POTD #122 Pocket Queens In a Jeju $50k

Launching a POTD x QQ partnership

NB: I am doing an AMA on r/poker. It starts tomorrow at 1pm EST, but is open for questions now. You can participate here

Punt of the Day is always looking to grow and add subscribers, and one partnership I’m happy to announce is the one we’ve made with Pocket Queens. Pocket Queens is a global all-women’s poker community and study group that “[welcomes] any woman passionate about poker with open arms” they do not take fees or advertise and they meet once a week on Zoom, but also have weekly strategy lectures, an active discord community, a mentorship program, an online poker league and much more. When I was approached by Pocket Queens co-founder Victoria Livschitz about collaborating, I was happy to do so. The gender gap in poker is large; it’s a boys club, and getting more women to play is one of the fastest ways to grow the game. Poker is coded as a male activity in a way that no other card or board game is, because it’s linked to gambling, which is linked to a specific type of “Saturdays Are For The Boys”¹ type of male debauchery. In The Simpsons, Homer hosts a home game for the regulars at Moe’s and they play poker and drink Duffs at the kitchen table next to his car hole.² The game of poker is a lot of things for a lot of people and changing how the public thinks about poker, does not mean that bro-y homes game will cease to exist. Just as some people like cash games and some prefer tournaments, some like debaucherous home games and some like poker as a serious mindsport, there is room for all types of game, but on a micro and macro-level every poker game is always looking for new blood and poker should be exploring all untapped markets. Rebranding poker as mindsport for all will require undoing years of social conditioning and increasing gender equality in a card game (or anything) is not an easy thing to do, but just because something is hard does not mean it should not be done.

There have been all sorts of (stupid) gender-essentialist arguments made to explain why poker is male-dominated; they tend to be an observation followed by a tautology. Women rarely play poker, therefore they must be biologically not interested in playing poker. If you disagree and think that women, by virtue of their biology, will always be uninterested in poker and will always be bad poker players, then from a selfish perspective, you should be trying to get as many women playing poker as possible in your games, unless you care more about proving a point than making money. In spite of the social and gender norms surrounding poker, there are women from various backgrounds who like poker and play it regularly. I highly doubt every woman who would like to play poker is currently playing poker, so it behooves the poker industry to be a more welcoming space to this mostly untapped player pool.

Yesterday we wrote about a single-raised pot button vs BB on T86 rainbow, today we are writing about a board button vs BB on T86 two-tone, unfortunately I don’t have a T86 monotone board to write about tomorrow, but in the meantime I’ll celebrate the launch of my collaboration with Pocket Queens with a hand where I had pocket queens and made some errors.

Triton Poker Jeju 2024 - Event #8 50K NLH 7-Handed
(1k/2.5k/2.5k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack

It folds to me (189k) on the button, I make it 6.5k with Q♠️Q♣️, the SB folds and Yauheni Tsiareshchanka calls the BB.

Flop (16.5k) T♠️8♦️6♣️: Yauheni checks, I bet 10k, Yauheni calls

Turn (36.5k) A♠️: Yauheni checks, I check

River (36.5k) 4♠️: Yauheni bets 65k, I call and lose to K♠️8♠️

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What I Was Thinking

At a level where the SB is less than half of the BB, I likely thought way too hard on what size to open on the button. Normally 80bb deep, you want to raise more than 2.4x, but 2.8x seemed too large with a 0.4bb SB, so I chose 2.6x. On the flop, I thought my hand would be a pure bet, because it’s often the best hand but vulnerable to giving free cards and can’t always value bet the river unimproved. I thought Yauheni would pair the turn often enough that I’d want to slow down, and that my hand wasn’t strong enough to keep value betting, so I checked. On the river, I figured that a bet of this size was representing a flush; I’d almost always bet the turn with two pair, sets, and straights, and I’d rather call with a hand that blocks a flush like QsQc than a stronger absolute value hand like A4. So I tanked, called, and mucked when he turned over the nuts.

What I Got Wrong

I spent a lot of time debating over my preflop size, and ultimately it doesn’t matter all that much, but I picked the right size. On the flop, I don’t use a small bet size with range and QQ is a pure bet, but the overpairs that are more protected against overcards like AA and KK mix checks. The turn is where I start losing control of the hand. When I bet the flop and am called, but before the turn rolls off, I have 46% range-vs.-range equity, and QQ has 72% equity. Once the As rolls off, my range equity increases to 52%— I have a large top pair advantage— and QQ still has 69% equity. QQ almost always bets the turn for the button, and it prefers betting with the Qs, because I get check-raised significantly less often with the Qs dead. QJ and Q9 with a flush draw or just one spade are some of the BB’s most common check-raise bluffs. Checking the turn doesn’t lose any EV from me, but if I check a hand that is supposed to bet 90% of the time and didn’t roll a low number or have a good exploitative reason to deviate, it means my overall strategy is off.

On the river, Yauheni is not “supposed to” bet more than 150% pot with range, but he did. So when someone bets a size they’re not supposed to, you need to figure out why they did it and what it means. The Qs is a nice card to have because it blocks some flushes he could have, but upon further review, it’s a bad card for me to have. He could have KQ, QJ, Q9, Q8, Q6 of spades for five total combos, but he also could have QJ or Q9 offsuit with the queen of spades. He could also have QJ or Q9 offsuit with a lower spade, and when he does, he will often be bluffing the Qc, my other card. If I wanted to call with a one pair hand that blocks a flush, I’d be much better off calling hands like K6, J8, or QT with a spade, because Yauehini will never bluff with a pair himself. He’s overbetting almost 2x pot, and having one good card is not enough to bluff catch with; I need two good cards, and I actually have one neutral card and one bad card. The other thing is, while I rarely have a straight or flush on the river myself— only 5% of the time— I also almost never have a set or two pair. Which means Yauheni can bet big on the river with hands as weak as two pair, sets, and straights. Having a pair in my hand and blocking potential overbets from two pair or a set is a characteristic I want in a bluff catcher.

So in theory, I am not supposed to call because my blockers aren’t that valuable, and I’d rather have a pair that doesn’t interact with his bluffs and blocks sets and two pairs, but there is another problem with my call. He almost always checks the river or bets small with a flush, because he wants to try and win all of my chips, not just a third of my remaining stack. I have bad blockers and a hand that’s supposed to fold in theory, and I’m against a betting range that’s a little too greedy; my hand has to be a fold by a lot.

Types of Error
Calling station
Blocker error

Grade
I started the hand with two good decisions, then made a dicey, but defensible turn play, but things really went off the rails on the river. When you’re playing a tough opponent and they pick a bet size the solver is not supposed to pick, it’s your job to play detective and ask yourself why did they pick this odd size. In this case he overbet for value with a hand that was supposed to be a pure check and I called a hand for 178% pot that is supposed to pure fold vs 100% pot. Calling the river with a hand that beats all your opponent’s bluffs can never be that big a mistake, but with the Qs and Qc in my hand, I am facing a bluff a lot less often than I am supposed to and this call could be losing as much as 7bbs, which means today’s hand is getting a

D+

1. I did not watch Barstool Sports’s foray into poker, but from the sounds of it, I could do Punt of the Day: every single hand played on that stream

2. Referencing bits from The Simpsons is also a classic male activity.