POTD #128 Winning Wednesdays: Blind vs Blind Blunder

A lot of alliteration against Daniel Dvoress

The recurring features on POTD have included Monte-Carlo Mondays, Final Table Fridays, AK Week, and a feature I have not yet come up with a name with, which I internally call “paired hands,” which are hands I played that resemble hands played by other people that I wrote about. Today I am naming another feature, which I stealthily launched in POTD #118: Winning Wednesdays (I am committed to using alliteration). The concept of Winning Wednesday is that I will write about non-final table hands from tournaments that I won. One of the beautiful things about winning a poker tournament is that, in hindsight, you would never change a thing. Every mistake you made, in some deterministic way, led to you winning the whole tournament.

If we view this attitude as a butterfly effect of sorts— a butterfly flaps its wings and there is a tornado weeks later— I am going to be focusing on things closer to the “butterfly flapping its wings” side of the spectrum than the “storm clouds are brewing” side. Since I am trying to focus on hands that I played in the early levels of tournaments I won, I am not sure if this feature will have legs. I have won 14 live poker tournaments and one of them was a four-handed tournament, my recall of early level hands in these tournaments is not great, and only one of these tournaments was streamed before we reached the final table. However, I have at least two hands to start with, from the same tournament vs. the same opponent— a 14 unique-entry, 21 total-entry 25k from Prague in 2022. A tournament so small there was no live reporting, but which I chopped it three-handed for less money than Steve O’Dwyer, but I won the three-way flip for the trophy, so I am happy to include it as part of the official launch of Winning Wednesday. Today’s series begins with a limp/check hand blind vs. blind in level 1, vs GTO Lab Pro Daniel Dvoress (If you’d like to subscribe to GTO Lab or buy a course from them, such as Daniel Dvoress and Nick Petrangelo’s Tournament Savagery. You can get $25 off by using code POTD). I lost the pot, but I did not lose my spirit. I would eventually bust this bullet, but I’d re-enter and rebound to secure a 4 buy-in profit on the day. Which is a very nice win in the grand scheme of things, but a very modest win given I won the tournament. On to the hand.

EPT Prague Event #27 €25000
(1k/1.5k/1.5k) (SB/BB/BBA) 100k Starting Stack

It folds to me in the SB, I limp J♣️9♠️, Dan Dvoress checks in the BB

Flop (4.5k) Q♠️T♦️2♥️: I bet 1.5k, Dvoress calls

Turn (7.5k) 6♠️: I bet 11k, Dvoress calls

River (29.5k) J♦️: I bet 3k, he raises 35k, I call and lose to J♥️T♣️