POTD #117 AK Week Part 2: Bluffing Trueteller in a WCOOP SHR

The biggest online tournament of all time.

The first Super High Roller I ever played was the PCA $100k in January 2015. PIOSolver was released in March 2015, and while private solvers existed as early as 2013, most of the early solver adopters played high-stakes cash games, particularly heads-up. So when PokerStars announced they’d be running the "largest-ever buy-in online tournament" as part of the 2015 World Championship of Online Poker. I marked it down as a tournament to play. At the time, the best cash and tournament players' skill sets didn’t overlap much, and they rarely played versus each other. Tournament players were not using solvers or playing vs. people who used solvers; I remember the first time OTB_RedBaron overbet the turn versus me and I sat there with the nuts running through my timebank totally baffled as I did not know what to do¹.

This WCOOP Event presented an interesting opportunity for me, as most of my edge would come in later stages of the tournament, where my short stack and tournament games were strong, but there was enough value in the tournament early on that I did want to play from the start, even if I would often be the fourth-best deepstack player at the table. I didn’t remember much about the tournament (it took place 10 years ago and a belated congrats to Ben Tollerene for winning it), but when I rewatched my series on Run It Once where I reviewed my play, I got AK under the gun, saw Trueteller in the BB, and I began to remember today’s hand. “This is the hand where I bluffed off half my stack to Trueteller in the biggest online tourney of all-time.” Fortunately for you guys, I was in the middle of preparing AK Week and thought this would be a perfect Big Slick punt to include on Tuesday.

You can watch the video and hear my thought process at the time here (hand begins at 30:25). If you are not a subscriber to Run It Once and would like to watch this video, or my more recent, better videos, Sign up here and use code: POTD for 10% off any purchase.

2015 WCOOP-47 $50k NLHE

6 handed Sam (27,542) makes it 750 UTG with A♥️K♠️, it folds to Trueteller (52,125) who calls in the BB

Flop (1,890) J♦️9♥️8♣️: Trueteller checks, I bet 1400, he calls

Turn (4,690) Q♣️: Trueteller checks, I bet 2345, he calls

River (9,380) 4♠️: Trueteller checks, I bet 4,690, he calls with A♦️T♣️

Today’s post is this week’s free post. If you’d like to recieve more content like this please consider becoming a paid or unpaid subscriber. A monthly subscription is $10/month, an annual subscription is $100/year. A premium subscription is $300/month and private coaching starts at $600/hr, but comes with a free premium subscription to POTD. You can click the button below or read the POTD about page

What I Was Thinking
One unfortunate thing about writing about hands 10 years ago is much of “What I Was Thinking” I can no longer remember, but I did listen to my Run It Once Video (where I also watched and listened to me justify making an absolutely terrible fold with AA in the 5k next to the 50k), and here are the broad strokes of my 10-minute monologue. The flop favours my range and it’s dynamic, so I want to bet on the larger size. I don’t want to bet a large size on the turn because it’s hard to bluff when he can often have a straight, so half pot is an appropriate bet size. AK is a good hand to barrel on the turn because it can improve to a better hand vs. a straight. I’d mostly keep barreling with flush draws, including hands like Ac9c or AcJc, while occasionally betting sets and two pair, but I’d never bluff no pair no draw. On the river, I don’t have many hands to bluff with. I would want to give up with flush draws because they block his weakest continues. I’d want to value bet straights, and AK without a club is one of the few turn barrels I have without a club. It blocks AT and KT, so I want to bet it on the river, but I don’t want to bet much larger than half pot because I can never get a ten to fold.

What I Got Wrong

I’ve taken to skipping basic preflop decisions in this section, but in a 10-year-old hand, I made a lot of my mistakes, so I’ll start with a pat on the back. I open-raised AKo. That’s a good play. On the flop, I was probably pure c-betting with range, which seems like a reasonable play when you raise UTG and have 57% range vs. range equity, but it’s a mistake. This board is connected enough that I don’t want to bet everything; even a very high equity hand like AA starts feeling the heat if it gets check-raised, so I play some checks with range. When I bet, I mix a big bet (my size is fine) and a small bet (let’s say 25% to 33% pot), and as is often the case on boards where AK whiffs, AK mixes between all three options.

On the turn, I start my RIO monologue by saying, on a board like this I do not get to bet a big size. That is incorrect. My ideal turn size is 150% pot, and it’s KT, AT, some sets, some flush draws, some Kx and Ax with a nothing kicker, and yes, some AK, but mostly with a club. No matter what size constraints I give my flop or turn strategy, AK bets both the flop and the turn sometimes. The problem is not how I played my hand, but with my strategy. I’m pulling way too many of my turn bluffs from AK; I am not betting the turn enough with total air, partially because my preflop range is too tight– I don’t have K5-K7 suited in my preflop range— but also because I am not finding no-equity two-barrels. I didn’t mention 33-66, 5h4h, or As2s as hands I could bet the turn with, but the solver bets with them a lot. This means if the river is a club, ace, king, or ten, I will not have enough hands to bluff with on the river.

My turn and river sizing make sense, in that I don’t want to overbet into a straight that will never fold, and he has a straight around 30% of the time on the turn. However, we are deep enough that I can get straights to fold. If I bet 150% pot on the turn, a bare straight folds 12% of the time. When I shove the river, I also get a non-KT straight to fold around a third of the time. Even if I missed the turn overbet and bet half pot on the turn, if I then shove the river for 2.5x pot, I get a queen-high straight to fold 30% of the time. I don’t know if I could have gotten Trueteller to fold a straight in 2015, but it’s not impossible. The problem with my line is that I make life too easy for middle-of-range hands. When I bet 150% pot on the turn, two pair almost always folds. When I bet half pot, it never folds, and it is a reasonable bluff catcher on a blank river versus a half-pot bet. I thought I was bluffing cheaply in case I ran into a straight, but I’m actually making it so that I never get a straight to fold and I can get hero-called by hands that would fold on the turn. Granted, when my bluff doesn’t work, I do lose a lot more money, but believe it or not, the solver’s sizing choices and overall strategy with range are superior to what my 2015 instincts wanted me to do.

As played, the river bluff is generally fine. If I force myself to bet half pot on the turn, I do get some half-pot value bets with queen-high straights, and for bluffs, AK can overbet shove, bet half pot to target one or two pair, or check. One of the lessons of AK week is that, postflop, you often need to spread your AK high combos throughout many different parts of your range, and that remains true on the river.

Types of Error
Poor range strategy
Lack of creativity

Grade

This is a classic hand that looked fine in 2015, but once I looked closer, I could see all the holes in my overall strategy. Raising AK and three-barrelling it on a board where I have a gutshot to the nuts, no flush draw blockers, and no showdown on the river all seems reasonable, and it’s one of the most natural bluffs for me to have here. The problems are: My preflop range is too tight so I don’t have enough suited kings to bluff with, my flop strategy is off, my turn size loses EV, and I am not bluffing with enough no-equity combos to such an extreme degree that AK high might be my only bluff on the river. This all adds up to a

C

1. I ended up raising, incorrectly, thinking OTB was greedily overbetting vs. a tournament donk who he believed could never fold top pair, and he snap folded.