POTD #165 FT Friday: WPT Online with $1,000,000 For First

The two chip leaders to start the final table clash.

Tomorrow, I will be doing my final bit of baseball writing for the foreseeable future, but one thing that makes the Blue Jays’ heartbreaking losses to the Los Angeles Dodgers so gutting is that the results of the series could be changed if one of several things happened differently. To segue this into poker, losing a big pot is never fun; sometimes there are several counterfactuals within an individual hand. “If only I three-bet preflop. What if the river was the 2s instead of the 2c? What if they bet the flop?” Losing a big pot is never fun, but squandering a chip lead is even worse: It usually requires a series of hands, each with their own hypotheticals and alternative universes, where if any one of the hands played out a little differently, you’d still be alive.

In 2020, Party Poker ran an online $3k WPT that had over 2130 entries. I came into the final table 2/8 and had 60bbs in a tournament with 45 minute levels. I was guaranteed $66k, but in such a well structured and deep-stacked final table, I was already eyeing up the first prize, which was just over a million dollars. I was prepared to use my chip lead and my experience to methodically work my way through such a slowly-structured and deep-stacked final table. The second hand of the final table a short stack doubled up; the third hand of the final table I had AK in the small blind and Viktor Ustinov had QQ in the BB, we got all-in, and I lost and tumbled down the leaderboard to 5th place. Losing a big flip is unfortunate, but it happens; what proceeded to happen was something I documented in a two-part Run It Once Video¹, , which Elite members can watch here and here. If you aren’t a Run It Once Elite member, you can sign up using code: POTD for 10% off.

I still had a healthy and playable stack, but despite having several spots where it felt like I could have won chips and regained my table position, I continued to miss flops and make second-best hands. While short stacks kept winning all-ins and surviving, I ended up finishing in an extremely disappointing 7th place. I do not have regrets about getting all-in preflop with AK, but there were several thornier hands I played at the final table that I did not have the tools to fully investigate in 2020, so today, like Isiah Kiner-Falefa and the Toronto Blue Jays, I will ask myself: What could I have done differently?

WPT #20 Online Championship Final Table (125k/250k/30k) (SB/BB/ANTE)
8th: $66k, 7th: $104k, 6th: $151k, 5th: $221k, 4th: $318k, 3rd: $473k, 2nd: $741k, 1st: 1.04M

It folds to Christian Jeppsson (23.938M) who makes it 550k in the CO, it folds to me (11.202M) in the BB who calls with 9♥️9♦️.

Flop (1.465M) 6♣️5♥️3♦️: I check, Christian bets 615k, I call.

Turn (2.695M) 8♦️: I check, Christian bets, 1.771M, I call.

River (6.238M) 9♣️: I check, Christian bets 3.567M, I call and lose to Q♥️7♥️.