POTD #194 Jesse Lonis Hero Folds A Set

Ryuta Nakai represents the nuts, but does he have it?

Today’s post was initially scheduled to be a hand where I wrote about going “Addamo Mode” in the EPT London Main Event, and in the introduction I wrote:

When I covered the Punts of the WSOP ME, it did lead me down a path of self-reflection I often have when I look at the winners of big-field Main Events. Do the winners have some main event magic— some “White Magic” that mere mortals like myself cannot access?

Jesse Lonis— the current Global Poker Index #3, #2 in the 2025 Player of the Year, and self-proclaimed “gorilla”— has had a lot of success playing an exploitative non-solver game in high rollers, especially big-field high rollers and main events, so he is an adequate target for my anxieties. When I see him winning tournament after tournament making plays I’d never make, I have to ask myself “Am I doing something wrong?” Early in the Day 3 of the $25,000 WSOP Super Main Event, Jesse played a hand that instantly lit up poker social media and all of my group chats— my initial response was less than charitable, a simple “looooooooool.” This was in part because I thought Jesse played the hand poorly, but also because as a fan of poker, it’s a very funny hand. When a Japanese horse racing streamer successfully runs an animal bluff vs. a self-proclaimed gorilla, it’s hard not to laugh.

It’s a hand that I had pegged as a potential Hand of the Tournament, but unfortunately, Lonis and his opponent Ryuta Nakai both busted the tournament later in the day. So while this might end up being the most memorable hand of the tournament, it will not be in hindsight the most consequential hand of the tournament. Enough preamble, let’s get to the hand.

$25k WSOP Super Main Event D
(125k/250k/250k) Starting Stack 300k 150/2891 Remain. We are in the Money.

It folds to Jesse (18.7m) in the CO with K♦️K♠️ and he makes it 525k, it folds to Ryuta Nakai (15.1m) in the BB with Q♠️T♥️ who calls.

Flop (1.425m) A♠️K♣️8♥️: Ryuta checks, Jesse bets 375k, Ryuta calls.
Turn (2.175m) Q♣️: Ryuta checks, Jesse bets 1.625M, Ryuta calls.
River (5.425M) 3♦️: Ryuta checks, Jesse bets 5.5M, Ryuta makes it 11M, leaving 1.8 back, Jesse folds.

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What Jesse Thinks

Jesse shared his thoughts on the hand, his poker journey, and what he thinks of Shaun Deeb. You can read it all on his Twitter, but for those without Twitter, I’ll quote his thoughts on the hand below.

I’ve played against my opponent at a few stops recently. Every spot we played he was super cautious. Even in most spots undervaluing hands because of his style. After I raise pre, down bet flop, full pot turn and full pot river. My hands are gonna contain AA,KK, and some AK/QQ. This particular opponent I really didn’t think he would go for value with 88. So now we’re left with the chances he is bluffing. I’m getting 4/1 on a call. So I need to be right 20% of the time. I don’t know about you guys, but in these spots, my mind starts running numbers in my head and computes pretty quickly. So the numbers 9-11% is the conclusion I came up with of percentage he is bluffing. So in my head I thought my call would still be losing a lot of money.

Now at this particular stage if I was wrong, I would be left with 5.5 million when the big blind was 300 K I believe. If I fold, I still had 11 million. The way my style is I know I can spin 11 million up at that blind depth with pressure way more than I could, if I only have 5.5 in front of me. That being said within the next hour, I did spin it back up to 23 million only seeing one showdown.

What I Think (No Cheating)

I shared my initial thought when I saw this hand above, ““looooooooool,” but I’ll elaborate in a more articulate manner below. My thoughts on this hand were, in order: You can’t fold KKK here, QsTh seems like the wrong combo to bluff, and how is the pot so small on the river? AKx boards are high-frequency big-bet-or-check boards, and hands like two pair, middle set, and bottom set are some of the highest-frequency big bets. If you do not think your opponent is going to check-raise the flop and barrel the turn and river as a bluff very often, I would start by betting bigger on the flop so it’s easier to get all-in on the river. I think the turn size is too small; you want to bet a size that is large enough that weak top pair is indifferent to continue, and this size is not that. It seems like Ryuta has a pretty easy call with top pair, and you aren’t getting enough money in the pot with a set of kings. On the flop you might not want to overbet because you might cause a hand like K5 to fold, but on the turn K5 is folding to a bet anyways, so it’s time to charge his pair-plus-draw hands and top pair.

Once we get to the river, we are in a tricky spot. Shoving 230% pot with KK does seem like overkill; however, I’d happily make this shove with 888, and the more I think about it— there shouldn’t be much of a difference in river strategy between the two hands. You’re almost never getting called by one pair of kings or eights (maybe KJ and KT), and since Ryuta three-bets AK preflop and can have 8c3c, he should have more two pair in his range with 8x than Kx. All of this is to say, I still think Jesse should go all-in. However, once he gets min check-raised, I still think Jesse needs to call Jesse’s sizing means his hand is rather underrepresented. I would not expect Jesse to bet this size with AJ, but AJ is a reasonable value bet for a smaller size on the river. If you’re strategy involves value betting the 15th nuts, you can’t go around folding the third nuts to a quarter pot raise. I also have a general policy of not folding the third nuts to inexperienced poker players who can’t always calibrate their hand strength or proper bluffing frequencies.

What The Solver Says

The solution I will be referencing today is a chip EV sim— “But Sam, we are ITM of a giant tournament! Chip EV is not an appropriate baseline.” Before we delve into the hand, I am going to make the case that it is. When Nakai check-raised the river, the TV production switched over to Taylor Black busting in 150th in a classic JJ vs. AK preflop all-in at the other featured table¹ for $70,000. The player who finishes in 64th place receives $125,000 before a pay jump where 63rd receives $150,000. There is not that much ICM pressure when you need more than half the field to bust to double what you’re guaranteed, and first place is 140x what you’re currently guaranteed.

In the chip-EV sim, Jesse’s c-bet strategy mixes big bet (common value hands include AK/AQ/88), check (common hands include QQ and JJ), and block (common hands include AA and KK). KK is close to a pure block, and betting big loses somewhere around 1/3rd of a BB; however, that is in a world where hands like AJ check-raise the flop for value every single time as the BB. I think this a great example of a spot where a main event specialist should throw the solver in the garbage and bet a larger size to try to play a big pot with a great hand.

Jesse’s flop size is the correct solver play, but I think he could have done something different to make more money. Jesse’s turn size is one that the solver rarely picks, preferring to bet a larger size that makes bad top pair indifferent, but his size does not lose much EV. That again brings me to the best main event exploit. When Jesse sizes down on the turn, he’s supposed to get called by a lot of weak Kx and never get top pair to fold. If Jesse wants to pick a smaller size here, it’s either because he thinks his opponent is calling with second pair too often (which is unlikely) or because he thinks his opponent would often fold top pair to a bigger bet too often (possible). I still prefer sticking to the solver size of around 1.5x pot because it makes shoving the river a more comfortable play. People really don’t like calling 2.3x pot river shoves for their life in the biggest tournament they may have ever played, but they might get sticky on the turn with top pair vs. an aggressive player.

Which brings us to the river. I’ve written two paragraphs on the flop and the turn saying a version of— you effectively have the nuts or second nuts, you don’t block your opponent’s most frequent bluff catchers, why don’t you bet bigger? So I’ll repeat myself: Jesse should bet bigger on the river, ideally all-in. It’s easy to find natural bluffs here: Any hand with a jack, ten or eight in them that is a pair or eights or worse can go all-in. The solver shoves KK on the river here and the solver also makes some very big folds as the BB. Hands like Q8 and K3 fold regularly. Shoving is the highest-EV play, and it’s not because the solver BB is a station that always stacks off top pair. When facing a big turn size the BB folds top pair, so of course it’s also mostly folding it on the river. If anything, humans might call the river more than the solver here vs. an opponent like Jesse they deem to be an aggressive big-stack bully. This is one way that big-field Main Event specialists gain their edge; they’re very aggressive at early nodes, but aren’t always emptying the clip and often get called down in spots they should not.

A lot of words here and I haven’t even gotten to the river check-raise. There is no point in analyzing this in solver land. Jesse is always supposed to shove the river with KK, so when he bets full pot, hands like A3 and A8 mix check-raises for value, and Jesse not only should never fold KK, it’s possible he should shove over Ryuta’s check-raise. If Jesse’s table talk is honest here, he did not believe Ryuta could be bluffing, but he was worried Ryuta could have worse for value. Commentator Henry Kilbane casually said this was the “most underbluffed spot in the history of poker” and I could not disagree more; this is a very overbluffed² spot. Some people never bluff in this spot, but those who do bluff, bluff a lot relative to how often you should be bluffing.

I’ve run several different sims of this hand that look at different turn/river sizings for Lonis, and the following hands bluff some of the time as Ryuta: every single bare top pair combo, QJ, QT, KJ, JT, some Kx with a bad kicker. We are talking about more than a hundred combos of hands that the solver sometimes chooses to bluff versus what is in many cases exactly 16 value combos, fewer if JT ever check-raises the flop or raises the turn. There are some individuals who never bluff in this spot, but there are some individuals who never bluff in any spot. I think players who are capable of bluffing are capable of bluffing here. Constructing an accurate river check-raise bluffing range here is about balance, and the specific balance is knowing that even if you have a combo that may seem like “the perfect combo,” it still only gets to bluff 10% of the time; if you start bluffing with it 15% of the time, the button should snap-call a check-raise with K8.

My initial shortcut was that Jesse should give up on the river with hands like Tc9c or Jc7c that missed a flush draw, which means that the Jc and Tc should be in a lot of his value-betting range, because it will be in his JT combos but not his bluff combos. So Ryuta should short-cut to bluffing his pair+gutshots when he has a club, to maximize the chances Jesse is bluffing himself. Then I also thought that Jesse might check back QQ on the flop, and he might be bluffing with an 8 himself. This led me to think that the ideal bluffing combinations for Ryuta would be KxJc and KxTc. This analysis all sounds good and is totally wrong; the solver prefers bluffing with QT. Nice bluff, Ryuta, and I can’t believe he had the discipline to not windmill it over.

Final Thoughts and Grade

There are some more tournament considerations here: from the commentary booth Kevin Rabichow talked about the value of Jesse preserving his stack and Jesse confirmed that in his post. I think if there is an edge to accumulating a big stack, that’s even more reason for Jesse to call. If Jesse calls and loses, he will have around half of an average stack; if he folds, he will have around an average stack; and if he calls and wins, he will have around 3x average and be one of the chip leaders. If there’s a spot to gamble, it’s when the payouts are flat but big in real money terms, and you can become a big-stack bully as people try to lock up “small” five-figure pay jumps. Giving up chip EV is a common sharp strategy in tournament poker, but this hand does not fit the bill. Ultimately, Jesse made two bad reads on the river: a micro read of “I don’t think he’s bluffing right now” and a macro read of “I don’t think this guy is bluffing this way period.” Both were wrong. However, the real punt of this hand to me is, if you’re concerned you are playing an opponent who is not aggressive enough and you have an extremely strong hand, you need to make sure the pot gets big enough that you can play a big pot. Jesse had three opportunities to size up and failed each time, which walked him down the path where he could make the wrong read and make a disastrous fold.

1. The WSOP TV crew switching from someone tanking with a set vs. a river check-raise to someone busting in the most standard fashion imaginable might be the real POTD here. D+.

2. People usually need a reason to bluff, and having a blocker is a good reason to bluff. I remember reading about bluffing with the nut flush blocker in Super System. These plays are not so advanced that they represent a secret that only pros know. Casual players have known about blocker bluffs for years and regularly implement them correctly and incorrectly. When horse racing streamers and septuagenarians start overbetting the turn on AK8Q with 64 nothing, then we can talk about poker being dead.