POTD #172 Leading Week Takes a Trip to Paris

A trois bet pot avec pocket huits

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how unconventional leads became the mark of a savvy player, but they also became the mark of, to borrow a term I am stealing from Nick Petrangelo, “fake solvers”: players whose play from a distance looks like a solver, but upon closer inspection is not. Leads often look like a good play from a savvy, studied player, but are they? Even for experts, it can be hard to tell. I am often impressed by players who find a tricky lead, but there is also a bias similar to the players who get a reputation for making great hero calls. If your poker gravity leads you to call rivers too often, you will have a lot of sick calls on your highlight reel. If you try to lead every time you think you might have a range advantage or a nuts advantage or think it’s a good exploit, you will inevitably find leads that work out in a given hand or that are correct solver plays.

Some players who find tricky leads are experts; some are just players who like to lead. Even if you do find a correct solver lead— let’s say you have a hand that leads 25% of the time and you lead 100% of the time. If you’re leading to consciously exploit your opponents over-folding or under-raising, that is a good adjustment; if you are leading 100% because you think the solver does, you are playing suboptimally. Players who lead too often lead when some criteria of the situation merit leading, but not all. They lead in situations that rhyme with a situation where one leads, but is not quite the same. However, I must admit that, at times, witnessing certain players leading too often has created a bias in my own game towards not leading enough. Sometimes my ego does not want my game to be bucketed into the “fake solver” category, so I pick the play I know can’t lose too much EV, checking, instead of reaching to find the best play in the given moment. In today and tomorrow’s post, we will look at hands where I missed some opportunities to lead, before looking at a hand where I overcorrected and found a lead that I should not have.

2024 EPT Paris € 25,000 No Limit Hold’em (Event #9)
Level 1 (500/1k/1k) (SB/BB/BBA) 100k Starting Stack. Registration is Open

I have 8♥️8♠️ and make it 2.5k UTG8, it folds to the HJ who makes it 8k, it folds back to me who calls.

Flop (18.5k) Q♠️4♦️2♠️: I check, HJ bets 9k, I call.

Turn (36.5k) A♠️: I check, HJ checks.

River (36.5k) 9♣️: I check, HJ bets 18k, I fold.