POTD #106 Monte Carlo Mondays Continue with a "Classic Coinflip"

With 15 left in the 2023 Triton Main Event, I flop a big draw and face a big bet

Last week, I wrote that Monte Carlo Monday reached its peak when I wrote about my bustout hand from Triton Monte Carlo 2024 Event #12: $150K NLH, but I did not write that it had concluded. I’ve been going to Monte Carlo to play poker since 2009, so I have plenty more hands to write about, but most of them will be hands that I’ve determined are less punty than POTD #101.

Different poker series structure their series differently. Online poker festivals mostly have one- or two-day-long tournaments, are weeks long, and usually begin their main event on the final weekend of the series. The WSOP is such a long festival that it peppers different high-profile tournaments throughout the month, but it ends with the WSOPME. EPTs are often 13-day festivals with 7-day-long main events, so it’s necessary that the Main Event begins early in the festival. Triton’s series normally follow a linear progression of starting with smaller-buyin tournaments and slowly raising the stakes until you reach the main event. In theory, this should generate bigger prize pools, as people who have big scores in the early tournaments can parlay their newfound winnings into the higher-stakes tournaments. Occasionally people lose so much in the early tournaments that they go home early, but that’s rare. Triton Monte Carlo 2023 was an outlier for Triton, because some notable VIPs wanted to play the invitational and the main event, but had a conflict near the end of October, so they reversed the schedule to let them all play the highest-stakes tournaments.

If you’re stuck a lot on a trip, some unproductive thoughts might enter your head when playing the final tournaments of a trip, like “What place do I need to come in to get unstuck?” In 2023, Event #3 was one of the highest-stakes tournaments, and I got ITM with an average-ish stack and I was already thinking the other way. “If I win a couple of all-ins, I might guarantee that I finish this trip in the black with a dozen tournaments remaining.” Then I flopped a combo draw and faced a big bet, not from the inscrutable Vladimir Korzinin, but from long time SHR regular Matthias Eibinger, and once again I got all-in and lost. And once again, I had to ask myself, could I have done something different?

Triton Poker Monte-Carlo 2023 - Event #3 $125K NLH Main Event
We are ITM 15 left. 23/135 Cashed. (30k/60k/60k) (SB/BB/BBA) 250k Starting Stack

It folds to Matthias Eibinger (1.84M) in the CO who makes it 125k, Leon Sturm (1.3M) folds OTB, Daniel Dvoress (2.9M) folds in the SB, I (1.38M) call in the BB with 4♠️3♠️

Flop (340k) 9♠️7♠️3♣️: I check, Matthias bets 240k, I make it 540k, Matthias shoves, I call. Matthias has A♥️9♣️ and I lose on the 4♣️ turn A♣️ river runout.