POTD #163 I Try to Bluff Fedor Holz

Always a terrifying proposition

One of the first POTDs, POTD #4 to be exact, was about a hand I played on a monotone board. Monotone boards are hard to play for a lot of reasons (they are also the subject of my latest Run It Once Video, sign up using code: POTD for 10% off), but the biggest reason is they are rare, so people don’t study them and know how to play them. Monotone boards represent 5% of all flops; by comparison, paired boards, which also have many unique properties, represent 17% of flops. You will rarely play on monotone flops playing poker, so you don’t learn how to play them perfectly. You will also play opponents who will rarely play them and don’t know how to play them perfectly, so you will develop counter-strategies to exploit your opponent’s poor play and they will do the same, so you never even really come close to reaching an equilibrium.

Even with modern study tools, if you study a spot without filtering for board textures— so just, for example, “CO vs. BU single-raised pot 30bb deep”— you will get much better at playing J86 rainbow than 932 monotone. You need to consciously decide, “I am going to study monotone boards, figure out how to play them, and hope my opponent is playing something somewhat close to a solver strategy and that my strategy will represent a reasonable counter-strategy.” In June 2020, I would say Fedor Holz and I were two very good poker players who studied using modern tools, but were probably not particularly proficient at playing monotone boards. Read below to see how he navigated a monotone board with a pretty good hand, while I tried to do something tricky with a very bad hand.

GGPoker HH

June 28th 2020 GG High Rollers Blade Mulligan
(80/160/25) 7 Handed. 10k Starting Stack. Registration is Open.

Fedor Holz (16,720) raises UTG7 to 320, it folds to me on the button (8700) who calls with A♥️5♥️, everyone else folds.

Flop (1,055) T♠️9♠️2♠️: Fedor checks, I bet 240, Fedor calls.
Turn (1,535) Q♥️: Fedor checks, I bet 507, Fedor calls.
River (2,549) 8♠️: Fedor checks, I bet 1,672, Fedor calls with K♠️J♦️.