POTD #126 Monte Carlo Mondays: I Make Tim Adams Fold Top Pair

But was my play any good?

By my count, this is the 20th Monte-Carlo Monday, so in today’s introduction I figured I would start with a quick taxonomy of the hands I have written about. I won three hands where I failed to value bet the river or picked too small a size on the river. I had preflop punts where I went all-in with a bad hand, one where I just called with a good hand, and one where I folded a great hand. I bluffed with the best hand, and I bluffed with the wrong hand and was hero-called by the hand I was supposed to be bluffing with. I twice folded a mediocre draw when I was priced into call, got all-in with a bad draw that sucked out, got all-in with a great draw that whiffed, and got all-in with a pretty good draw where I turned the best hand before being rivered out of the tournament. I made three loose flop calls in three-bet pots and only managed to salvage one of them. I c-bet a size that was too large in hands vs. Fedor Holz, Xuan Tan, and Juan Pardo Dominguez. I failed to slowplay a hand vs. Alex Theologis and failed to fastplay a hand vs. Ren Lin. All in all, my record in these hands is 5-13-1; we are in Arizona Cardinals¹ territory over here.

In today’s hand, we look to improve our record by writing about a hand where I successfully check-raised the turn and got Tim Adams to fold top pair on stream. In another world without solvers, this hand looks like it could belong in a Best Of Sam Greenwood compilation, but the more I dug into this hand, the more I realized how poor my play was. Let’s dig into it.

Triton Monte-Carlo 2023 - Event #3 $125K NLH Main Event
(SB/BB/ANTE) (2K/4K/4K) Starting Stack 250k

It folds to Andrew Lichtenberger (263k) in the HJ who makes it 10k, Tim Adams (502k) calls on the button, I (256k) call 6♣️2♣️ in the BB

Flop (36k) J♣️5♥️3♣️: I check, Andrew checks, Tim bets 9k, I call, Andrew folds

Turn (54k) 9♦️: I check Tim bets 39k, I make it 105k, Tim folds K♦️J♥️