… sometimes on the river you just bluff your hands with the least amount of showdown and sometimes you bluff with blockers and sometimes you bluff to mix kickers. So bluffing linearly in this hand would mean you always bluff [six high], then [a pair of fours], then 55, but you might never bluff 77.

It can be difficult to know when you should and should not bluff linearly; sometimes, as hard as it is to do, you just need to give up with total air. However, what can be even harder is figuring out on the fly if your opponent is bluffing linearly and what are the highest-EV bluff catchers vs. a linear range. If the board is Q42J7, calling with K8 high might seem appealing if you think your opponents most common bluffs are 53, 65 and T9. You unblock their bluffs and beat them all. If that same opponent starts bluffing A3 and A5, hero calling become expensive fast.

So what about when they’re not bluffing linearly? As I wrote above, you should almost never call with hands that lose to a bluff. The next step is determining their bluffing frequency, and there are two criteria that matter, how often they bluff with hands that might be the best hand right now and how often they bluff hands without showdown. Let’s say the UTG vs. BB board is KsQd2sAc4d. Perhaps Td2d is a better bluffing hand than 6s5s: It is occasionally ahead on the river, but it has no actual showdown value, because if UTG can’t beat a pair of twos they will bluff when checked to, and you can’t bluff-catch with a pair of twos. Td2d has much better blocker value, blocking two pair, JT and also bluff catchers like AT, KT, QT or even TT. However, if the BB always bluffs with 6s5s and 9d2d and Js9s and Tc9c, they are bluffing way too often, and UTG can easily pivot and call every bet with every reasonable bluff catcher.

However, let’s say you only have one data point. What if you see your opponent bluff 6s5s in the spot above when 6s5s is supposed to be a pure give-up? What if you see them bluff TT in that same spot? Well, it’s possible the player bluffing 6s5s always gives up with 2x because they think their pair has showdown value. It’s possible the player bluffing TT is only bluffing because they have such great blockers and would give up most of their missed flush draws. In today’s hand, I made a big fold in a hand where I believed my opponent should have been bluffing linearly. Then in writing about the hand, I learned that his hand was a pure bluff, but many worse hands, hands that I thought would be a pure bluff, gave up. I was and remain confused; did I get unlucky and run into a natural but unintuitive bluff combo, or was my opponent bluffing this hand and every hand worse than it, which made my fold a disaster? We’ll never know.

GGSF 2021 Event 41-H $25,000 Sunday Five Million
(35k/70k/8.5k) (SB/BB/ANTE) 7-Handed.
1st: 1.095M, 2nd: 821k, 3rd: 616k, 4th: 462k, 5th: 346k, 6th: 259k, 7th: 194k

Video from Hole Cards up FT Stream

Sami Kelopuro (2.6M/37BBs) folds, Shawn Daniels (1.8M/26bbs) folds, Niklas Astedt (5.3M/75bbs) folds, I (1.425M/20bbs) make it 161k with A♣️2♣️, Jason Koon (3.5M/50bbs) folds, Joao Vieira (3.4M/49bbs) folds, David Yan (1.93M/28bbs) calls in the BB.

Flop (416.5k) K♦️J♣️T♣️: David checks, I bet 140k, David calls.
Turn (696.5k) 6♠️: David checks, I check.
River (696.5k) A♦️: David bets 230k, I fold. I saw on stream that he had T♦️7♦️

Today’s Final Table Friday Post is free and unlocked to all. If you’d like to read HH breakdowns like what you will read below for every POTD. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. If you’d like to video analysis, please consider becoming a premium subscriber.

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What I Was Thinking

Even if I wanted to tighten up at a FT as the short stack with two big stacks behind me, open folding a suited ace in the CO would be an overadjustment. Once I opened and got called by David, I figured this flop is so good for my range I would pure c-bet. Even my middle-of-range hands like AJ have a ton of equity, and pocket pairs that are underpairs to the board could get Tx to fold right away. I was not interested in betting too big a size, because I did not want to bet-call a shove with my hand. I figured a smaller size that might allow me to three-bet shove over a check-raise, but was still big enough to leverage my range advantage, was appropriate, and chose 1/3rd pot.

On the turn, I figured he’d have a bunch of weaker draws and I could not bet-call my hand, so checking behind to keep in his worse flush draws was the move. On the river, I have a pure bluff catcher, but I figured it would be pretty hard for him to be bluffing without a missed flush draw, and the 2c should be a common card in all his bluffs. So while I’d reluctantly call the river with Ah2h, I could fold Ac2c. I did fold Ac2c and was very mad 30 minutes later when I saw he bluffed with a pair.

What I Got Wrong

I did not run a size test preflop; it’s possible my size is too big, but A2s is a pure open either way. The flop is a pure c-bet, and when I gave the solver options of 20%, 33% and 50%, 33% is the preferred size. 50% is never used, and 20% is occasionally used, so maybe if we’re being really nitpicky, 130k would have been better. My flop size gets Tx without a backdoor flush draw to fold on the flop, even T9, but I never fold out a king, jack, or queen. The only other non-flush draw peels are 98 and 97 with a backdoor flush draw. The turn is a pure check from me; the only nut flush draws I ever bet are a little bit of Ac6c, which can call a shove, and AcKc. Even AcQc pure checks the turn as a trap with the super nuts. If I bet 60% pot, all those nut flush draws would fold to a shove, and I don’t want to waste such a strong draw when I can comfortably bluff with any of my suited aces that do not have a flush draw.

Once the turn goes check-check and I face a third-pot bet on the river, I have a roughly neutral-EV bluff catcher. My large preflop raise size is supposed to knock out a lot of suited 2x from the BB defense range, which means instead of having a sidecard that is in a lot of his bluffs, I have a sidecard that barely interacts with his range at all. Ac2c pure calls vs. a 15% block bet and mixes vs. a half-pot bet, where Ac5c folds to both, but a hand like Ah5h almost always calls. However, OOP also regularly gives up with no showdown hands such as 8c5c, so I am just not concerned about how my hand interacts with flush draws.

So the two questions that matter here are: Does David have a bunch of suited twos to bluff the river with, and should that make me want to fold with 2c? And does David bluff every no-showdown hand on the river? If the answer to the latter question is yes, I need to call; he’s overbluffing, even if I’m blocking 9c2c. In the actual hand he was bluffing with Td7d. I thought a pair was too strong to bluff with, since he should have showdown vs. my pocket pairs. It turns out I was wrong, and Td7d is a perfectly good hand to bluff with. It only has 7% equity, but it’s even worse than that 7% would indicate, because it never shows down a winner and can’t check-call the river. If he’s bluffing every missed flush draw and also bluffing some of the Tx, Jx hands that the solver bluffs, then I need to call, but I am not sure if that’s the case. Ultimately I think I was wrong about the composition of his river bluffing range, both what it should be and what it actually is— I never expected him to bluff with Jx or Kx, which the solver does, but he’s probably bluffing around the same frequency or even less than the solver, which makes me think my fold is, if not good, acceptable.

Types of Error
Did not consider that my opponent could be turning pairs into bluffs.

Grade

Everything up to the river is good; what I need to do is determine his exact river betting range, and while I’ve played a lot with David Yan, I do not have enough experience playing big FTs with him to confidently say things like “He’d never bluff a king here,” “He’d regularly fold 3c2c preflop,” or “He’d give up with a missed draw 62% of the time here.” Unfortunately, him having Td7d tells us very little; he has a pure preflop defend and a pure flop defend. If he had a hand like, say, Td7h, I could conclude David is defending too wide preflop and on the flop, which means he’ll reach the river with too many hands that have less than 10% equity and be regularly bluffing with them, and then I need to call. If he bluffed with Kc9c, I could conclude he’s bluffing too often on the river and call. Here he has a hand that is well played and tells me nothing about his range.

Five years later, I’m still torn on my decision, but I think ultimately David is more likely than not to be looser than the solver is both preflop and on the flop. That, coupled with the fact he showed he was capable of turning a pair into a bluff and I don’t know if he’ll give up 0 EV missed flush draws, means I have a neutral EV call if his river strategy is perfectly balanced, but no one’s strategy is ever perfectly balanced, and I think in a spot that’s close to a coinflip, I’ll lean toward him bluffing too often here. I’d normally give myself a B here, but I was so confident his river bluff was a mistake when he actually had pure decisions at every single point in the hand, that I’m turning a B into a

B-

… sometimes on the river you just bluff your hands with the least amount of showdown and sometimes you bluff with blockers and sometimes you bluff to mix kickers. So bluffing linearly in this hand would mean you always bluff [six high], then [a pair of four…

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The problem with adopting this co-operative strategy with a fellow pro resembles a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma: If you co-operate with your fellow pro and agree to not battle, then they can defect, start bluffing you all the time, and overfolding every marginal bluff catcher vs. you and capture a ton of EV. Even in the softest of tournaments, you’ll need to bust a tournament making a big bluff vs. the best player in the tournament some of the time. Adrian and Mustapha understand this, which led to a very interesting hand where they absolutely were not co-operating with each other to play small-pot poker. The hand perplexed me and I was not sure if there were mistakes from Adrian, Mustapha, or both, which made me think it was the perfect hand for POTD.

Triton ONE Jeju 2026 $8K NLH Main Event – Event #10
(50k/100k/100k) (SB/BB/BBA) 67/1230 Remain. We are ITM

YouTube video

It folds to Mustapha Kanit (7M) on the button who makes it 250k, it folds to Adrian Mateos (4.3M) who calls in the BB.

Flop (650k) 8♣️5♦️5♠️: Adrian leads 200k, Mustapha calls.
Turn (1.05M) T♥️: Adrian leads 1M, Mustapha calls.
River (3.05M) 6♦️: Adrian bets 2.875M of his final 2.9M, Mustapha calls with T♣️9♥️, Adrian has J♠️2♠️.

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For those who don’t remember or did not click on the link above, POTD #70 was a Final Table where Michael Lavin was wearing a ClubWPT Gold patch and would win $1,000,000 on top of the $267k for first if he won the tournament, and Jordan Westmorland fastplayed aces into his set to bust the tournament. I argued that the incentives were aligned in such a way that Jordan should have trapped and bluff-caught hoping that Lavin would bluff wider instead of fastplaying his strong one-pair hand.

It’s easy to sit here in my office and confidently comment on a once-in-a-poker-lifetime scenario like being at FT with a crazy promotion that only effects one player [Fun, too! -ed], and I don’t think I’ve ever played a hand that mimicked that exact situation. I went digging for a hand that fit the description and found one with some matching characteristics: a hand where I have a very strong one-pair hand, a hand where my opponent and I have different incentives, and a hand where I made a mistake that I want to have back. The hand I found was from the 2022 Triton Madrid Main Event. We were approaching the bubble and I had a slightly above-average stack. Instead of fastplaying my strong hand vs. a short stack, I got tricky and missed out on winning an even bigger pot.

Triton Madrid 2022 - Event #9 €100K NLH Main Event
(10k/25k/25k) (SB/BB/BBA) 18/93 Left. 13 Cash. Average Stack is 1.3M. 6-Handed.

I (1.57M/63BBs) have A♥️K♣️ and make it 55k, it folds to Nick Petrangelo (1.03M/41BBs) who calls on the button, the blinds fold.

Flop (170k) A♣️5♠️5♦️: I check, Nick bets 45k, I call.
Turn (260k) T♥️: I check, Nick checks.
River (260k) 8♠️: I check, Nick checks.

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For those who don’t r…

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Hi, I’m Sid Sudunagunta, a recreational player based in the UK. Around 6-7 years ago I started playing online and became increasingly obsessed with poker. It’s my main hobby and I tend to plan my holidays around trips to various series and festivals. Over the last 2-3 years my focus has shifted away from NLH and more towards mixed games, though I’m always conscious that I don’t want to fall hopelessly behind in Holdem; to that end, Punt of the Day has been an invaluable resource. Most mornings start with one or two POTD articles over a coffee, while my cat Dorito bats my coloured pens off the table. I then go to work and try not to forget the lessons I’ve learned.

This hand is from a €3250 mystery bounty at EPT Prague in December 2025. I had won my seat in a satellite earlier that day, it was my first ever 3k and I had a slightly tricky table, sandwiched between two pros. I was finding it tough, had lost a few medium sized pots but had managed to claw my way back to around a starting stack.

EPT Prague €3250 Mystery Bounty (2k+1k)
(600/1.2k/1.2k) (SB/BB/BBA) 30k Starting Stack.
Registration still open. Bounties begin at (1.5k/2.5k)

I open KTo (sorry, don’t remember suits) UTG8 to 2.4k off 33k (27.5bb), BB (pro whose name I don’t know) calls. He covers me.

Flop (6.6k) T♦️8♦️5♠️: He checks, I check.
Turn (6.6k) 7♣️: He leads 5.5k, I call.
River (17.6k) K♥️ He leads 4.5k, I go all in 25.1k, he calls.

BB has J9o and I am eliminated.

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What I Thought

Preflop: I thought this was a bottom of range hand 8 handed, would fold full ring.1

Flop: I didn’t think this was a range bet board; T high favours my range however there are so many draws available and I didn’t fancy facing a check-raise.2 I think shallower I would be more happy about betting and getting it all in with top pair if need be, but this stack depth felt a bit awkward.3 I know I need some top pair in my check back range and top pair, K kicker, no diamonds felt reasonable.4

Turn: Good card for villain, J9 and 96 get there, they have both of those5, I don’t have either (maybe I have J9s?).6 They also probably have more sets since I don’t think I would check 88 or 55 back on the flop, probably not TT either, given the connectivity. Villain can have 88, 55 and 77.7 They have lots more two pair as well (I only have 87s?).8 However they can bluff a lot here, with diamonds and/or hands with a 9 in it.9 Even though it’s a big bet I don’t think I should fold top pair here.10

River: I rivered top two and had intended to go all in if checked to, with SPR just over 1. Facing the block I certainly didn’t plan on folding and tried to decide if they were heavily weighted towards bluffs/thin value. I managed to convince myself they were blocking with bluffs and very thin value +/- some two pair I was now beating. I shoved, they snap called and I left my first ever €3k feeling very sorry for myself.11

What I learned

I looked in GTO wizard at chipEV 28bb effective.

Preflop my hand isn’t a full frequency open, it only opens 30%, I think maybe I can just fold on a tough table but opening it isn’t a mistake.12

On the flop I have a pretty significant range advantage, 59.8% and my range bets 87.9% of the time (b60). Regardless of my suits, KTo bets pure (actually, KTo only bets 99.9% but I didn’t have my 1000-sided die to adequately randomise). Everything bets at least a little bit, my lowest frequency cbets are 44 and 65s.13

After the flop checks through, villain gets to lead a fair bit on the turn, 36.1% of the time. GTO wizard prefers b111 and leads J9s/o pure (96s/o mix). They can also bet sets, a fair amount of top pair (including things like T4/3/2s) and semi bluff flush draws and straight draws. A lot of 96 is in the check range, as are their two pair combos. Since I’m not supposed to be in this node with KTo, I think the solver analysis isn’t very helpful from this point onwards14 and in any case GTOw doesn’t block the K river, it plays check or shove. So facing this river block I need to decide what my hand is worth and I think I got that decision terribly wrong.15 I don’t think I gave villain enough credit for having a polar range and managed to convince myself they were blocking with bluffs and very thin value.16 But even if that is the case, I don’t think I can expect to get called by worse here, it would need to be exactly a worse two pair.17 I really don’t like this decision; I came away thinking I got coolered but on reflection I think the shove is way too thin.

While the river jam is the really big punt, I’m also not delighted with my flop play, or rather not understanding the flop strategy at all. I knew the T high board was good for my range, but didn’t realise I could bet at such a high frequency (effectively a range bet), or that my hand could bet pure.18

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

Blaise Bourgeois wrote about the end of Card Player Magazine. It was an honour to have Punt of the Day published in Card Player, and it was very cool to be on its cover. It’s sad what happened to Card Player, and I feel bad for the people working for Card Player who have to deal with their publication being gutted. If you are interested in the poker economy and the media economy, Blaise’s article is a must-read.

Range Advantage

#16: How ClickOut Media Killed Card Player Magazine

RIP Card Player Magazine. Once known as the crème de la crème of poker journalism, available at virtually every poker room in the United States and beyond, the magazine will no longer print physical copies…

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8 days ago · 9 likes · 6 comments · Blaise Bourgeois

Most of the winter in Toronto has been cold, snowy, or both. This week has been not-cold and rainy and even occasionally sunny. Spring is on the way, and I’m feeling great about it and doing a lot of walking. If you’d like to read Maria Konnikova write about Kurt Vonnegut extolling the value of walking, you should read her excellent post, which is embedded below.

The Leap

The importance of farting around

In the winter of 1995, David H. Freedman, then a contributing editor at Inc. Magazine, made his way to East 48th Street, to the Turtle Bay home of Kurt Vonnegut. He was there to ask Vonnegut about his opinions on technology: its role in modern society, its impact on Vonnegut’s own life, its effects on the future of humanity…

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10 days ago · 47 likes · 8 comments · Maria Konnikova

If you like actual content written by actual humans, and not websites whose sole purpose is to find the content that is the most cost-effective way to get you to click on ads, you should subscribe to the Substacks listed above, but also the one you are reading right now. Click the button below.

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Finally, in some sort of poker news, the New Jersey Devils hired former poker player and poker author Sunny Mehta to be their general manager. That a guy who I interacted with on Two Plus Two over a decade ago is running an NHL hockey team would be wild to imagine, if there weren’t already several similar examples in a variety of different arenas. I wish he took the Toronto Maple Leafs front office vacancy, and now I am filled with dread that they are going to hire someone dumb, but on the bright side, if Sunny turns the Devils around, it obviously means that all people who write poker strategy content are fit to run professional sports teams. [NFL teams who need a draft expert, call me! -ed] So I guess market forces will force me to end POTD to take a seven-figure annual salary to run a professional sports team.

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. This week I uploaded

• A fully converged blind vs blind postflop sim for POTD #267

• A Rocket Solver flop sim and PIO turn sims for POTD #268

• HRC sims for POTD #269

Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers

Everyday Premium Subscribers get an extra bit of analysis not included on Substack. Today, I’ll share #onemorething from POTD #267, where I wrote about how to adjust your BB raising strategy vs SBs who might not be playing a solver strategy:

POTD #267 ⁠onemorething

In the normal CEV GTO Wizard sim the BB raises 42% of the time and picks 3.5x and 82o raises 38% of the time and 83o raises 60% of the time. If I node lock the SB as being too tight to VPIP playing only 65%, never RFI you will see a lot less raising from the BB— only 20% of the time and I pick a more polar raise size, something like 4-4.5x. 82o raises 15% of the time and 83o pure checks. If the SB can’t RFI, but plays a very wide range, in this case the solver limps in 96% of the time and even mixes hands like 83o. You will see a smaller raise size from the BB, mostly in the 3.5x range and now hands like 82o go back to raising a lot, because they want to knock out hands like 83o. However, you still raise less often than the the normal cEV sim.

The general lesson here is a much simpler poker lesson, if someone is playing too tight at one node and they put money in the pot, even if it’s just completing the SB. You should tighten up in response because they have a tighter range. When I node lock the SB to limp a tight range first in, they limp folds hands like A3o, K9o and T5s to a 4x or 4.5x, it’s very unlikely that someone is limping too tight first in and also folding to a raise too often. The way you make money vs a tight player here is not them limp-folding too much, it’s from them open-folding too much the first time and also from them likely playing bad in LX BvB pots. You don’t need to raise all your garbage versus this type of player.

The other lesson here is a sizing one, the weaker the limping range the smaller you can raise. If he’s completing 96% of hands, a 3x or a 3.5x to knock out 93o is sufficient. If they’re playing very tight first in a 3x to knock out A2o is probably not going to work that well. If you’re opponents limping range is so strong you can’t comfortably raise call a shove with KJs or A9s then you don’t want to pick a 3x type size either. You’re too polar to size that small. It’s rare for players to be too tight everywhere if you suspect their tight, raise less often, however you should also size larger and bluff more polar into that type of range. Raise less, bet bigger is the exploit vs the type of player Rustam is, so I am happy with my preflop check.

Media

I’ve been recommending less music in this space recently; one of the reasons for this is that the podcast where I got most of my non-rap music recommendations— Indiecast— was cancelled by Uproxx. It has since been picked up by Amazon Music and is back; if you like listening to two guys talk about indie and indie adjacent music while “hashing out trends,” you should listen to Indiecast. You should also subscribe to co-host Steven Hyden’s Substack Evil Speakers and co-host Ian Cohen’s Substack Something On. [Speaking of indie music, I saw Melbourne’s own Belair Lip Bombs a couple of weeks ago at a small club in Denver. Amazing act; you’ll want to get in on the ground floor of this one. -ed]

If you want some rap recommendations, I recommend subscribing to the newly launched POW Mag, which takes the indispensable and long running Passion of the Weiss blog and turns it into a Substack magazine. It’s free for the first month, check it out.

As always, I can be reached on

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Bluesky

Even though I remember this hand, I never ran a sim to see if my call was any good, and I figured there was no better hand to pick for POTD than one that I myself haven’t even analyzed. So let’s see if I was right or wrong, and together we can learn where the line for calling a shove is in this particular hand.

Triton Vietnam 2023 - Event #6 50,000 NLH 8-Handed
12/139 Remain. We are ITM. Average 2.3M (50k/100k/100k) (SB/BB/BBA)

It folds to Viacheslav Buldygin (800k) who shoves from the SB, I (2M) have K♠️3♣️ and call in the BB. I lose to 9♦️8♣️ on A♥️A♦️9♣️4♥️4♦️.

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I thought about it and found the largest pot I ever lost in a cash game1, a hand where I got flush over flushed in a five-way pot 200bbs deep, had two opportunities to be a hero, and missed both of them.

Triton Poker Jeju 2018 Cash Game
(3M KRW/6M KRW/6M KRW) or approximately ($2700/$5400/$5400) (SB/BB/BBA)
Everyone is around 1.2B KRW (200bbs) deep. We are 7-Handed

YouTube Video

I make it 14k UTG with 5♠️4♠️, Paul Phua calls in the CO, Patrik Antonius calls OTB, Mikita Badziakouski calls in the SB, Dominik Nitsche calls in the BB.

Flop (76M) K♠️7♣️6♠️: Mikita checks, Dom checks, I bet 22M, Paul makes it 100M, everyone folds, I call.

Turn (276M) J♠️: I check Paul bets 140M, I call
River (556M) 4♣️: I check Paul bets 353M, I call and lose to Q♠️T♠️

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The long game of blind vs blind play in MTTs is non-existent compared to playing tens of thousands of heads up hands versus the same opponent. Especially when you consider the variable stakes you are playing. In 2019 I played blind vs blind hands versus Dario Sammartino with 100 left in the WSOP Main Event and in a $100 online tournament. If I ever had an exploit on his blind vs blind play, it would be foolish to not use it when we’re playing a pot worth several magnitudes more money. You should have a similar mindset of Who cares about balance? Let’s make the most money right now. When playing versus unknowns deep in MTTs, but sometimes you will not have found a weak spot to attack. When you don’t know much about your opponent you should revert to exploiting the tendencies of average players in your player pool while also trying to play close to solver equilibrium. In today’s hand I knew a decent amount about my opponent, but I did not think I had enough information yet to make any crazy exploits, so I decided to revert to solver baselines. In hindsight there were a couple easy adjustments for me to make, but I failed to find them.

2019 EPT €5,300 Main Event. 15 Remain. Average is 1.84M chips
Level 25 20k/40k/40k (SB/BB/BBA)

It folds to Rustam Hajiyev (1.37M) who completes in the SB, I check 8♠️2♦️ in the BB

Flop (120k) A♣️3♣️2♣️: Rustam checks, I check
Turn (120k) K♥️: Rustam bets 65k, I call
River 250k) K♦️: Rustam bets 105k, I call and lose to A♠️T♣️

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Poker remains a human game and what I am looking for in a Sunday Special is not complex technical poker spots or hands played by experts, but submitters that clearly articulate their thought process. Sometimes submitters will write things like “I had a range advantage, so I bet” and I can pick apart that faulty logic, sometimes they will write “I think this player type never bets top pair here” and I can dissect whether or not I think that assumption is valid. What matters is that I’m reading your honest-to-god thoughts about the hand you played. There will always be surprising tidbits in anyone’s analysis that are worth exploring. An unvarnished look into a submitter’s thought process as you are playing the hand such that readers of POTD and myself can learn from it is more than sufficient.

When I was on the Double Pivot Podcast with Sunday Specialist Mike Goodman and his co-host Michael Caley they mentioned that when they read POTD, I will occasionally teach them something in an aside. I’ll write something like “well normally this board is big bet or check, but I decided to bet small as an exploit” and they’ll learn that that “normally this board is big bet or check”. There is a similar dynamic when I read Sunday Special submissions, people will articulate something that contradicts a bit of poker wisdom I took for granted. This allows me to write about things that I otherwise would not even consider. As long as a Sunday Special submission is sincere, it is something I and POTD subscribers can learn from. It’s not boring to get a look into what someone is thinking and even if you might think a hand is standard, I assure you there will be details that are not. I wrote about check-folding a gutshot to one bet in a three bet pot this week. I relish testing my readers’ boredom thresholds. If you are one of the thousands of people reading this and would like to send in a Sunday Special, don’t be shy, your hand will not be boring, I promise you.

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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. This week I uploaded

• A PIO sim testing different c-bet sizes for POTD #264

• A Rocket Solver flop sim and PIO turn and river sims for POTD #265

• A Rocket Solver sim for the flop, turn and river for POTD #266

Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers

Everyday Premium Subscribers get an extra bit of analysis not included on Substack. Today, I’ll share #onemorething from POTD #265, where I wrote about how I created the sim to solve Robl’s big fold.

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 it 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 would 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 getting top pair to fold to one bet is very nice.

Similarly, I thought Robl’s checkraise size was too large, but upon 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, 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 nut blockers, but still needs to call a jam with a flush because he blocks too much value.

Media

I’ve been watching two Bill Lawrence shows, Rooster on HBO and the reboot of Scrubs. They are both pretty good, they’re watchable and have good jokes and likable actors. I am not even watching his third show airing new episodes Shrinking. Sometimes when I watch a late period Eastwood or Scorsese movie, I like them just okay, but I am mostly impressed by the display of human accomplishment. This guy is in his eighties and is making a movie better than other people’s passion projects. I feel similarly about the Bill Lawrence shows, he’s making three pretty good shows at the same time. Give him some sort of medal and let him take a nap. May his work ethic and competency be an inspiration to us all.

As always, I can be reached on

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Bluesky

In multi-way pots, everyone tends to play more pure strategies, because it’s hard to play pots versus several opponents at once. You’re not fighting a fair fight, so you make sure you have a piece of the board before engaging in multi-way combat. Even preflop, you might be able to raise 72o from the SB to exploit a tight BB, but you can’t do that from UTG. Multi-way pots have more pure strategies and more decisions, so you are given more information from your opponents, and each piece of information you gain is often more actionable than it would be in a heads-up pot. If someone checks in a heads-up pot in a spot where every hand in their range mixes, you might not be able to eliminate a single individual hand from their range. If someone checks in a multi-way pot, you often can eliminate not just specific combos such as 8c8d, but entire classes of hands such as sets.

This makes multi-way pots little games of inductive logic; you take all the pieces of information you have received— the HJ raised preflop, the CO flat-called and check backed the flop, the BB stabbed the turn, etc.— and you slowly make conclusions. “The second preflop flatter never has AQ,” “The CO who checked back the flop never has top pair,” “The c-bettor never turns a set.” This can create river dynamics that are complex, but are almost toy-game-like: Player A is capped at having the third nuts, Player B is capped at having the sixth nuts, and Player C can have the first or second nuts, but has total air more than half the time.

Of course, poker is a human game, and while the solver can deduce facts about everyone’s range before brute forcing a perfect strategy, many load-bearing solver assumptions fall apart in real poker. A solver might determine that “A straight should always be the nuts here because no one would ever check a set on the flop,” but that’s cold comfort when you’re eliminated three-bet shoving the river into a boat. Of course this is true in heads-up poker as well, but when one player does something unusual and solver-unapproved in a heads-up pot, it’s much easier to deviate because you don’t need to worry about other players in the hand. In today’s hand, I approached the river with a rules-based approach of what value-betting thresholds would look like and what a reasonable bluff-catcher should look like. I thought my opponents would share the same beliefs, but whether they were trying to get one over on me or each other, my assumptions of how they should play the hand were technically right, but in practice could were not.

Triton Poker Jeju 2024: Event #9 $150K NLH 8-Handed
(5k/10k/10k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack. Registration has Closed

It folds to Pieter Aerts (570k) UTG7 who makes it 20k, it folds to James Chen (704k) in the HJ who calls, it folds to me (457K) in the BB with 5♥️5♦️, who calls.

Flop (75k) 9♥️8♠️6♦️: I check, Pieter checks, James checks.
Turn (75k) 9♠️: I check, Pieter checks, James checks.
River (75k) 7♥️: I check, Pieter bets 40k, James calls, I fold, Pieter has K♣️J♠️ and James has A♠️A♦️.

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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.

High Stakes Poker (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 K♥️9♥️, Madden (176k) folds on the button, Senor Tilt (166k) calls in the SB with Q♣️J♠️, Robl calls in the BB with Q♥️7♥️, Wasserson folds.

Flop (18k) A♥️T♣️2♥️: Tilt checks, Robl checks, Gavri bets 8k, Tilt calls, Robl raises to 35k, Gavri calls, Tilt folds.

Turn (98k) 9♠️: Robl checks, Gavri checks.

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

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What I Think (No Cheating: My Thoughts Before Looking at Any Sims)

The optimal strategy in these games does 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, and 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 a bet 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 8h7h.

Once we get to the river, Robl has a polarized range; he rarely checks the turn with two pair or better and he rarely check-raises 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 either 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 to a jam 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 a block with top pair.

Once Robl bets his size and gets 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 certainly 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, 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 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 breakeven calls. 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 including hands as strong as AcQh vs. a block quite a bit, and Gavri is supposed to just call a block with flushes 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 by 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 him 13k; blocking two of Gavri’s flush combos and none of his bluffs is still too valuable.

Exploitative Thoughts

I gave the technical breakdown above that is (I hope) interesting to read about, 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 questions here are, 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 a pretty big chasm between never bluffing and bluffing at least 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 no 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, followed by a preflop call from Robl that is too loose. Gavri likely c-bets too often; Tilt makes a losing flop peel. The next couple of 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. If Gavri is an experienced enough poker player to understand that the third nuts is not worth raising to this action, why do 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, but when the last bet goes in on the river and then 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 raise so quickly with number 3. I think that’s fair. I do think he could could bluff-raise this quickly. Some people like making big bluffs quickly because it looks strong; others do it because they don’t want to give themselves a chance to chicken out. 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 conclude Gavri probably had the nuts often 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, solver-unapproved plays. I tend to not write about these sorts of hands because while, I am interested in the drama of these hands, they are usually not a good fit for POTD. What drew me into writing about this hand was that I was shocked by the confidence of, using Nick Schulman’s term, “civilians” that this fold was easy. In loose games like the ones on HSP, 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 others 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, but 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-

Today’s hand is one that splits the difference, between a decision that I’ve encountered so many times that I know like the back of my hand, and one that’s obscure enough that I am totally freestyling. It’s about a decision early on in a hand, but at a pretty obscure node: UTG vs. CO three-bet-pot 100bbs deep. I’d imagine something like 10% of all hands I play in live tournaments are 100bbs deep or deeper. Of those hands, I’d be UTG for around 1/7th of them, get a hand to raise around 1/6th of the time, and get three-bet and have a hand that can call a three-bet around 1/10th of the time. In a given year playing a full schedule of live tournaments, I might play 20 hands that fit this criteria.[If the estimates are accurate, that would take 84,000 hands. -ed] So while it’s not a spot I should know perfectly, it’s a perfect bread and butter spot.

In the first bread and butter hand, we talked about the correct c-betting strategy and continuing vs. a probe bet after checking back the flop— a spot where the pot is small and each individual error doesn’t cost too much, but one that occurs so often that mistakes can cumulatively be rather expensive. Today, we are looking at a pot that has already gotten pretty big enough that any bread and butter error I make facing a c-bet could be expensive. A different class of bread and butter from #227, but one that is just as important.

Super High Roller Series Cyprus Event #1 $25,000 NLH
200k Starting Stack (1k/2k/2k) (SB/BB/BBA). Registration is Open

I am UTG7 (200k) and make it 4.5k with J♠️T♠️, it folds to Roman Hrabec (200k) CO who makes it 16k, I call.

Flop (37k): K♥️9♣️5♦️: I check, Roman bets 13k, I fold.

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