SB vs BB hand, but closer to PFR vs SB vs SB. Robl isn’t peeling J2s here preflop. Gavri has position and a range advantage, but he’s against two pretty specific ranges and can’t just auto bet. So it makes sense he’d bet rarely and pick a larger c-bet size. When Gavri bets 2/3rds pot, Tilt starts folding a lot of top pair in the SB. I didn’t test to see if Gavri would want to bet bigger, but folding to pair to one bet is very nice.

Similarly, I thought Robl’s checkraise size was too large, but open further reflection it makes a lot of sense. His bluffs are gutshots, flush draws and Tx, his value range is two pair and sets. He wants to pick a size that is big enough that it can get hands like flush draws and top pair to fold right away. A polar check-raise that targets top pair folds, should be on the big size. The turn and river solve did not require nearly as much guess work, but the outputs are only as good as preflop and flop ranges. I entered the Rocket Solver ranges into PIO and ran a vanilla turn sim, I suspect if Gavri is c-betting too much top pair on the flop and calling a checkraise with it too often that betting the turn works out very well for Robl. On the river, I needed to run a sim where I only give Robl one size to force some volume into that size that isn’t just nuts or nut blocker, but the general shape of the solution remains the same, Robl only gets shoved on by the nuts and but blockers, but still needs to call a jam with a flush because he blocks too much value.

Let’s start with the good news, POTD will be publishing daily. Everyday when I am done play, I will pick my POTD and write about it. My writing will be looser and bloggier, I will write a first draft, send it over to the POTD editor extraordinaire and go to bed. The timing of publication will break from the normal format, but I will try to make it as consistent as possible. Currently, I try to write a posts days in advance, such that they’re are edited and scheduled to post well before the actual publication day and they are usually emailed to you at 6:00 EST sharp. Jeju is 13 hours ahead of Toronto, so what you will see is likely something like, I finish a draft Wednesday at 22:00 (which is 9:00 Wednesday EST), I send off the draft to my editor, then I’ll go to bed. Pray I get a good night’s sleep and wake up at 8:00 Thursday (19:00 Wednesday EST). Then I’ll give the edited copy a once over, hit publish and you’ll receive the post in your inbox immediately. POTD was designed to be something you’d read with your morning coffee it might become something you read with your evening whiskey. Of course if you live in a certain Asian or European time zones, you might finally get to enjoy POTD with your morning coffee.

To promote my return to the SHR scene, I am offering a deal that will price POTD at the lowest it’s ever been offered at. If you subscribe at https://www.puntoftheday.com/jeju, you will get 90% off a 1 month subscription. Since I am in Canada, all my prices are listed is CAD, but for one month you will be getting POTD for ~$1 USD a month. Paid subscribers will also get access to the entire archive of POTD, including over 200 paywalled posts. Next month it will revert to the normal $10/month.

While you should subscribe at this low, low, price and become a “paid subscriber”. I’d also suggest you go the extra mile and become a “Premium Subscriber” or as Substack likes to call it a “Founding Member”. For the price of ~300 USD (give or take fluctuations in the CAD:USD exchange rate). You will get all of the posts without a paywall, plus daily video analysis from me, both going over the sim and playing vs the trainer. I also upload the raw files of the sims I ran and they are in a private Google Drive folder where Premium Subscribers can download them. There are many other perks including access to an exclusive Discord channel and some more I’ll write about below.

This week from Monday-Thursday I will be rerunning some Premium posts from the past, so people interested in becoming Premium Subscribers can see what they’ve been missing. I have some specific hands scheduled already, but if there are commenters who want to see specific posts get unlocked, feel free to make requests.

Finally there are two more changes that will start once I am in Jeju, since I am writing about hands I played that very day. I will only share my hole cards before the paywall if the hand showed down. If you (or my opponents) want to learn what I had in a specific hand, you’ll have to pay $1. The #onemorething, an additional bit of analysis for Premium Subscribers/Founding Members, will become #onemorehand another hand I played where I punted or maybe just one I found interesting. So if you want to play along with me in Triton Jeju, please sign up using this link or 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 week I uploaded

• PIO sims beginning on the flop and beginning on the turn for POTD #325

• PIO sims on the flop and one that forces Mike to check the turn for POTD #326

• An HRC sim showing the preflop strategies for POTD #327

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 #327 where I write about how to adjust your preflop ranges at a FT vs a BB who will make losing overcalls.

POTD #327 #onemorething

My preflop flat is ambitious, but at least it’s a hand that I am supposed to VPIP. Nic Chouity’s flat with A5o is especially ambitious. It’s a hand that mixes folds for chips facing a minraise. So is almost certainly a fold vs a 2.33x, when I am flatting extremely tight. In this GTO Lab sim, A5o mixes three bet and fold facing a CL 2.15bb raise from UTG9.

There’s an argument here that by flatting AQs, I let Nic make losing calls and I recoup some EV. However that’s also true of folding AQs. The EV of folding will be greater than because Nic and Igor will play bigger pots, but the rebate is not enough that I’d want to fold AQs. The other argument here is that if Nic is going to play too loose in the BB, I want to avoid playing three way pots vs 1 and 2 in chips as much as humanly possible and that Nic’s losing preflop calls are mostly leaking EV to Igor and the other short stacks. I am not 100% sure, which side of this argument is right. However, there is an easy tiebreaker here, go with the play that you know is the right play vs a BB playing an appropriate range. At final tables you might identify a leak in your opponent and not have the right hand to exploit it or be legitimately unsure if you can exploit the leak in a given hand. In that case reverting to solver baselines is appropriate.

Media

Nothing this week, but as always, I can be reached on:

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Bluesky

The reason it’s important to me is that I can get defensive when people criticize me for writing about the punts of others. I am violating poker’s number one rule, “Don’t tap the glass.” I’ve made the case for why I think criticizing other people’s play is totally fine. It’s something that exists in every poker game in the world. Ask people to rank the quality of the opponents in their home game and get ready to hear a whole lot of shit talking. There’s nothing people love more than critiquing the play of people better than them; look at the chat box of a given Triton stream if you’d like further proof. So people like evaluating other’s plays, and I say let them do it. The popularity of every competitive sport is in some part built around the fact that there are fans who will grouse about how the best in the world are bums.

However, out of fairness, I do like to show that any mistake made by others is probably one I could make or have made myself. So today, we’re going to start pairing hands and end “off the beaten path” week with a hand I played at the GGMillion$ FT in Triton Cyprus that resembles POTD #317, a key hand played by Han Feng deep in the WSOP Main Event. In both hands, we knew there was an obvious and best preflop play, but chose to deviate vs. capable opponents for reasons that were probably not best.

Triton Cyprus 2023 - Event #1 $25,000 GG SUPER MILLIONS
(75k/150k/150k) (SB/BB/BBA). We are 9H at the FT Payouts are
1st:918k, 2nd:623k, 3rd:415k, 4th:339.5k, 5th: 272.5k, 6th:211.3k, 7th: $156k, 8th: $115k, 9th: $91.6K

YouTube link

Igor (13.5M/90BBs) makes it 350k, Santhosh (2.2M) folds, Heindorn (2.9M) folds, I (3.6M/24bbs) call with A♥️Q♥️, Boika (2.1M) folds, Schwecht (2.4M) folds, Putz (2M) folds, Bedir (2.2M folds), Nicolas Chouity (8.25M/56bbs) calls

Flop (1.3M) A♣️T♠️4♥️: Nic checks, Igor checks, I bet 300k, Nic calls, Igor makes it 1.2M, I calls, Nic folds.

Turn (4M) 6♣️: Igor checks, I check with ~2M back
River (4M) 8♠️: Igor checks, I check and I win vs J♠️J♣️

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Today’s hand is about when that doesn’t happen. It’s about when two very good poker players play a hand where a mistake is made, but neither one knows it. Well, I can confidently say that I did not think Mike Watson made a mistake in this hand. It’s possible he knew he made a mistake and lied to me when I asked him about it, but I doubt it. From one perspective, if neither of us knows we’re off tree, it doesn’t really matter. We are just playing a poker hand the way 99.9% of people have played poker hands throughout the history of poker. However, I feel that I should know better and play better. Was this a hand where both of us punted, or just a normal poker hand where we missed some hard-to-find solver precision?

HH Pokerstars Replayer
(4000/8000/1000) Ante. 250k Starting Stack.

PokerStars Hand #232820719272: Tournament #3332007476, $10000+$300 USD Hold’em No Limit - Level XI (4000/8000) - 2022/01/04 16:37:30 ET

Table ‘3332007476 2’ 8-max Seat #8 is the button
Seat 1: raidalot (300359 in chips)
Seat 2: neymar-jr (330872 in chips)
Seat 3: SirWatts (633217 in chips)
Seat 4: WushuTM (202235 in chips)
Seat 5: C. Darwin2 (120303 in chips)
Seat 6: Sam Greenwood (779482 in chips)
Seat 7: Proudflop (216390 in chips)
Seat 8: moertelmu (211494 in chips)

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Sam Greenwood [Ks Qd]

SirWatts: raises 9600 to 17600
WushuTM: folds
C. Darwin2: folds
Sam Greenwood: calls 17600
Proudflop: folds
moertelmu: folds
raidalot: folds
neymar-jr: folds

*** FLOP *** [3s Qh Th]

SirWatts: checks
Sam Greenwood: bets 36432
SirWatts: raises 64032 to 100464
Sam Greenwood: calls 64032

*** TURN *** [3s Qh Th] [9c]

SirWatts: checks
Sam Greenwood: checks

*** RIVER *** [3s Qh Th 9c] [Ad]

SirWatts: bets 64032
Sam Greenwood: calls 64032

*** SHOW DOWN ***

SirWatts: shows [5h Ah] (a pair of Aces)
Sam Greenwood mucks
SirWatts collected 384192 from pot

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Being able to adapt in unfamiliar situations is useful when playing vs. weaker players, but it’s also useful vs. elite players. Sometimes elite players will take you off-tree on purpose to exploit you, but almost as often, elite players will make mistakes and you’ll end up playing a hand you’d never play vs. a solver or trainer. This week, I’ll be writing about “off the beaten path” hands: three hands I played vs. three tough opponents where one or both of us made a play that is never or rarely made with range, and you’ll read about how we both navigated unfamiliar territory. Counting backwards, the third hand this week will be about a hand where I knowingly made a play I wasn’t supposed to make. The second hand this week will be about a hand where I don’t think either me or my opponent realized we were in a non-solver-approved line, and the first hand, today’s hand, will be about a hand where I think I could have figured out my line did not make sense and was not solver-approved, but I still played the hand that way anyways.

Triton Monte-Carlo 2023 - Event #1 $200K NLH Triton Invitational
(SB/BB/BBA) (1k/2.5k/2.5k) 300k Starting Stack. Registration is open.

It folds to Dan Smith (344k/137BBs) in the LJ who makes it 6.5k, It folds to me (253k/101bbs) in the BB with A♠️5♠️ who calls.

Flop (16.5k) A♥️K♦️6♣️: I check, Dan checks
Turn (16.5k) K♣️: I bet 5.5k, Dan calls
River (27.5k) 3♣️: I bet 9k, Dan makes it 46k, I fold.

Today’s post and all the analysis is free for all. If you liked this post and would like more posts like this please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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What I Was Thinking

I had As5s in the BB and figured this would be an occasional three-bet from the BB, but not a mandatory one. I likely rolled a passive number and just called. On the flop, there is obviously no leading from me, and I expected Dan to c-bet often, but not always. Once he checked back, I thought this was a bad turn for me, but not so bad that I’d always check with my range. I did not think I’d play overbet or a big bet size, but I could occasionally block with hands like flush draws, gutshots, 6x, pocket pairs, Kx, and of course some top pair as well. I rolled a very aggressive number and figured that block was the best play, so I did. When I blocked and Dan just called, I figured his most likely hands were hands in the QQ-77 range and that I was going to check-call a bet anyways, so I might as well bet myself. I bet, Dan raised, I felt as if I had put enough money in the pot already, especially once the flush filled, and if I wanted to call a raise with an Ax combo, I could at least wait until I had a flush blocker.

What I Got Wrong

I have a much higher frequency three-bet than I might have initially guessed and three-bet around half the time, but calling is fine. Dan almost always c-bet the flop, but he does mix in the occasional check. I was correct that most of his checking range are pocket pairs, around 38% of his check-back range. The problem is that 42% of his check-back range are Ax and Kx. So even on a king turn, his range has 66% equity vs. mine, he has trips almost twice as much as me, and his trips have on average a higher kicker than mine. When you are at a range disadvantage, a nuts disadvantage, and you’re deep-stacked out of position on the turn, you should not bet. I check my entire range here. Betting the exact value of your hand is never all that costly, and if I did want to play a turn betting range, it does make sense to include some Ax in it. Ideally I’d like to at least have the A5 that blocks K5s, which I did not.

Once I bet the turn, value betting the river is okay. I have some obvious bluffs, I can get called by QQ-77, but my size is too large and I should bet something closer to 1bb, especially when I could just be value betting against a better ace. If I had AQ here, my river size is defensible, but this is way too big with A5. I might have only bet 2.5bbs too many, but I also bet ~3x more than I should. Once Dan raises, folding to the raise seems like the best play; it’s rare to make a value bet that is too thin with a hand that doesn’t block value and still want to call a raise with it.

Types of Errors
Bad turn range strategy

Grade

This is a hand where I was too focused on balance and being unpredictable and not focused enough on the basic logic of the hand. Dan raised preflop from early position, and even when he checks back an AK6 flop, his range is much stronger than mine. The types of hand he checks back on this flop— the types of hands any player checks back on any flop— are often middle pair-type hands. When middle pair turns into trips, and I’m already at a range disadvantage, I should just check. I was more concerned with making sure I had some top pair in my turn betting range that I didn’t even bother to ask “Should I be betting the turn at all?” So I made one mistake by going off tree and betting the turn, but that mistake was not all that costly, provided that I occasionally bet Kx on the turn as well. Once I did go off tree, my river bet was too thin for my hand, which is not just a generic “top pair,” but weak top pair that should have bet smaller. Two very clear mistakes that don’t cost me much EV means off tree week begins with a

C

Today’s submission has been lightly edited for formatting and clarity

My first poker study tool was Flopzilla, an equity calculation and combo counting tool, similar to Equilab. It helped me getting better at, who guessed it, combo counting and also visualizing how the different hand classes, offsuit and suited combos, pairs and flush(draws), are weighted in postflop ranges.
Todays hand will point out how correctly evaluating the strength of your own holding (a.k.a equity) compared to your opponents range throughout the streets will help you make the right decision – or at least not punt in the way I did 😉.

Mid Stakes Online-Poker (SB/BB/A). 7 Handed.
44$ Medium-Field CoinPoker on a Sunday.
I guess registration still open, but a considerable amount of players has already busted.

Hero opens from SB and 68.61bb to 3.5bb w A♦️9♠️, folds to the BB, looked like a regular, who called and now has 37bb back.

Flop (7.75bb) A♥️T♠️8♠️: Hero c-bets 2bb, BB calls.

Turn (11.75bb) 3♠️: Hero bets 9bb, BB calls.

River (34.26bb) K♣️: Hero shoves for 26bb, BB snaps with Q♠️5♠️ and wins while already tagging me as a fish (most likely).

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What I Was Thinking:

Preflop
Around 40bb SB vs BB (effective) without ICM considerations I play limp, raise 3.5x and fold.
I do trap with 99, JJ, AQo to also strengthen my limping range (playing l/3-bet), but the rest of my strong hands, especially strong offsuit broadways and ace high’s, clearly belong in my 3.5x raising range. They need protection and wanna charge weaker holdings.1

Flop

Very interesting flop. We should have a considerable TP, set and range advantage, however we have 3 streets OOP to play while being relatively deep stacked.2 The board is very dynamic, thus having the best hands in our range NOW isn’t that valuable, as hand strength is likely to change.3

I bet that solver would mix between bet small and check, while checking very frequently4, but I don’t know how to build that range probably, so I think in practice I c-bet range small with the plan to have a high turn check percentage.5

A minor detail that makes the flop a little more advantageous for our range is that the Ace isn’t suited. Otherwise we would lack a lot of flushes in comparison to the BB, if turn or river completes said flush.6

I don’t think my opponents will have an educated flop raising range, so I will get away with my range bet. I also don’t expect them to pressure me with sick float, then db AI’s if I choose to x/c turn.7

I wonder, from a theoretical perspective, if my holding fits better in a flop checking range, as we have the key blocker 9♠️for the hands we want to charge – draws.8

Turn
Talking about completing flushes. Here my ranging already falls apart, as I expected A9 with spade blocker – probably the best TP against his BB flatting range behind AJ – still be worth 3 streets of value.

I know from studying that flushes only make a small portion of my range and I thought together with a loose BB calling range that ranges are still wide enough to go for 3 streets.9

Now coming back to Flopzilla. The first interesting finding I had is that BB will probably overfold to my double barrel. I think it’s the right exploit (even tho I don’t think it’s intentional, I just think he won’t reach minimum defense frequency) as I don’t expect myself to have many bluffs here OOP and be slightly weighted towards value. My bluffs will also always have a considerable amount of equity.10

I expect my opponent to call TP’s+, pair+ draws and any sort of combo draw or at least a straight draw. Tx and worse pairs without a flush draw, as well as Kh’s will probably fold to my big size for the most part.11 That’s around 49% of hands in my range!
So I was kinda right that ranges are wide, yes, but with firing a triple barrel my hand will just be to weak to still a value bet on the river – even if turn and river are complete bricks!12

After turn brought in the flush I do at least need an Ace-high 2p to consider triple barreling. From a theoretical standpoint I also expect that I played this hand completely wrong. I have a loose SB range with still every crap hand I decided to raise SB T2s and decided to range bet.13

BB has a condensed range by calling my SB preflop raise that even got tighter after calling my c-bet. He is uncapped on the flush turn and has every flush imaginable in his range.14 The most part of my range just wants to get to showdown for cheap, my checking range needs much protection.15 I think the biggest size we do play on this turn is 1/3, but checking is certainly the right play with our holding.16 By the way, do even play check raises in this line?17

River
On the river my poker senses telegraphed me that something felt off.
I knew QJ came full range to this river and my hand felt thin.18 I stopped and tanked for some seconds. Ultimately I thought I still had enough value and jammed.

Looking back I certainly don’t have enough equity to value jam + I do even have the worst blocker to x/c, as it blocks every straight and or flush draw imaginable. A hand like A2 no spade would be a much better call in theory.19

What could I’ve done differently? I could block, but my hand would look very face up and I do believe that I wouldn’t be able to construct that range properly.20 I believe I would only THINK about blocking when I had what – an Ace that prays for showdown. Arriving at the river as played, I should just x/f versus a jamming range.21

Types of Errors
Proper equity & hand strength analysis
Range strategy & size for turn and river

Final Thoughts
I should block/small size or check turn, the completing flush shrinks our value part to flushes we rarely have in our range, especially compared to the BB’s range.22
I strongly believe that the turn is crux of the hand. On the river it’s easy to construct a very polarized AI or check range or a small/ check range.23

Our big turn size just makes it way to easy for IP to play against us and we either end in an overplay (as played 😉) on the river or many ugly hero calling spots we could have avoided easily.24

Sure enough I would grade this hand very harsh from a strategy perspective, but emotionally it didn’t hit me all to much, although 44$ is the absolute max of Buy-In’s I enter at the moment.25

Finally, as this hand had many decision points, I am already curious how Sam and the community would have played the hand!26

If you are interested in being the subject of a future Sunday Special, let me know. Do not be shy if you have a lack poker skill or accomplishments. No solver analysis is required from you and I’d much rather have amateur 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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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

• An PIO sim using ICM preflop ranges for POTD #322

• Two rocket solver sims one starting on the flop, one on the turn for POTD #323

• Two postflop PIO ICM sims one that strategy locks me for POTD #324

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 #322 where I write about another way I felt I misplayed the hand vs Phil Ivey

POTD #322 ⁠onemorething

One reason I decided to bet the flop was because I felt Ivey would not find enough no equity three barrel bluffs. I think that’s a solid reason to argue that betting the flop > check-calling the flop, but it doesn’t tell me anything about if betting the flop > check-raising the flop. When I check QQ with the plan to check-raise 100%, I am still gaining EV when he stabs total air that would fold to a 60k bet, even if those hands wouldn’t put me all-in by the river as often as the solver would.

If he doesn’t three barrel enough here it also means that his betting range on the flop is a little too linear and he bets too much middle of range stuff that would call or at least consider calling a check-raise. There are many times when I’m playing a poker hand where I correctly identify a relevant piece of information, but don’t come to the right conclusion with it. Ivey is, it goes without saying, a very tough opponent; he’s less likely to blast off JTs for three streets vs a check than say Michael Addamo. Ivey’s decreased bluffing frequency is a point in favour of betting first and I noticed that in game. I did not make the case that my read on Ivey makes check-raising better than betting. I suspect, one reason I did this is because I felt check-raising might have made it more likely I’d bubble the tournament. However as we learned today betting the flop also made it rather likely, I’d bust if I ran into a better hand. Having a great read on your opponent is not worth that much if you can’t find the right play to exploit that read.

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The main media I have been consuming this week has been my own dreams as my newborn has started sleeping through the night. Let’s hope I can give the same report tomorrow.

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The one FT I did make was in EPT Malta in the fall of 2015, the second EPT Malta of the 2015 calendar. They scheduled one as the penultimate stop of EPT Season 11 and another as the second stop of EPT Season 12. I entered the FT as one of the short stacks and was hoping to ladder, or spin, but at least spend some time at the final table. It’s a rare place to get to. I didn’t want to be kicked out as soon as I arrived. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get anything going and ended up busting in 6th. For years, I felt that I couldn’t have done much; I just got the wrong cards at the wrong time. But one hand had always stuck with me, so for this Final Table Friday, I’ll be analyzing this hand using modern tools to determine what I could have done differently.

€5,300 2015 EPT Season 12. Malta Main Event
(30k/60k/10k) (SB/BB/Ante) 6 Left. Average is 3.25M

1st: €602k, 2nd: €371k, 3rd: €266k, 4th: €203k, 5th: €161k, 6th: €125k

YouTube Link

Giulio Spampinato (1.26M/21BBs) folds, Alen Bilic (7.6M/126bbs) folds, Jaroslaw Sikora (2.32M/39bbs) makes it 130k, Niall Farrell (5.6M/93BBs), Rainer Kempe (1.45M/24bbs) folds, I (1.175M/20bbs) call Q♣️3♣️.

Flop (340k) A♣️K♣️6♠️: I check, Jaroslaw bets 110k, I call.
Turn (560k) K♥️: I check, Jaroslaw checks.
River (560k) 5♥️ I check, Jaroslaw bets 325k, I tank for a very long time and fold. He has Q♦️9♦️.

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There is no one reason that is directly responsible for me punting in this hand. Sometimes you just don’t execute, but sometimes you are fatigued and don’t realize it. Sleep deprivation and fatigue will lead to decreased mental function, and unless you are measuring your cognition, you might not even notice that you are not operating at full capacity. I did not think I was still amped up from the FT, I got a decent night’s sleep, and I was not under immense financial stress, yet I still punted in a pretty simple spot. Maybe it was just the wear and tear of a long grind; maybe it’s just that you can’t always be perfect. Poker is hard and always making good decisions is hard, even if you are rested and ready to play.

Triton Poker Cyprus 2023 Event #3 $30,000 Mystery Bounty ($15,000+15,000)
(1.5k/3k/3k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack. Bounties not in play. Reg is open.

Paul Phua (59k/20bbs) makes it 6.5k HJ, it folds to Morten Klein (93.5k/31bbs) SB and he calls, I (273k/91bbs) calls K♥️T♦️.

Flop (22.5k) K♠️K♣️4♣️: Morten checks, I check, Paul bet 5k, Morten calls, I call.

Turn (37.5k) 5♥️: Morten checks, I bet 20k, Paul calls, Morten shoves 82k total, I call, Paul calls 47.5k total.

Morten has 4♠️4♦️, Paul has Q♥️Q♦️ and Morten wins on a brick river.

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The poker world might end up plugging this leak for me. Phones are no longer allowed on the rail. They are taken away at final tables and soon could be banned at all times. If these rules are implemented, I will be more present at the poker table, but there will be an ancillary benefit. I will not embarrass myself at the table– well, embarrass myself less often in one specific way. I embarrass myself by dropping my phone on the ground in the middle of a hand, or needing to be told it’s my turn to act, or, as was the case in today’s hand, have my phone start ringing as I’m in a big pot on the turn and being stared down by Phil Ivey. I’ve played enough SHRs vs. enough of the same people that I am rarely intimidated at the table, and I have completely given up on “looking cool” at the table, but Ivey is the exception. Trying to play a big pot vs. him while flustered because I did something that would make me feel shame at a restaurant or in a movie theatre is not ideal. So I punted this hand from a general etiquette and impressing a legend of the game perspective, but let’s see how I did poker wise.

Triton Madrid 2022 - Event #9 €100K NLH Main Event
(10k/15k/15k) (SB/BB/BBA) 26/93 Left. 13 Cash. Average Stack is 900K. 7-Handed.

I (840k/56BBs) make it 35k UTG with Q♥️Q♦️, Phil Ivey (845k/56BBs) calls next to act, everyone else folds.

Flop (110k) 7♠️5♣️2♥️: I bet 60k, Phil calls
Turn (230k) 6♦️: I bet 115k, my phone starts ringing on the rail, I fumble around and hang up, Phil calls.
River (460k) 3♦️: I bet 140k of my remaining 550k, Phil calls and mucks.

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Honourable Mention

I did not include this hand because it Pokernews did not include the whole hand and it looked reasonable to me. K2 was repping 22 and happened to run into 66. A user on Twitter was at the table and DMed me the whole HH:

Felix K opens UTG to 5.5K
Folds to Gaspar on the button, he makes it 17.5k
UTG call

Flop (41k) 6❤️Q♠️T♠️
UTG: Check
BU: bet 15k
UTG: c/r to 43.5k
BU: raise to 105k (or something like this he like clicks it back essentially)

UTG: tankkkk call

Turn (261k): 6❤️Q♠️T♠️2❤️

Utg: check
Bu: bet 135k
Utg: tankkkkk call

River (531k): 6❤️Q♠️T♠️2❤️T♣️

Utg: check
Gaspar all in
Utg tankkkkkkkkkkkkkkk calls lol

UTG wins w/ 66

Gaspar had the K♦️2♦️

That’s a high-quality punt that just misses the top 10, but which I needed to include to correct the oversight of missing it the first time.

10. Four-Betting 73o

I don’t know what it is about the Main Event, and specifically Main Event Feature Tables, that makes people fall in love with bottom 10% hands. (This year we also saw Michael Mizrachi four-bet 42s.) In this year’s Main Event, they were about to go on break at 15k/30k blinds, and Francisco Fragoso (great name) decided that Hossein Ensan in the BB wanted a smoke break or to go to the bathroom and that this would be the perfect time to steal his BB. He decided to 3x pre to make sure he’d steal the BB, and then when Ralph Perry three-bet him, he figured Ralph must have known he was making a move and responded with a four-bet. Ralph had JJ and Fragoso fortunately hit the dream flop for bluffing JJ and took down the pot. Next time just go to the bathroom.

9. Straddle!

I can’t not include the most notable hand that occurred after one table decided to straddle for an orbit on Day 5 of the Main Event. At 50k BB, Loai Elayday straddled UTG nine-handed. Will Givens made it 175k next to act; it folded back to Elayday who shoved 1.5M chips— 30bbs, but only 15 straddles with 74o. This play is very bad, but EV-wise, it might not be as bad as it looks. If Will is raising A3o and is calling a jam with something close to, let’s say, top 10% hands, then Elyaday is shoving 3.5x pot, getting called around 30% of the time, and has around 30% equity when called. It’s not a good play, that’s why it’s on this list, but it’s why straddling and jamming 74o is not ranked even higher on the list.

8. Eshaan Bhalla Catches an Opponent Overplaying AK

A common Main Event punt is someone overplaying AK by getting too many BBs AIPF with it or underplaying it by not getting nearly enough BBs in the pot with it. Normally, when people have AK and they whiff, they don’t put too much money in the pot. This hand was an exception, where we saw an unknown player go nuts with AK high on T973 double flush draw. If you are playing any sort of reasonable poker, it’s impossible to get all-in on a board that connected drawing dead, but our mystery man found a way to.

7. Baptiste Tries to Bluff AA (Winamax stream)

A rhetorical question I often see asked on Day 1 of a Main Event is “How did they get so many chips?” and a question I often see asked on Day 2 is “How did they lose so many chips?” Jourdan Baptiste gave us a window into the roller coaster of trying to win every pot and running hot and cold. He cold calls a three-bet and a four-bet with K5s and tries to bluff AA, and it doesn’t work out for him.

6. Not Shoving QQ Just to get Bluffed Off It Post

In my coverage this year, I wrote about how one of the biggest punts someone can make is putting in a bunch of money with a medium-strength hand just to fold it later. Paul Guilbeau three-bet QQ from the SB and got four-bet by Allan Sannier. This is a wonderful spot to be in; he could shove and get called by a worse hand or take down the pot preflop. Instead, he just called. Not my choice, but an okay play. The flop was ace high, which is not ideal, but a spot QQ could still navigate with ~2x pot to play. Guilbeau chose the worst option and check-raise/folded 1/3rd of his stack. On Day 5 of the Main Event, he was 92% to double up to 3M in chips and somehow chose the line that allowed him to lose half his stack without even showing down.

In order to go deep in the Main Event, you need a lot of good fortune, and for a while it seemed like Allan Sannier was destined to go on a miracle run. He also found a bizarre way to get AA to fold when he had 66 that I almost included in this countdown, but like most Main Event runs, his eventually came to a halt.

5. To Quote the Pokernews Headline “Stop Being a B**ch, Shut Up!”

Normally I don’t include hands where I don’t have the full action, but I need to make an exception here. When you call all-in with A3 high and lose to an AT high bluff, then throw a tantrum as you’re leaving the table, you make the top 5 of the POTWSOPME.

4. Chris Moneymaker Bubbles the Main Event

Chris opened a hand he should have folded preflop, called a three-bet with it, and then called a ~40% pot river shove on the bubble playing the board. I can’t really defend preflop here, but I can defend the rest of the hand. He flopped a gutshot and two overcards and calls twice. Then on the river, he thinks his opponent is bluffing or has AK. In theory, you probably call the river with a chop here some % of the time… why not J9? However, when a legend of the Main Event bubbles in spectacular fashion, when he could have just folded J9o preflop and locked up a mincash, he makes the list. Even if he was actively trying to get the Bahamas package reserved for the bubble boy, I’d rather he shove preflop instead of playing a hand like this.

3. Ryan Miller folds QQ

I’ve heard some people say that Ryan folded here because he’s a limit player who is inexperienced in NLH. The year is 2026, even players who never play NLH are pretty good NLH players. Ryan had 20bbs and managed to fold QQ as an overpair after putting 60% of his stack in the middle. As I wrote in my initial writeup, he called almost half his remaining stack to set mine, then folded when he was getting 4:1 on his flop call. Aren’t limit players supposed to understand pot odds?

2. Konishi Goes Nuts with 42o

To me, the great Main Event punts are ones where both players punt in some capacity. This one fits the bill. We have two clearly losing preflop plays: The J7s open has got to be extremely bad given Konishi defends 42o. We arrive at the flop and Konishi has 3% equity. If you asked me to bet on how likely he was to win the hand, I’d have happily laid 100:1. Then I would have watched in horror as he did not check-fold the flop, but check-raised it, turned a pair and managed to get Masato to fold second pair. Folding second pair is often a reasonable poker play, but not when you have 615k back and there is 440k in the middle on the flop. Every decision in this hand, outside of Masato’s c-bet and call of the check-raise, were absolutely shocking to me. What a great hand.

1. The Punt of the 2026 WSOP Main Event

The POTWSOPME is not strictly, what was the worst hand played in the tournament? It’s also about what hands are the most notable and memorable. If there was a Casino Royale-type four-way cooler that occurred, that would be the most memorable hand of a given year, but it would have zero punty elements in it and I would not include it.

This year, we had a spectacular hand that was one of the biggest pots in Main Event history. In my writeup, I defended Lauri’s play and I believe it. I think there is a rationale to the hand and it’s not as bad as it looks at first glance. However, when you’re heads up for $4,000,000 and a World Title, and you call off 90% of your stack with third pair on a board where you lose if he has one spade in his hand, and you run into the nuts… It’s a punt. And it’s the POTWSOPME.

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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 for POTD #315

• A PIO sim including a second sim with a resolved river for POTD #316

• An IOU for POTD #317

• An IOU for POTD #318

• Preflop HRC sims and postflop ICM sims for POTD #319

• A variety of different HU sims for POTD #320

• Two different HRC Sims for POTD #321

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 #320 where I write even more thoughts about The Hero Call heard around the World.

POTD #320 ⁠onemorething

One reason I am not crazy over leading the river as Lauri is because Lucas is supposed to fold hands with Kx in it because a lot of Lauri’s bluffs have a K in them. Which means a river bluff needs to get Lucas to fold KK or AK sometimes, but I’m skeptical that Lucas would fold those hands on the river (they’re also probably heavily discounted given his preflop limp). I am not sure if Lauri would have led the river in game with his range, he didn’t find one here, but that doesn’t mean he’ll never lead.

If you force Lauri to check the river, Lucas shoves much more often and his value shoving range is almost entirely the Qs, but there is some shoving with the Ts and much more shoving with hands like Qs5s. This means if Lauri checks dark on the river, his river calling range should be much more linear. You can’t fold the Ts if your opponent might shove Ts6c for value, and you’d rather call the river with Jd5s than Jd3d if your opponent might have Qs5s. If you force Lauri to check the river, calling a hand like J3, loses around 2bbs on the river and calling a hand like KxTs makes around 2bbs on the river. If you allow Lauri to lead the river, Lucas’s range is even more polar to nuts/air and any bluff catcher that Lauri might have is still doing alright.

Versus most people, I’d much rather call linearly, you need to be very confident that Lucas never jams a two card nut flush or a second nut flush or is wildly over bluffing to want to call Jd3d and even then Jd5s or KcTs should still be much higher EV calls. There are opponents who bluff so much that calling anything is +EV, but it’s still nice to have the right cards such that you have a buffer zone where your call still might be +EV, even if you’re wrong about your opponents range.

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Respectfully, this post is long enough already. See you next week. As always, I can be reached on:

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Making a model more complex does not always make it more accurate. If it gives you an output that is nowhere close to a naive model, the odds are more likely the model is over/under-fit than it’s revolutionary. ICM gets you in the ballpark and that is often enough. If a perfect MTT model provides an output that disagrees with ICM— let’s say, one that says if you have 39% of the chips you should win the tournament 42% of the time— how much would that actually change your strategy? I suspect the changes will be subtle and on the margins.

If you face a shove at a FT and you know that one model wants 48% to call off, while another wants 50% to call off, and your hand has 49%, your decision is a gamble on which model is more accurate. It’s easy to spend a lot of time debating over which model is right, but when facing most opponents you should focusing on how much equity you have vs. your opponent’s actual range. Different sims might have different thresholds to call all-in, but they’ll be in the same ball park, while your equity vs different humans’ ranges can easily vary between 5-10%. You’ll make a lot more money calling one pip too wide vs. a player too loose, or hero-folding vs. a nit, than you will poking small holes in ICM. Fortunately, you’re allowed to do both.

In today’s hand, Greg “FBT” Mueller faced a minraise and large shove in what could have been a three-way all-in with five left in the World Series of Poker Main Event. Everyone (I hope) understood that he had an easy call for chips, but it was a tough technical spot at a high stakes FT. However, he was against two opponents who had some unbalanced tendencies, which made his decision easy from my view on the sideline. I think he may have been too concerned with the math puzzle of the hand and not concerned with the human puzzle.

World Series of Poker Main Event The Final Table
(1.5M/3M/3M) (SB/BB/BBA)
5th: $2.25M, 4th: $2.75M, 3rd: $3.75M, 2nd: $6M, 1st: $10M

Video of the hand Pokernews Update

Han Feng (25M/8.3BBs) makes it 6M UTG with A♦️A♣️, Lucas Jumalon (376.5M/125BBs) folds, Lauri Saaskilahti (59.5M/20BBs) makes it 50M with 9♠️9♥️, Michael Gagliano (26M/8.6bbs) folds the SB, Greg Mueller (63/21BBs) folds J♦️J♣️, Han Feng calls.

Lauri wins on the thrilling runout of T♦️8♦️3♦️J♥️Q♠️.

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This is especially true in live MTTs where the most common form of HU is rake free with a BB Ante. There is a lot of limp-check preflop, followed by cagey and passive play postflop, but not every match is like that. When Lucas Jumalon and Lauri Saaskilahti got heads-up last week, I was not expecting a finesse match, I was expecting to see fireworks. It felt like they were both itching to play big pots and there was not going to be a “feeling out period.” I was seated on my couch at 10:30 EST because I was unsure if the match would make it to 11:00. I was correct as we had an action packed match that was largely decided by a hand that was an instant classic that many were calling one of the biggest punts of all time. Some time has passed and I’ve been able to gather all my thoughts about the hand and I’m ready to answer, if that was an unusual, but well played hand, a legendary punt, or somewhere in between.

World Series of Poker Main Event Final Table
We are Heads Up $10M 1st, 6M for 2nd.
(2M/4M/4M) (SB/BB/BBA)

Lucas Jumalon (287M/72BBs) calls Q♠️5♦️, Lauri Saaskilahti (258M/64bbs) checks J♦️3♦️
Flop (12M) A♠️K♠️4♣️: Lauri checks, Lucas bets 4M, Lauri calls
Turn (20M) J♠️: Lauri checks, Lucas bets 40M, Lauri calls
River (100M) 6♠️: Lauri checks, Lucas bets 180M of Lauri’s 214M, Lauri calls.

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What I Thought When I First Watched the Hand

I’ll admit, I had checked out when I saw the hands and the flop. I assumed Jumalon was going to bet and Lauri was going to fold. Once Lauri called, I was reminded of Hand #158 where Lauri made a loose flop peel vs. Jumalon’s top set. (Jumalon also made a questionable turn overbet with his set, which is a little bit of foreshadowing for today’s hand.) I thought Lauri’s flop peel was too loose, but thought it was close with backdoor broadway and wheel draws, and was impressed that he was comfortable making loose flop peels out of position.

The way many inexperienced players get run over heads-up is, they don’t find enough marginal continues and they allow their opponent to win the pot with small bets too often. The aggressor believes that their opponent won’t hit an appropriate minimum defense frequency1 and consistently makes a version of the same gamble, over and over. “I bet half pot that you won’t defend 2/3rds of your range here.” Over one hand, your opponent folding a little too much won’t be worth as much as bad river play in a big pot, but overfolding on early streets recurs so often that it will add up to a rather nice win rate for the aggressor.

On the turn, I thought that Lauri was going to be in a relatively tough spot with third pair. Once again, he needs to reach deep to find some unusual turn continues, and while he’d greatly prefer to have a pair with a draw, second pair should never fold to a medium sized bet and third pair should be close. Lucas did not bet a medium size; he bet 2x pot. My instinct was that in all forms of NLHE, you rarely overbet on the turn when a flush completer turns, and Lucas size’s was too big. If he’s betting 2x pot here, I am not sure what he’s trying to exploit. Lauri doesn’t seem like someone who likes folding, and this is not like ring NLH, where having the nut blocker matters much more than having any other flush blocker. In fact, the nut blocker is probably a very bad card to bluff a blank river with, as Lauri should never fold the Qs on the flop. When you overbet the turn with the Qs, it looks like you’re setting up playing for stacks on the river. Unfortunately, a hand you’re trying to get to fold on a river like, say, the 6h, would be hands like Qs4c, Qs6c or Qs9c, which means you don’t want to bluff with the Qs on the river.

On the river, I resorted to my default here, which is that hero-calling without a flush on four-flush boards is usually pretty bad if your opponent has been aggressive on the two prior streets. In heads-up and blind vs. blind poker, people have lots of offsuit combos they can semi-bluff with and tend to barrel them too often, which makes it very hard for anyone to be underbluffing the river, especially when they overbet on both streets. Most people won’t overbet the turn without a spade, and most people won’t overbet bluff the river without any key blockers and there aren’t obviously blockers on a board like this. That being said, Lauri did have a pure bluff catcher. I’d be shocked to see Lucas bluff with a hand like JT or Kx here. When your hand beat all bluffs, calling the river can never be the worst play. As I was watching the hand, I expected to see a snap-fold from Lauri, but once he started tanking and started talking, I became convinced he was talking himself into a call. Then I became more focused on the human drama of the hand and spent less time wondering if his river bluff-catch was a good solver or exploitative call. However, my instinct was that I did not like the call, it always helps when I can see their hole cards, but it felt like Lucas was underbluffing and Lauri would have better hands to call with.

What Lauri Was Thinking

Lauri was interviewed by Craig Tapscott on Poker.org. You should watch the whole interview, but I’ll summarize his thoughts on the hand here. Lauri thought Lucas’s button limping range heads-up was weak and that vs a weaker range he could make some loose flop peels. On the turn, Lauri had, he doesn’t explicitly say a live read, but a sense that Lucas was bluffing and that he had the best hand right now and called. On the river, he says he regrets not weighing the fact that most of Lucas’s weak turn barrels had a spade in them, and that even if he felt Lucas was bluffing, it’s very hard for him to do so on this river.

What Lucas Was Thinking

Lucas shared his thoughts replying to Mike Matusow on Twitter. He said he overbet the turn because he thinks Lauri thought he had a “blasty” image, and he might be able to get paid off with a really weak holding if he hit on the river2 and he would have given up if he missed.

What The Solver Says

The solver does play limps preflop. Q5o mostly raises first in, J3s almost never raises over a limp. The solver c-bets often on the flop, but not pure. Most of its check-back range are middle-of-range hands like QQ or total air without backup like 98o, but given it’s the solver, almost every hand that mixes checking also mixes betting. Lauri’s flop peel is technically too loose, but Q3 and J5 peel, while J3 needs a backdoor flush draw to see a turn. Having an overcard to a four, is a small thing, but edges are so marginal that occasionally having three more outs adds up. If you think Lucas’s preflop limping range is a little weak and think his c-betting range is a little weak because he bets too much air, and that he might size up with a good hand, then I’d suspect calling is at least breakeven.

Which brings us to the turn. Lauri never leads and the solver button never picks a size bigger than full pot. It’s possible the ideal size is slightly smaller than full pot, but full pot is close enough. The reason for this is because the button’s betting range is pretty linear. Hands like KQ can bet for value trying to get called by hands like Qs9d or 5s4c. Meanwhile, there are not many no-equity bluffs; most of Lucas’s turn betting range has a spade, a gutshot (including the wheel gutshots), or both. No pair, no draw checks 94% of the time for Lucas. If your value bets include second pair with a redraw, and your bluffs have 9 outs vs. bare top pair, there is no need to overbet. A full-pot bet is already enough to get folds from some bare Kx and almost all bare Jx. That being said, calling bare Jx that has two pair outs vs. J4 breaks even, and calling J3/J2 only loses around 1/6th of a BB vs. a full pot bet. In theory vs. the proper sizing, Lauri has a losing continue, but one that’s acceptable if he senses Lucas is up to something. I ran a sim where Lucas could either bet quarter pot or 2x pot to force some volume into 2x pot, and facing a 2x pot bet, J3 loses around 3/4 of a BB, a sizeable amount, but less than I initially expected. Lucas’s line is fine of course; he has a very-high equity draw that can value bet rivers when he hits and can also get better hands to fold right away.

Once we get to the river, something surprising happens— Lauri frequently leads with range. Lucas’s most common turn value bets are not flushes, but hands like two pair, straights and sets. With the AKJ on board, those hands rarely have spades, and Lauri has a ton of hands like Jx3s or Kx8s that now have a lot of equity. Lauri has a flush 73% of the time and he can lead hands as weak as bad top pair as a bluff to get hands like two pair and top pair to fold. After making a very loose turn call, Lauri seems to have a prime candidate to bluff-lead the river, but he chose to check. On the river, Lucas prefers to bet a smaller size with his exact combo, but many offsuit Qs combos shove the river. Lucas doesn’t bluff the river with better than J3, so Lauri does have a pure bluff-catcher. A hand like KxTs is a break-even river call; a hand like Jd3d only loses 0.5bbs. The only way someone could make a really bad river call is if they called with a hand that regularly loses to bluffs or in this case, that their opponent is not bluffing with total air more than 38% of the time.

In order to make a big hero call on a board like this facing back to back overbets, you’d either like your opponent to be overbluffing, or to have both cards in your hand helping you out. Either by blocking your opponent’s value bets or at least unblocking his bluffs. In this hand, I do think a J is a pretty good card to have in your river hero-calling range; the problem, is the three is neutral to bad, and that’s not enough when facing two large bets. “I beat all bluffs” is accurate, but it’s not enough when this much money is going into the pot. It’s especially not enough vs. humans who will struggle to find turn barrels that could bluff a spade river.

Final Thoughts

Often when a pro plays heads-up vs. a recreational player, they adapt to a max-exploit strategy, and that strategy is to try to small-ball the recreational player. Bet small and often on early streets, hoping the rec will over-fold. This appeared to be their gameplan entering this HU match. You could tell from their preflop strategies: Lucas was limping and minraising, and Lauri was often 3xing first in. I think Lauri adjusting by making loose flop peels was an okay exploit, and either way, peeling Jd3d here can’t lose too much money. It’s a 1BB bet vs. what’s basically a random hand, and if you think Lucas might have an extra weak button limping range. Go for it.

On the turn, I think Lucas’s logic for the overbet doesn’t quite make sense. If you think Lauri is too sticky and you aren’t interested in bluffing the river when you miss, it sure seems like you’re going to lose a pot that’s larger than you want to something like 70% of the time. You can make it back by winning a ton when you hit on the river, but it’s also possible you could make a ton of money by betting smaller and overbetting the river, or checking back the turn and raising the river when you hit. I think his logic is a little inconsistent, but of course the play is fine. He has a high-equity draw and bet big. It’s an acceptable turn play. Lauri’s turn call is loose, but like the flop, a hand one pip better mixes calls, and his call doesn’t lose very much, so with a decent read, calling easily could be a good exploit.3

Which brings us to the river. Even though the solver would lead, I actually don’t think Lauri should have; I just don’t think Lucas is betting the turn enough with a hand without a spade or folding KK/AK often enough to a river bet to make the play worthwhile. Once Lauri checks and Lucas overbets, he does have a pure bluff-catcher. He tried to get a live read on Lucas, which in this one instance I think was probably a mistake. If you’re running a crazy bluff heads-up in the WSOPME, I’m sure you will be very nervous. If you’re value betting such that if you get called it’s [almost] “all over baby,” you will be very nervous. On POTD, I tend to write about how in river spots, minor reasons can tip ambitious river plays from being slight losers to big winners, but here the number one thing is, I just really don’t think Lucas is overbetting the turn with a spadeless hand worse than a pair of jacks often enough for him to be bluffing enough on the river. After doing some research, I can say the call was better than initially anticipated it to be vs. the solver, but I think it’s much worse vs. Lucas

What I like about this hand, and why it was a fitting climax to the Main Event, is every street of this hand involved someone deviating from theory to try and exploit the other player. Lucas limped a hand that almost pure raises preflop because he didn’t think Lauri would bluff-raise enough over a limp or a raise first in. Lucas (likely) pure c-bet a spot where he’s supposed to mix some checks because he didn’t think Lauri would find loose flop peels. Lauri found a loose flop peel, and correctly sensed something was fishy about Lucas’s turn bet when Lucas overbet the turn because he thought it might cause Lauri to do something crazy on the river. Which brings us to the river, where Lauri did do something crazy. This hand was the greatest (great meaning large and immense) punt of the Main Event, but all in all, it was a pretty well-played, interesting poker hand between two non-HU specialists trying to exploit each other with $4,000,000 on the line. A hand that rightfully will go down in the annals of poker history.

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“Who is the most famous person you’ve ever played poker with?” is a common question I get. While there are of course the famous poker players, your Iveys, Negreanus and Hellmuths, their fame is miniscule compared to actual celebrities. There are some very famous entertainers I’ve played poker with, but they aren’t famous in North America, so they aren’t particularly famous to me, people like Patrick Bruel or Gackt. The most famous entertainer I’ve ever played poker with is Kevin Hart. However, the type of celebrity that I’ve played the most poker against by far are athletes. It can be tough to determine who is more famous, a Japanese pop star or a billionaire podcast host, but with athletes, there is a pretty clear hierarchy. At the bottom tier you have people like Evan Mathis [one of the most athletic offensive guards in history! -ed], then you have someone like Phil Kessel, who is a very nice guy, a good poker player, and a key figure in my personal sports fandom, and a borderline Hall of Famer, but not that famous because hockey is not that popular a sport. You also have people like the late Shane Warne, who is incredibly famous in Australia and in the world of cricket, which I know nothing about. However, by far the largest contingent of pro athletes that I’ve played high stakes poker with are soccer players, and with all due respect to Sergio Aguero, who I only played against online1, Arturo Vidal, and Gerard Pique, the most famous athlete I’ve ever played poker vs. is Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior, who you may know by the mononym Neymar.

Neymar mostly played in EPT Barcelona when playing for FC Barcelona. He was going to play in EPT Paris while he was playing for Paris St-Germain, but he got injured the day before and spent his off day recovering instead of playing cards. I’ve played a little bit of live poker with Neymar, but I’ve also played a fair amount of online poker with him, and I thought it would be fun to find a hand I played vs. him to coincide with the 2026 World Cup. Unfortunately, I was so busy covering the WSOPME that I forgot about this plan, and even then, the best I could do was find an online FT I played where Neymar finished ninth and the hand in question occurred when we were eight-handed. Neymar and Brazil had a disappointing World Cup, but at least they had a better World Cup than the home country of my opponent in today’s hand, Mustapha Kanit, whose Italian squad did not even qualify after losing to Bosnia and Herzegovina in penalty kicks. In today’s hand, we will see if I have a clinical strike or punt it over the net.

June 16th 2019 $2,100 Sunday High Roller
(4k/8k/1k) (SB/BB/ANTE)
8th: 7k, 7th: $8.8k, 6th: $11.2k, 5th: $14.3k, 4th: 18.3k, 3rd: $23.3k, 2nd: 29.7k, 1st: $37.9k

YouTube clip of hand

UTG (64K) folds, UTG+1 (114k) folds, LJ (366k) folds, HJ (277k) folds, CO (147k) folds, BU (165k) folds, Mustapha Kanit (586k) completes, I (207k) check with 4♦️2♥️

Flop (24k) J♣️9♥️9♦️: Musta checks, I check
Turn (24k) 4♣️: Musta bets 12k, I call
River (48k) 3♠️: Musta checks, I bet 24k, he calls with Q♦️4♥️

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This year, we looked to be on the same track. Lucas Jumalon entered the FT with a big chip lead, and while his stack dipped early on, it was mostly smooth sailing as his chip lead grew through the first two days of the final table. I was prepared for another anti-climactic FT— Lucas grinds down the short stacks into dust and gets heads-up with a 10:1 chip lead and wins in four hands— but then something surprising happened. He doubled up Lauri Saaskilahti in what ended up being at the time, the biggest pot of the tournament, and I immediately posted in the live chat watch party in the POTD Discord that I had found a hand to write about. So let’s write about it.

2026 World Series of Poker Event #82 Main Event NLH World Championship
(1.5M/3M/3M) (SB/BB/BBA) We are 4-Handed

Video of the Hand

Lauri Saaskilathi (92M/31BB) makes it 6M with T♣️T♠️, Michael Gagliano (24.5M/8BB) folds, Greg Mueller (58.5M/19.5BBs) folds, Lucas Jumalon (370.5M/123bbs) defends 4♥️3♦️.

Flop (16.5M) 9♠️4♦️2♥️: Jumalon bets 10M, Saaskilahti makes it 25M, Jumalon calls.
Turn (66.5M) 5♦️: Jumalon puts Saaskilahti all-in for his final 61M, Saaskilahti calls and holds on the K♦️ river.

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What I Think

Jumalon’s preflop call is fine; it might be a slight loser for chips, but he is the chip leader and should be able to eke out extra EV either by bluffing more or just getting to show down weak hands a little more often. That brings us to my next point: Part of the reason we can make a loose preflop call here is because, as the chip leader vs. second in chips, we can control the size of the pot. When we flop bad second pair, we want to keep the pot small. Jumalon instead decided to lead 60% pot. As far as I can tell, there are three reasons to have a leading range on any flop here as the chip leader:

1. The board is very good for our range and not good for our opponent’s range.

2. Your opponent will either over-fold or under-raise vs. a lead.

3. You have a very good hand and want to get a lot of money in the pot and think this is the best way to do it.

None of these conditions are met. The board is too disconnected to be good for a BB defense range, especially if we are making loose defends with hands like 43o (and have been making them throughout the FT, defending the BB with hands like 42o and K3o the prior day). A nine-high board is not quite low enough to favour the BB; Lauri is opening a lot of suited and offsuit nines here. There is a really big difference between 742 and 942, and an even bigger difference between 942 and 743, when flopped straights and one-card straight draws are possible for the BB.

Sometimes under ICM pressure, you see spots where the solver pure leads as the chip leader from the BB (POTD #54); those leads occur because the in-position player is under so much ICM pressure that they never raise. In those spots, the OOP chip leader bets often and small because they know they’re never getting raised. In any form of poker, the bigger you bet the less often you get raised, so if you want to lead to freeze Lauri, you shouldn’t need a big size. Either way, I would not expect Lauri to co-operate, and I am not just being results-oriented when I say this. There is no way Lauri is well versed enough in specific ICM solver concepts that he’d ever play zero-raise here. As for the third condition, we do not have a very good hand; we will rarely get called by worse or fold out better. So it’s the wrong board, vs. the wrong opponent and we have the wrong hand.

Once he gets raised, I initially thought that calling seems fine, as does folding. However, once I started counting his backdoor straight draw outs, I think he should fold. A 3 is not the cleanest two pair because it gives hands like AA or A9 a wheel draw, so it’s lower EV than turning two pair with a hand like 84. He has backdoor straight outs, but not that many; only an A, 5, or 6, and only a 5 gives us an open-ender, while an ace is a bad card for our range. If the flop were 963 and I led 76, I’d want to call a raise with it, but not 43 here. If he had a backdoor flush draw I’d certainly be on board with calling. The turn shove feels very PLO-y: It doesn’t make sense as a range play, but does as a hand play. Lucas would never play a set or straight or two pair like this, but if he checks, he might just need to stack off anyways, so shoving and hoping Lauri might fold something better than 43 seems like a reasonable play. Credit to Lauri for recognizing what Lucas’s hand looked like and calling.

What the Solver Says

The solver defends 43o vs. a minraise for chips at basically any stack depth. I suspect the cEV solver will put a lot more pressure on the BB than Saaskilahti will vs. the chip leader with four left in the Main Event. So I think the preflop peel is good, even if an ICM sim might not like it. This is also why Saaskilahti should have raised to a larger preflop size like 7M.

In POTD #317, I wrote about how there was no real need for me to run any bespoke sims because no sim I ran would ever play preflop flats from the SB. Similarly, I don’t need to run anything to see if Jumalon should ever lead the flop. He shouldn’t. I suspect if I ran a sim, you might see 43 check-raise some of the time, which is sort of like leading 60% pot, but I also don’t think you’d see very much flop three-betting. So I am not going to bother to Frankenstein up a sim that goes down a different fake node then the actual fake node we are down. The preflop call is good and I’ll say quasi-solver approved; the flop lead is bad. Calling the flop raise is acceptable, but probably bad, and the turn shove is fine in the Main Event where I could see some players making some really big folds, but maybe getting exactly A5 or JdTd to fold is enough.

Final Thoughts

I posted on Twitter about how prep before a huge FT is useful, but overrated. I’ve written several times on POTD about how the gap between learning a new solver concept and successfully implementing that concept in your game, while not forcing it, is very hard to do. It feels like Lucas has been trying a little too hard to find rare plays at this FT, and this hand is the perfect example. These flop leads tend to exist on boards with lower cards, under enough ICM pressure where your opponents will co-operate, or at stack sizes shallow enough where you can reluctantly stack off hands like middle pair. None of the criteria are met here, and he likely lost 90 million instead of 30 million, but it did not end up costing him $10,000,000.

C