RERUN: POTD #149 $200k Invitational: I Miss A Chance to be a Hero

I fold queen high on the river and regret it later.

It seems that my most liked POTD posts are my earliest posts, while many of my most read posts are my more recent posts. Obviously, this means that the POTD is in decline and it’s no longer as good as the golden days of April 2025. Seriously, I think what’s actually happening is the posts that have been up for a longer period of time are more likely to have been read in full by paid subscribers who have read the whole post and give it a “like". So if you are not a paid subscriber, you should become one so you can read full posts, which you will “like”. Today’s post is one of my most liked, paywalled posts of recent vintage— those are a lot of qualifiers, but I just reread the post and it’s a good one. At the conclusion of the post there will be a #onemorething and a video of me analyzing the hand that I shared with Premium Subscribers in the Discord channel. If you’d like to become a Premium Subscriber you can do so here or you can pay for an hour of private coaching with me and contact me at any of the methods outlined here.

One of the first lessons I learned about playing poker was, you should only bet if you’re getting better hands to fold or worse hands to call. It’s good advice, but like all simple advice, it’s not perfect and has plenty of exceptions. Sometimes you bet because you have a range advantage and your entire range bets; sometimes you bet to deny equity; sometimes you bet because your opponent is over-folding. However, when you’re playing a hand, it can often be helpful to think of your hand as a bluff or a value bet— the problem is, sometimes your hand changes categories within a hand or even within a street. You might value bet KK on QJT32 and then use your straight blockers as a bluff once you get check-raised. You might bluff the turn with a draw, then hit it and have a value bet on the river.

Today’s hand was an unusual hand, but one I felt was appropriate to pair with POTD #147, a hand where Punnat led the turn in a spot I didn’t think he should have. In today’s hand, Punnat is the one facing a BB lead as I check-called the flop and led the turn— was it a value bet? No. Was it a bluff? Sort of. Then I missed the river and had a decision to make: Should I bluff or not? I decided to give up, faced a river bet, and snap-folded. I was so focused on determining if I should bluff the river, that I ignored a key criteria of my hand. I actually had a pretty good bluff catcher, but my cards had hit the muck before I even considered calling a bet. I don’t think my river fold cost me $200k, but the poker gods punished me for quickly folding, Punnat coolered me for the rest of my chips within an orbit.

Triton Cyprus $200K NLH Coin Rivet Invitational
(2.5k/5k/5k) (SB/BB/BBA) 300k Starting stack. Registration is still open.
The Pro and VIP fields have combined.

It folds to Punnat Punsri (291k) in the CO and he makes it 10k, Mustapha Kanit and Ramin Hajiyev cover Punnat and fold, I (148.5k) call in the BB with Q♥️J♦️.

Flop (27.5k) K♥️8♠️7♦️: I check, Punnat bets 8k, I call.

Turn (43.5k) 7♣️: I lead 11k, Punnat calls.

River (65.5k) A♦️: I check Punnat bets 33k, I fold.

What I Was Thinking

I thought with half a starting stack in an invitational, I should be playing a close to cEV strategy. I thought the flop was a close decision, but QJ high would mostly continue and mix check-raise and call. The 7 turn seemed very good for my range, so I thought I would have a high-frequency turn lead and played a small block with most of my range. I thought my river bluffs would come from hands that weren’t ahead of hands like JT and T9, and mostly from hands that didn’t interact with his range at all like 65 and 54, so I checked. My turn bluff failed and I didn’t bluff the river, so once he bet, I did what one normally does with a bluff and check-folded.

What I Got Wrong

My preflop defend is the standard play. I can generally call a small c-bet with queen-jack high on the flop, but it’s such a close decision that the fact I am facing a 8k (29% pot) bet, as opposed to even a 7k (25% pot) bet, is significant enough that it pushes my hand into being a fold. Technically, I really want the Qc here, because on average he bets his small size on the flop with KQ with the Qc more often than with other queens, but I doubt Punnat or anyone else is playing with that level of precision. In an invitational, close to late reg ending, with the ability to rebuy and half a starting stack, I think erring on the side of making loose plays to double up or bust is fine. My turn lead is fine; I lead 60% of the time with range, and every hand mixes some leads, sometimes with a big polar size and sometimes with a small block size. However, QJ is one of the lowest-frequency leads of my no-pair, no draw hands. The reason: I don’t fold out better hands. A9+ pure defends; A6-A2 often raise or pick a different c-bet size on the flop. Once I arrive at the river, I have a pure give-up; my most common bluffs are missed straight draws with a 6,5,4 in them. 54 is a better bluff than JT, because 54 loses to JT and does not block JT. So my give-up is good. However, once I check and face a half-pot bet, his most common value bets are Ax, specifically AQ and AJ, and QJ blocks those two value bets. His bluffs are T9, 96, 65, 54, so I don’t interact with his bluffs and beat them all. If you face a half-pot bet, block value, unblock bluffs, and never lose to a bluff, you need to call. My call is making a lot of money; I am facing a 6.5bb bet into a 13bb pot and my call is making 0.8bbs. If he ever bluffs JT, calling is making even more money. I need to call

Types of Errors
Playing on auto pilot

Grade

Folding queen high on the river is usually a good poker play, but as I mentioned in the introduction, there are exceptions to every rule. Had I just folded the river, I still think this hand would have been poorly played by me, but how I got to the river was also not great. My flop call and turn lead were both fine, but are at best low-frequency mixes that don’t lose EV and are more likely than not losing plays. Then there is the mindset element of this hand. I found a turn lead and considered bluffing the river, but did not even consider calling a bet. The only reason I looked this hand up was to check my flop and turn play, so it was quite a surprise to see that the river was not just a call, but a pretty clear one. If I’d played the flop and turn better, and I’d thought about calling the river before folding, I’d give myself a forgiving grade, but since I did not, today’s punt gets a

C-

POTD #149 ⁠onemorething

Leading on board pairs, like leading on low card flops is something that makes sense as a poker player, but is also overdone. There are times where you get to lead because you have a range advantage. In today’s hand I have a range advantage, but I only have 55%, I also have a trips advantage, 18.7% to 6.6%. However I have a full house and quads disadvantage. So Punnat has trips or better 12.4% of the time and I have trips or better 21.3% of the time and his average trips or better hand is stronger than mine. My trips or better hands have 90.6% equity, his have 93.8% equity. We have top pair a similar amount of the time, but his kicker plays more often than mine. Nevertheless I have a range and nuts advantage, so why don’t I pure lead? One way to look at this is to look at specific hands, Hands like 22, AT high, certain Q8 combos make more EV checking than betting. If you’re on the river, it’s easy to understand that you don’t bet everything even if you have a range advantage or a nuts advantage, some hands in your range have properties that lead to passive play. The same is true on the flop or on the turn. An early lesson one learns in poker is to think of your range, not your hand, but the more I’ve played I’ve realized a well played hand involves knowing your range so you can fit your hand within that range and overall strategy, but it’s still very important to know how to play your hand.