POTD #193 A Toy Game Hand for the Holiday Season

I gave myself a lump of coal

I already had Leading Week on POTD, where I wrote about times I was passive out of position on one street before leading the following street when the board ran out in my favour, but today’s hand inspired me to go back and write even more about leading in unconventional spots. When you are searching for unusual leads, the most important questions to ask yourself are: How will my opponent respond to a lead, and how will they respond to a check?

If you defend the BB, your opponent c-bets 75% pot from early position on JhTh3c, and the turn is the Ah, the BB often leads. However, the way many c-betters play that spot is to assume the ace is good for their range and to keep barreling. There is no reason to lead into a player who will bet a lot themselves. Similarly, if there is a turn card that is actually good for your opponent’s range, but they think it’s good for your range, leading with a strong hand might make some sense, but you don’t need to lead a middle of range hand because your range does. A good way to check how necessary adding a leading strategy is to your range is to look at the in-position player’s response if out of position is not allowed to lead. If IP totally shuts down vs. OOP checking dark in the solver, and you suspect IP will shut down in your hand, you should start leading. If you think IP is a maniac who will keep betting anyways but might slow down if you lead, let them keep blasting.

When you aren’t sure how your opponent plays, looking at the solver helps. You’ll never be able to perfectly mimic the solver strategy for leading, and if you’re struggling to determine what spots are worth learning leading strategies for, here is my suggestion: Force yourself to check and look at how extreme IP’s response is. If they go from betting one-third pot 60% of the time to 45% of the time, it’s probably not worth learning the leading strategy on this board. If they go from betting one-third pot 60% of the time to pure checking, you have to implement leads, because your opponent can capture far too much EV by checking back too often. In today’s hand, I had several opportunities to lead and didn’t take any of them, but that wasn’t even my biggest mistake of the hand.

WSOP 2023 Paradise Event #7: $50,000 Super High Roller
(10k/25k/25k) (SB/BB/BBA) 300k Starting Stack

It folds to Mike Watson (covers me) who makes it 55k in the HJ, it folds to me (625k) in the BB who calls T♥️9♠️.

Flop (145k) 8♣️7♠️6♥️: I check, Mike bets 90k, I call.
Turn (325k) 5♦️ I check, Mike checks.
River (325k) 4♥️: I check, Mike checks. I win because I have the nuts and he checked back the river.