POTD #13 Bluffing Erik Seidel in the Triton London Main Event

Fool rushes in (I am the fool not Erik)

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing” is a quote I’ve heard dozens of times, but I never knew who coined it. I have little knowledge in many areas and in researching this quote, I learned that Alexander Pope originated the phrase, but that the original phrase is actually “A little learning is a dangerous thing”. Another prominent thinker, Phil Galfond recently tweeted a sentiment that concurred with Pope’s famous misquoted maxim “Most players trying to play ‘GTO’ are actually playing a distorted version that's easier to exploit than their old game. “

One thing that solvers excel at is recognizing every characteristic of a hand. After millions of hands of self-training, solvers give outputs that recognize how often cards in your hand are in your opponents range at each node and how your range plays on 47 different turns (and 2162 turn/river combinations). Poker is a human game and sometimes looking at a solver output can feel like trying to read the mind of an algorithm. A CFR algorithm does not have a mind to read beyond trying to minimize EV loss. Humans looking at outputs search for patterns and heuristics they can apply to their own games, but sometimes a little learning can lead to the biggest mistakes.

Someone who has played 100 hands of NLHE might see K♠️6♠️ on J♦️8♦️4♠️ and think “I have three to a flush and three to a straight”, a person who played 10,000 hands might think “I missed, I have nothing”, but a person who has played a million hands and looked at solver outputs might think “I have an overcard to the jack, block KJ and have backdoor straight and flush draws, these sorts of hands often bluff.” In poker knowledge is better than being ignorant, but in any given hand there’s a thin line between having useful knowledge and dangerous knowledge

2023 Triton London $125k Main Event Event #11.

Level 14: 10k/20k/20k (SB/BB/BBA) Starting Stack 250k. 40 left. 27 cash.

Hand History: Triton App: There’s a reporting error in the screenshot. Mikita folded preflop and there is 40k too much in the pot listed postflop

Hand History: My Poker Coaching Replayer

It folds to me in the hijack and I raise K♠️6♠️ to 40k off 505k, Erik Seidel calls in the CO off 910k, Mikita folds OTB off 310k, Lun Loon folds SB off 760k, Isaac Haxton folds BB off 480k. Heads up to the flop

Flop (130k) J♦️8♦️4♠️ I bet 60k, Erik calls

Turn (250k) T♠️ I bet 100k, Erik calls

River (450k) T♣️ I bet 300k leaving 5k back, Erik calls with 9♦️9♠️

What was I thinking during the hand?

Even with 40 people left and 27 cash, preflop is a standard open. I started the hand with around two starting stacks and could not fold into the money and I’m opening into mostly short and medium stacks that can’t put too much pressure on my shortstack. On the flop I thought my hand was too weak to check or check-raise, but too strong to check-fold. So I thought betting was the best option. I can get better hands to fold right away and I’ll turn draws that I can two-barrel. I turned a flush draw, just what I wanted. Once again, I thought my hand was too weak to check-call or check-raise all-in and too weak to open shove so I decided to bet small again, hoping to see a cheap river and get some folds. On the river, I felt most hands I’d want to bluff with would have some bad blocker effects, it’s not like I’m bluffing A♥️2♥️ here, However I thought bluffing spades was preferable to bluffing diamonds because I blocked Eric’s nut front door flush draws and that I should probably be bluffing anything that can’t beat AQ on the river.

What I Got Wrong

A good rule of thumb is when you raise preflop and the player on your direct left calls and has position on you, you should check to them on the flop. I globally check the flop around 90% of the time and carve out a small betting range of strong one pair hands, straight and flush draws and the occasional no pair no draw bluff. The problem is my hand is not good enough, it cannot turn an open ender, it does not have two over cards to a jack, it does not even have two overcards to an eight and it blocks almost none of his flop continues. On the turn the board is so connected, the only size the solver uses is all-in. If I have a hand like AJ or AA I shove and I pair that with combo draws. I can’t shove a hand like Ks6s on the turn because too much of his range are draws that have me dominated right now, like A♦️T♦️ or 9♠️8♠️. Once I bet this hand on the flop my turn size is okay, it’s not a size used with range, but it probably doesn’t lose much EV and often allows me to see a river for cheap. On the river my bluff is fine, AQ should be a reasonably large amount of Erik’s range and bluffing anything that loses to AQ and doesn’t block AQ is fine.

Types of Errors

Range Error
Too much money going in the pot

Grade

As a short stack, nearing the money of a tournament you want to play tighter and get involved in fewer pots with marginal hands.I had a hand in the bottom 5% of my range on the flop and declared it “too strong to check-fold” then I ran an ambitious bluff vs a legend of the game and got called by second pair. Doing more Alexander Pope research, I learned that he coined the phrase “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”, which was the title of a movie about a man who gets his memory wiped to erase the pain of a breakup. Do I wish I could erase this hand from my memory? Pope also wrote “To err is human, to forgive divine”. I erred in this hand, but I don’t think Pope was talking about forgiving oneself, so I won’t do that here. C-