POTD #210 FT Friday: I Bluff Jason Koon at a $50K FT

Someone make me a splash image of Jason folding in agony with a comic book lettering say "WRECKED!"

Sometimes as an oversimplification, I’ve told some students they should focus on c-betting strategies for when they raise the button, and then bucket the remaining five positions at the table together. In other words, c-betting strategies from the cutoff often have more in common with c-betting strategies from under-the-gun than from the button. Every hand you raise from UTG, or even the CO, is pretty good; they’re often suited, paired, or have two big cards. It’s only when you get the button that you need to master how to play K6o or J2s. Boards that are good for UTG vs. the BB are not nearly as good as those same boards BU vs. BB, and it’s reflected in c-bet strategies. When you raise the button, you cannot simply look at QJT and decide, this board is great for my hand so I am going to bet big with everything, when you’re looking down at J7o.

This means, when you raise the button, you often bet smaller on “big bet boards” and you often check on “range bet boards.” There is an inflection point where this changes, and that is when you are short- or mid-stacked. If you’re 100bbs deep and have A5o and the flop is AT3 FD, you aren’t looking to get all-in, even if you raised the button. When you’re 20bbs deep, buckle up, you can play A5 like it is the nuts. This is largely because the stack-to-pot ratio has shrunk and getting in 20bbs with top pair is not nearly as scary as getting in 100bbs, but also because your opponent will fastplay a lot of strong ace-high hands preflop and even fastplay the flop with middling top pair, which makes you feel much more comfortable about getting all-in with bad top pair on the river.

So we have two rules of thumb here. You put less money in the pot BU vs. BB than UTG vs. BB, especially on boards that favour the preflop raiser. The shallower you are, the more comfortable you are fastplaying weak top pair and equivalent classes of hands. Today is Final Table Friday, which means we will need to add a third principle into this hand: How does being at a final table affect your c-betting strategy? Generally speaking, you like to bet smaller: if you’re a short stack, you don’t want to waste precious chips betting a big size. If you’re a big stack, you can generate a lot of folds with just a small size, because short stacks are afraid to play back at you. However, you still want to abide by some cEV principles, and striking the balance is a tricky thing to do.

2022 Super High Roller Series Europe #6 $ 50,000 No Limit Hold’em
(30k/60k/60k) (SB/BB/BBA) 43 Entries. 7 Cash. 3 Remain.
3rd 322.5k, 2nd 473k, 1st 731k

I (1.125M) have 8♦️8♥️ and make it 120k, Daniel Dvoress (3.97M) folds in the SB, Jason Koon (1.345M) calls in the BB.

Flop (330k) A♦️Q♥️9♦️: Jason checks, I bet 200k, Jason calls.
Turn (730k) 5♥️: Jason checks, I bet 300k, Jason folds what I later saw on stream was Q♠️8♠️¹