POTD #111 Monte Carlo Monday: Triton $50k vs Isaac Haxton and Axel Hallay

I choose a nonsensical size on the river

For a newsletter with a lot of technical analysis, the POTD grading scale is not technical at all. A reason for this is, when I put on my grading hat, I need to balance grading my process vs. grading my results. Let’s say I bluffed a pure check on the river, but my opponent folded versus me. How should the following criteria change my grade? My opponent had a worse hand than mine and folded. I incorrectly thought I had a pure bluff in equilibrium. I picked the bet size the solver uses with range. I had a live read that my opponent was weak and they hero-folded to me. It’s hard to answer, if any given play was good or lucky?

If I wanted to simply put a number on the size of my error, a solver could do that for me, but then there would be a bias made towards mistakes in big pots— a 3bb mistake in a 200bb pot is not all that big. Measuring the size of the mistake as a percentage of the size of the pot gets rid of that problem, except then a lot of this blog might be me making a bad river call in limp-check, check-check, check-check, bet-call hands blind vs. blind. That’s not very satisfying either. Should I create some sort of proprietary Punt-O-Meter that splits the difference between the two? I could, but is that really all that much better than me sizing up a hand and declaring something a C-? I don’t think so.

One reason I prefer the more feel-based grading system is that it can account for other factors, such as: How does my play work as part of an overall strategy? Was I thinking about the hand correctly? Or am I likely to make the same mistake again? Let’s say I limped 72o UTG— this can never be that costly a play; at most it loses 1bb. However, it’s a clear mistake that can’t be justified and that I am likely to repeat. If I attempted to implement this play into part of a logically consistent strategy, it would mean I’d be limping 100% UTG, which would mean at an 8 handed table, I’d be making a 0.5bb mistake every 16 hands or so, which would cost me at least 3bb/100.

Sometimes, I play a hand that I feel is like someone asking me to buy “two plus two apples,” only for me to come home with five apples, or three apples and a pear. Was my failure in comprehension all that costly? No. Was it clearly wrong in a way that’s preventable and made me feel like an idiot? Absolutely. People have asked me how I am able to recall small pots I’ve played for this blog— well, sometimes I do something so stupid that I can recall the sense memory of blundering, even if the error was not that costly financially. This is especially true when it’s a hand where I am thinking very hard. I am not just a punter, but an observer of punts, and one of my favourite types of punts to witness is when a smart person, locked in deep thought, confidently makes a play that makes me question if that person is even capable of having deep thoughts. In today’s hand, a three-way pot involving Isaac Haxton, when I got called, I felt immediate shame that I had to table such a poorly played hand in front of Ike. Read more about it below.

Also if you also are interested in not disappointing Ike you can sign up for GTOLab use code: POTD for $25 off any product. It can be used multiple times.

Triton Monte-Carlo 2023 - Event #9 $50K NLH 8-Handed
(SB/BB/BBA) (5k/10k/10k) 200k Starting Stack

Isaac Haxton (400k) makes it 22k in the LJ, Axel Hallay (400k) calls on the button, I (110k) call 9♥️3♥️ in the BB.

Flop (81k) 9♣️6♣️5♦️: I check, Ike checks, Axel checks

Turn (81k) 3♣️: I check, Ike checks, Axel checks

River (81k) J♦️ : I bet 20k, Ike folds, Axel calls and mucks