POTD #202 FT Friday Binder puts De Souza in the Blender
A hand “so bonkers you have to see it to believe it.”
I’ve written a lot about the WSOP Super Main Event. I criticized the tournament’s structure and some of the play deep in the tournament, but today I will pivot to a more positive tone, and to say it was a very good final table. There were a lot of fun and interesting pots; you had Ali Nejad— one of the best in the business— doing play-by-play of a heads-up match for the ages. Bernard Binder, an Austrian who is a protégé of Fedor Holz, vs. Jean-Noel Thorel, the sole proprietor of Bioderma1, a billion-dollar cosmetics company. I was rooting for Jean-Noel and he put up a good fight, but Bernard ran one or two monster bluffs that required a lot of courage vs. someone as unpredictable as JNT and that propelled him to victory.2
So here is my final New Year’s Resolution: Give compliments and praise good work. This does not mean “be positive.” I will remain critical when I think things are bad, but sometimes it can feel more natural for me to note mistakes than to praise good work. There is a balance to strike here, and in the New Year I don’t aim to be any less critical, but I do aim to be more complimentary. With that being said, today we will be looking at the hand that Daniel Negreanu described as “so bonkers you have to see it to believe it.” And in the spirit of today’s resolution, it will be complimentary, as in free, for all subscribers.
$25K WSOP SUPER MAIN EVENT - FINAL TABLE
5 Handed. 5th 2.35M, 4th 3M, 3rd 4M, 2nd 6M, 1st 10M
Blinds 4M/8M/8M (BBA)
Belarmino De Souza (236M) makes it 16M with J♦️T♦️, Eric Wasserson (193M) folds the CO, Terrance Reid (209M) folds OTB, Bernhard Binder (384M) call from the SB with J♥️T♥️, Jean-Noel Thorel (417M) calls Q♥️2♥️ in the BB.
Flop (56M) K♥️9♦️2♦️: Bernhard checks, JNT checks, Belarmino checks.
Turn (56M) Q♠️: Bernhard bets 37M, JNT snap folds3, Belarmino calls.
River (130M) Q♣️: Bernhard shoves for Belarmino’s final 183M, Belarmino folds.
What Bernhard Was Thinking
Bernhard won the hand and the tournament, so I will be writing about the hand from his perspective, although I think Belarmino river’s spot might be the most interesting part. I’d guess with Jean-Noel in the big blind, Bernhard would generally play more flats and fewer three-bets from the SB, because Jean-Noel would not three-bet bluff nor play as well postflop as the solver. JTs seems like an appropriate hand to flat even with an expert in the BB, and Bernhard flatted.
Bernhard checked the flop so quickly I don’t think he was ever really considering leading it. On the turn he saw a connected board, he thinks Belarmino’s range is capped and JNT has a whole host of hands that can call a bet, and he has the nuts and wants to get value, so he decided to bet and bet on the larger size. On the queen river, he’s slightly concerned that Belarmino could have him beat, but as the covering stack, he figures it’s best to go for it all. He was representing a polar range on the turn and might as well keep representing a polar range on the river, so he shoved.
What Sam Thinks (No Cheating)
I like the preflop flat; I think three-betting is tricky because our hand is not quite the right class of hand to three-bet/fold, and given JNT is the other chipleader and in the BB, I’d generally be toning down my preflop aggression. I would not lead this flop; it’s a little too disconnected to be good for his flatting range, and no need to bust out a fancy play without a plan at a high-stakes final table.
I think Bernhard’s turn size is too large. JNT is tightening up his BB defense at a FT and should hit this board reasonably hard. I also think this is generally a spot in theory where the SB rarely plays a big lead size for chips; generally speaking, the furthest out of position players do not bet big on boards where the other two players can have straights. Generally speaking, boards with common straights on them feature small betting when players are under ICM pressure. Since Bernhard and JNT are close in chips, I don’t think there is a sound theory reason to bet big here for chips or at a FT. However, this is a once-in-a-lifetime type of FT; your goal should be to make the most money, not find the correct solver play. You’ll probably never make the nuts again at this FT and betting big with it seems like a reasonable exploit, however, I still like the small bet because JNT likes making small raises when facing small bets, and I would be tempted to try to induce a raise from him. I think betting small is the best solver play and the best exploitative play.
Once we get to the river, I have two concerns. One, it feels like Belarmino has a queen a lot and I am not sure we should be betting much with range. Two, I am not really sure what our bluffs are here. I’d often give up on the river with diamonds, I’d never bluff a pair, and I’d often three-bet AJ and AT preflop. I suppose you could bluff with the AJ/AT that bet the turn, but betting AJ/AT no diamond three ways for 2/3rds pot seems pretty adventurous at this point of the tourney. For that reason, I think I would block small. I want to make sure Belarmino raises with a queen if he has one, so I would probably bet something like 20M.
What The Solver Says
Preflop approximations have Bernhard calling or folding preflop when facing a 2.25x; I think pure calling vs. a minraise vs. a BB who isn’t going to three-bet 20% of the time is the way to go. The solver SB is folding JTs most of the time and the solver BB folds Q2s 100% of the time; I don’t think those preflop ranges are appropriate for this hand, so what I’ve done is used a mixed-media approach, where I take a CEV sim to get an approximation of the ranges that reach the river and run an ICM solve from there.
Bernhard and JNT never lead the flop, and Belarmino usually c-bets the flop with his range, around 75% of the time, even more with a gutshot, and even more with a gutshot and a flush draw. But checking appears to not lose any real EV and is a fine play, especially if he’s trying to set up Bernie Big Bet later in the hand.
I thought the turn would mostly be a small bet or check from Bernhard, but it appears for chips he mostly picks a big size of around 2/3rds pot. I think a three-way ICM sim would still prefer a smaller size, but his turn strategy is fortunate for us, since it gives us some clay to mold an ICM river strategy around. Bernhard’s common turn big bets include AT with a diamond, nut flush draws, bottom set, KJ/KT, AJ, KQ, K9, low flush draws like 6d5d, some low-frequency bluffs with 33 and 44, and of course JT. JNT never folds top pair and rarely even folds a pair of queens. Belarmino never raises with range and also never folds a pair of kings or queens, but does fold some JJ and A9.
Binder checks the river around 44% of the time, and when he bets, he prefers a block size centered around KJ and KT. When he blocks, Belarmino mixes raising with every queen, so if you think he’s always raising a queen, block betting with JT is a good play, and if you think he’s rarely raising it, blocking is a terrible play. JT mostly bets 110% pot (143M chips), and the all-in size is reserved for a little bit of KQ and mostly 22 and 99. However, the EV loss of shoving is $3000 in a tournament with $10,000,000 for first. To Belarmino’s credit, JT almost always calls on the river, but it’s a neutral EV call and mixes folds on the river. He had a tough spot under a lot of pressure with only one time bank chip and was correct that his opponent was not bluffing, and honestly, I am not sure how often Binder is bluffing. Binder’s turn size and river size indicate that De Souza is never beating value, and Binder’s most common value bets are a lot more likely to be full houses than straights. The solver says Binder bet a little too big, and it’s a coinflip for De Souza. It’s a tough spot.
Final Thoughts and Grade
I think that was a really tough spot for both players, and they presented me with a tough grading conundrum. I think this is a good fold from De Souza; I do not think he has the 48% equity he needs to make this river call. I also think Bernhard put in a little too much money with his hand, which normally is not a huge problem if you have a great hand, except I really think this is a spot where he’d struggle to find the bluffs. It’s possible that he has something in the range of 10 value combos, and I really don’t think he’s bluffing 33/44 that often or bluffing with AJ/AT often enough to have 10 combos to bluff with. However, if he is, I will say kudos to him for finding some really tricky bluffs and appropriately expanding his value range at a big FT.
B-
If JNT is reading this, POTD is looking for advertisers and I will happily promote whatever skincare products they have.
I’ve often criticized players for playing too passively when heads up vs. someone they’re better than. They are so scared to get all-in and lose their edge in bleeding them out in a protracted heads-up match that they give up a lot of their edge in the process. To Bernard’s credit, he took control of this match and was not simply waiting to cooler JNT or slowly whittle him down.
JNT folded so quickly and his table talk indicated he misread his hand.