POTD #147 Punnat Punsri Trips up Samuel Mullur

At the Jeju II $50k Final Table

A fun feature of poker broadcasts is the “Mystery Hand.” They don’t show you the cards of one of the players in the hand, which allows you to play along with another player in the hand. I know what it’s like to play high-stakes tournaments, and even so, when I watch hole-cards-up streams, I often find that my armchair quarterbacking is biased by the fact that I know what people have. Even in “standard” spots, I find myself having thoughts such as “Maybe he could have folded AK there; it’s so obvious UTG has AA.” So the mystery hand can be a humbling reminder of how hard playing poker can be when you don’t know everyone’s cards.

Part of my collaboration with Octopi has involved watching FTs and picking out hands for them to run for me. They eventually will run all the hands at these FTs and add them to The Vault, but they have helped me get these newsletters out as quickly as possible by prioritizing the hands that I’ve hand-picked as hands with a punt in them. Obviously when I pick the hands I know what both players have— I’ve already seen them on stream— but I do not actually know the answer to the question “Did someone punt?” Sometimes the answers are easier than others. In POTD #110, I knew I punted because I had run it myself the day I played the hand. In POTD #139 and POTD #142, I was interested in both hands, but I did not know any punting had occured. However, my initial hunches were confirmed; Foxen put in too much money on the flop and turn and not enough on the river, and Ponakovs put in too much money on the river. Today’s hand jumped out to me as an interesting hand, a big and notable pot, but one where I was not 100% sure if either of the players had punted. I had some initial hunches, though, and you can read below to see if those hunches were validated by the Octopi sim.

Octopi Sim

And a reminder, if you’d like to subscribe to Octopi Poker to see more hands in The Vault. Sign up using code: PUNT for 50% off the 1st month for monthly subscriptions and 2 free months for annual subscriptions

Triton Jeju II Event #6 50k NLHE
(75k/150k/150k) (SB/BB/BBA) 6H Final Table
1st: 1.697M, 2nd: 1.15M, 3rd: 766K, 4th: 628K, 5th: 504K, 6th: 391K

Samuel Mullur (4.3M) raises to 300k UTG, Igor Yaroshevkyy (4.3M) folds, Brandon Wilson (9.1M) folds CO, Manuel Fritz (1.2M) folds OTB, Klemens Roiter (2.2M) folds SB, Punnat Punsri (7.9M) calls in the BB with J♦️3♦️

Flop (825k) J♣️9♥️2♣️: Punnat checks, Samuel bets 375k, Punnat calls

Turn (1.575M) J♠️: Punnat leads 550k, Mullur calls

River (2.675M) T♦️: Punnat leads 650k, Mullur raises to 2.775M leading 300k back, Punnat calls with J♦️3♦️ and beats A♥️K♠️