POTD #197 Closing Out the Year with The Nuts

But there will be no nutcracker this holiday season

NB: POTD will be taking a holiday break. There will be no new hands posted this week or next, but I will be removing hands from behind the paywall, including posting all the premium content that I created for premium subscribers and posting them free for all here. If there are any hands you’d like to read more about, you can request them in the subscriber chat here or the POTD Discord server here.

Chanukkah ended last night, Christmas Eve is tomorrow, but the 23rd is celebration-wise an empty day on the calendar. However, for working stiffs, it often represents their final day of work before the holidays, and while it’s TBD if I am a working stiff, I thought I’d mark POTD’s last day of brand new content by giving myself a little gift. That gift is remembering a hand where I coolered my opponent and had them all-in and drawing dead on the turn. If you’ve played poker long enough, you have become numb to just how bad a beat can be. Sure, your set of aces is looking mighty strong on A27 rainbow, and you can only lose to running quads, but have you considered that running 3, 4 could give 55 a wheel? If you’ve played millions of hands of poker, you start expecting a 3, 4, 5 to come on the turn, because winning any hand is never as easy as it appears.

Today’s hand is one where I flopped a big draw and buckled up for a big sweat once my opponent shoved, but I was way ahead on the flop and turned the nuts. A holiday miracle we can all celebrate. The other tradition working folks might associate with December 23rd is checking out a little early, perhaps doing work that they do not consider to be their best. I assure you, what follows will be top tier poker analysis that goes over a common spot where it’s easy to punt, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t try to pick a hand today that had relatively few decision points. Come back in the new year, where I will be looking at the three-way pot between Bernhard Binder, Jean-Noël Thorel, and Belarmino De Souza from the WSOP Super Main Event. A key pot at 2025’s highest stakes FT where Binder shoved the river with the nut straight on a paired board and De Souza folded the very same straight. Complex ICM spots can wait until 2026; today, we will be closing out the new year with a strong blog about a simple hand.

Triton Monte-Carlo 2023 - Event #3 $125K NLH Main Event
(10k/20k/20k) (SB/BB/BBA) 36/135 left. 23 cash.

It folds to me (880k) on the button and I make it 45k with A♣️9♣️, Igor Yaroshevskyy (545k) makes it 140k from the SB, Santhosh Suvarna (685k) folds the BB, I call.

Flop (320k) Q♣️T♣️8♠️: Igor checks, I bet 80k, Igor shoves, I call and table my hand. Igor is visibly disgusted when he sees he has 18% equity with K♣️5♣️. That 18% swiftly turns to 0% on the 3♣️ turn.