POTD #203 Okamato bluffs Owen in the Japan Open Poker Tour

POTD travels to the JOPT

This week on Punt of the Day, we will be looking at a common decision in a poker hand, one that was one of the simplest shortcuts in the pre-solver era and has become confusing and confounding in the post-solver era— the continuation bet. In the pre-solver era, the strategies were simple: If you raised preflop, you followed up with a continuation bet; your opponent might fold, and you could always credibly rep a strong hand. You raised preflop, after all— you might even have AA or have flopped a set. In the solver era, these decisions have become overwhelming— if you raise in middle position and the BB calls and the flop comes T63, the solver might suggest that sometimes you check, and when you bet, you simply must master six different c-bet sizes. Sometimes I long for the simpler days, when I could just bet somewhere between 25% pot to 50% pot every time on every board, except for really ugly boards like 654, and call it a day. But even if you wanted to turn back the clock and simplify your own c-bet strategy, you’ll still need to understand the purpose of each of those c-bet sizes, because even if you don’t use them yourself, you might face them from others.

I had prepared a whole week built around c-bet sizes in hands that I played, and I still have those posts locked and ready to go later this week.¹ But then I was sent a hand from a Japan Open Poker Tour stream by several people who insisted I write about it. I have not been to a JOPT event, but POTD subscriber Steve O’Dwyer was on this stream and has attended several JOPT events and raves about how much fun they are, and attending a JOPT event is definitely on my to-do list. The poker culture in Japan is growing and I can’t wait to be a part of it.

I don’t write about every hand someone sends my way and was unsure if I could fit this hand into c-bet week, but two notable things happened. The first: I actually discovered that the c-bet strategy in this hand is rather interesting and something I could definitely write about. The second: The Toronto Blue Jays signed Kazuma Okamoto on the same day that someone sent me that video of Shiina Okamoto bluffing Adam Owen. Okamoto is a popular last name— Wikipedia tells me that ~290,000 people in Japan share it— so while we’re not exactly at “winning the lottery in back-to-back weeks” level of unlikeliness, it was a nice bit of kismet that made me even more interested in writing about this hand.

JOPT / Japan Open Poker Tour@japanopenpoker

【 Pick up Hand / JOPT 2026 Tokyo #01】 👑 JOPT STARS TABLE 日本を代表するプレイヤー岡本詩菜さん VS WSOPファイナルテーブル進出 8回を誇るトッププロ！ どっちが勝つ!? ◾️プリフロップ

6:40 AM · Jan 2, 2026 · 172K Views

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2 Replies · 10 Reposts · 152 Likes

JOPT, 7-handed, Blinds 1000/1500/1500 (BBA)
100k Starting Stack. Top Two get Paid 1st gets $500k JPY, 2nd gets $250k JPY.

Preflop: Shiina Okamoto (99k) opens A♠️J♠️ UTG7 to 3500; it folds to Adam Owen (224k) who calls A♥️Q♣️ in the SB; Hayato K calls 4♠️4♥️ in the BB.

Flop (12,000) A♦️ K♥️ 5♣️: Owen checks, Hayato checks, Okamoto bets 4000, Owen calls, Hayato folds.

Turn (20,000) Q♥️: Owen checks, Okamoto checks.

River (20,000) 5♥️: Owen bets 25,000; Okamoto shoves for 91,500; Owen folds.

What Adam Was Thinking

Fortunately for us, Adam published some of his thoughts on Twitter. He didn’t comment on preflop, the flop or the turn, but I don’t think I needed his thoughts for those streets. I think he’d three-bet preflop sometimes, check-raise the flop sometimes, and never lead the turn. On the river, I think he thought he often had the best hand and Shiina was relatively capped, so he overbet. Once he faced the jam, Adam said he thought it was unlikely Shiina was bluffing versus his overbet and he had reasons to believe she might have checked back a set on the turn, and he talked himself into folding.

What Sam Thought (Some Cheating)

All of my analysis here is from before I looked at any sims, but I am biased by seeing that not only is Shiina capable of bluffing, but she’s capable of bluffing with a pretty marginal hand. When this hand was posted in the POTD Discord server, which you can join here, here is what I initially wrote.

Someone messsaged [sic] me about this hand on twitter, my instinct is that Adam’s river size is really greedy and he got punished for it

but he needs to call the river, especially with the Ah

I wouldn’t be shocked if the EQ solution here is that Shina [sic] mostly bluffs with the Ah so Adam folds with it because Shina’s [sic] most common value shoves are actually A5/K5, but I am not folding vs. her

I also shared a similar sentiment (with the same spelling error) on Twitter.

Preflop is standard from both, but Adam could three-bet/fold, or three-bet/five-bet if he was feeling really spicy. The flop also seems standard from both; I’d expect Shiina would play a bigger size on the flop as well, but I’d expect a small size to be used some of the time. Adam’s flop situation resembles his preflop spot: He often has the best hand and he could raise for value/protection, but he will be in an uncomfortable spot if he faces more action, so calling is prudent.

On the turn, I’d mostly keep value betting as Shiina. She can get value from hands like KJ or worse top pair and should not be too worried about getting check-raised. The river is where things get interesting. I think Adam has a clear value bet, especially with the Ah, but I think the overbet is a little greedy for two reasons. He doesn’t have many natural bluffs; a 5 is now trips. Does he call the flop with JJ-66? Could he have 43s? Maybe, but those all seem pretty dicey. A king has too much showdown to bluff. Maybe he’s bluffing with exactly QJ/QT and wants to pick a size that can get a chop to fold, but I think the problem is, Shiina can have A5/K5 or a flush herself, so she needs to call an overbet with a pair of aces a lot to make overbetting with one pip better than a pair of aces the best play.

I do not like Shiina’s river shove. Generally, when people overbet in a spot where it’s hard to bluff, they’re overweighted in value, and I tend to not bluff people who are overweighted in value. This seems like a spot where you need to have a key blocker to bluff the river, and while the As blocks the one combo of A5s, I’d much rather have the Ah, which blocks as many as 9 nut flush combos. The J blocks JT, which is probably not good, because that’s a hand you’re likely trying to get Adam to fold. As to what Adam should do, I do think this is a close spot in theory, but I am biased by the results. He has a credible bluff catcher, and I’ve seen Shiina is capable of bluffing with the wrong class of hand. He needs to call.

What The Solver Says

Adam mostly three-bets preflop, but flatting is fine. He has a strong hand that is tricky to play OOP and can knock out the BB by three-betting. Once he flats, he almost always check-raises the flop, but that’s partially because he rarely has AQ, given he mostly three-bets it preflop. AJ rarely check-raises the flop and it has similar equity to AQ, so I would only suggest check/raising AQo every time, like the solver does, if you’re also three-betting it ~80%+ of the time preflop. However, when Shiina has AK, KK or 55, she often bets a large size on the flop, which means vs. a small c-bet size Adam often has the best hand. Folding out all of the BB’s gutshots and getting value from Shiina makes check-raising an attractive play from Adam, but calling twice is fine, even if the solver would prefer showing a little more aggression.

In a heads-up pot versus the blinds, it’s very common for the preflop raiser to c-bet a polar range on AKx flops and play big bet or check. In multiway pots, it’s rare for the most in-position player to c-bet a large size— they’d rather bet small and leverage their positional advantage to generate extra folds from their opponents. However, an exception here is the preflop raiser vs. both blinds. In a CO vs. BU vs. BB three-way pot, the CO checks strong often, and the BU is worried about the CO and bets small on most flops to see how the BB and CO will react. However, EP vs. SB vs. BB resembles a heads-up pot in many ways. Especially on an AKx board when EP has a range advantage, they have a nuts advantage, and they have a lot of high-equity middle-of-range hands like A2 or KQ that aren’t interested in betting themselves. Shiina’s c-bet strategy here should be big bet or check, and when I ran this hand, her flop size mostly converged around 2/3rds pot as the ideal c-bet size. Betting smaller is fine from an EV perspective, but if you always bet small here, you’re leaving money on the table by not getting enough money in the pot with certain hands— such as AK, 55 or AJ.

Adam’s turn check is standard, and Shiina’s turn check is rare. AJ is often the best hand, a bet will frequently be called by worse, and you almost always guarantee a free showdown on the river, as she gets raised on the turn less than 5% of the time. However, AJ and AT (and A5, AA, AK, AQ, KQ) all mix turn checks from Shiina.

Which brings us to the river. Adam’s bluffs are not that hard to find; he does, as I posited above, just bluff QJ/QT and some low-frequency 43. That is more than enough bluffs, given his minimum value bet for larger than half pot is his exact class of hand— AQo with the Ah. So he can value bet some AK/AQ with a heart, some 5x, some JT, and some AhXh type hands, which are not too many value bets for him. Shiina shoves nut flushes, some AA and A5s for value, and bluffs with AT-AK with one heart and some pocket pairs, like 88 with a heart. Since Shiina’s most common bluffs have the Ah in them, AQ with the Ah is not a particularly good bluff-catcher and Adam’s fold is fine in solver land. Hands like JT mix folds as well, and our best hero calls on the river are hands like 5s4s, trips that block As5s.

Final Thoughts and Grade

Adam could have, and as the chip leader of a sit-and-go where the top two get paid, probably should have three-bet preflop. His flop call is fine, but raising would have also been fine. I would have preferred a larger flop size by Shiina and a turn bet from her as well, but these are all early street nitpicks, and I am sure everyone wants to read my thoughts about the fireworks factory on the river. I think Adam’s bet is too large and a little greedy as I initially hypothesized, but as is often the case on the river, betting the wrong size rarely loses all that much EV; it loses around 0.2bbs in this hand. I think his logic of “I overbet, bluff-raising over an overbet in this situation is crazy, her most common bluffs should have the Ah in them, and I don’t really think she’s bluffing 6h6x often enough to make this a call” is reasonable… except she was bluffing AsJs, which blocks As5s, but is otherwise one of the worst top-pair combos to bluff, because she wants Adam to have JT and fold it. The decisions up until the river are fine from Adam; the river overbet is not quite solver-approved and the river fold is … except that when someone is repping so narrow and shows up with a totally out of left field bluff combo, and that player has a reputation for making crazy bluffs, small solver mechanics don’t really matter that much, and every marginal bluff-catcher should become a +EV call. I’ll give Adam a

C

1. At this very moment, “locked and ready to go” means “I have some rough drafts that are too embarrassing to publish,” but I assure you we will have some good posts later in the week. [count on it! -ed.]