POTD #131 Monte Carlo Monday: Triton $200k Invitational Near the Money

In a key pot, I should have taken the wheel, but ended up in the passengers seat.

Punt is an evocative verb; when you hear about someone punting, you usually imagine them rifling all their chips into a massive pot or smugly folding the winner. However, the punts that can be most costly to one’s games are punts that are only noticeable to a discerning eye. In poker, one can play passively, meaning they call and rarely raise, but they can also be passive as in the opposite of active. They are a passenger in the hand and take the standard line instead of finding an unusual play that is correct. As a poker player, you internalize a million heuristics, such as “you often check with bottom pair after defending the BB,” but there are always exceptions, and finding those exceptions is part of what makes a player world class. When you are an active participant in a hand, you are more likely to find those plays.

If I were 12-tabling online, today’s hand is one that I would not remember and certainly not one I would think was worthy of digging into for future study, but when you play live poker, you might be dealt 300 hands a day, you might play 75 of them, and you might have a close or interesting decision in 10 of them. Every decision feels so important, especially as you are approaching the money of a $200k. A lot is made of the pace of play in SHRs, and this hand is a good example of why the play can be so slow; you have 30 seconds to use all your brain power and hope that, if it’s required, you can find a non-standard line. Some people use the full clock to balance their timing, but others are focused and persistent; they’re using all the time allocated to them in the hopes they can find a play they’d otherwise miss. Today’s Monte Carlo Monday looks at a hand from a secondary TV table that was not streamed. I forget how much time I used on the turn, but I reverted to the heuristics I’ve honed over years of playing poker instead of searching for an unconventional move that might have won me the pot.

Triton Monte-Carlo 2023 - Event #1 $200K NLH Triton Invitational
(SB/BB/BBA) (10k/15k/15k) 22/79 Remaining. 13 Cash. 300k Starting Stack

It folds to Mario Mosbock (1.789M) who makes it 30k on the button, Juan Pardo Dominguez (1.984M) calls in the SB, I (230k) call 9♦️4♦️ in the BB.

Flop (105k) Q♣️J♠️8♣️: Juan Pardo checks, I check, Mario checks.
Turn (105k) 4♥️: Juan Pardo checks, I check, Mario bet 60k, Juan Pardo folds, I call.
River (225k) 5♠️: I check, Mario put me all-in for my final 140k, I fold.