POTD #215 With A £144,000 Bubble Looming I Just Go All-in

A hand from the British Poker Open £50,000 vs David Peters.

I’ve spent most of this week writing about finding unconventional two-barrel bluffs on the turn, but I am going to close this week with a little treat for the weekend: writing about a hand where I have a good hand and pick the biggest size available, all-in. The challenge of today’s hand will be asking ourselves, given that we are shoving this hand, what hands could we bluffing with? Today we return to the final table of the British Poker Open £50k, a tournament I bubbled in POTD #80. It was an odd final table, with a large mincash of £144,000 and only £486,000 for first. Five remained and David Peters had over half the chips in play, Christoph Vogelsang was comfortably in second place and Mikita Badziakouski, Matthias Eibinger and myself were all hovering around 250k-300k.

The past four punts were about reaching deep to find some no-equity bluffs, but I’ve mostly ignored another more common short-stacked turn play, shoving all-in. The idea of betting a polar range when you’re not going all-in is that if you get check-raised you will fold and it doesn’t matter how little pot equity you have when your bluff doesn’t work. If you’re shoving all-in you want to make sure you have some equity, but making sure you have the exact right hand to bluff-shove with can be hard to do. If you have AhKh on JhTh2c3s, you might get some pairs to fold, but you’re not maximizing the value of a monster draw. If you shove 5h4h on that same turn, you might just get snapped by 9h2h and be in terrible shape. What you’re looking for in a hand that shoves the turn as a bluff is a hand that gets better made hands to fold and either gets better draws to fold or gets called by worse draws. In today’s hand, I had the easy part of the equation— I had a good hand under a lot of ICM pressure and shoved. I am not sure if my shove is any good, but I will also write about what bluffs I should have been pairing with my value shove.

British Poker Open Event 9 £50k NLHE. 5 left, 3 pay.
3rd - £144,000; 2nd - £270,000; 1st - £486,000.

Blinds 8k/16k/16k (BBA)

Hand starts at 1:51:00

Cristoph Vogelsang (577k) folds the HJ, Mikita Badziakouski (290k) folds the CO, I (236k) have Q♠️J♦️ on the BU and make it 32k, Matthias Eibinger (288k) folds the SB, David Peters (1.3M) calls the BB.

Flop (88k) Q♣️9♥️4♥️: David checks, I bet 45k, David calls

Turn (178k) 8♠️: David checks, I shove for 159k, David folds.

What I Was Thinking

I wasn’t sure if I got to shove QJo preflop, but since there was a three-buyin mincash, I figured I generally wanted to give myself wiggle room to not end up all-in preflop with an offsuit broadway hand. I decided I was going to play very tight on the button, and QJo would be a raise-fold and not a shove.

Once I flopped top pair I was ready to stack off, and I figured if I had top pair with an overcard to a queen or a heart, I would consider betting a small size and slowplaying, but QJ no heart seemed like a hand that wanted to fastplay, and half pot seemed like a good c-bet size that would set up a turn shove if I wanted to. The board gets more connected on the turn, but also gives me a gutshot, which is a rather nice equity boost. I figured that if I secured this pot, I would have more chips than Matthias and Mikita and would be in a pretty good situation to mincash the tournament. I do not know if I considered betting a smaller non-AI size or just decided that jamming was the way to go, but I shoved and got the fold.

What I Think Now

This hand was played in 2019, and in the moment, I don’t think I spent much time thinking about what my bluffs would be here. I was too busy playing my actual top pair on a £142,000 bubble to think of my hypothetical bluffs, so I am adding this section to add some of my thoughts before I look at the sims I ran. I don’t want to get all-in preflop here with QJo, but Matthias needs to call me rather tight from the SB, and raising and playing a pot vs. David Peters and his chip lead is not particularly exciting. However, I am sure minraising has to be a fine play.

I think this flop is a little too disconnected for me to have a large c-bet size, especially my preflop range is largely bluffs and very strong hands, so I should have top pair plus quite a bit. However, if there is a hand that wants to c-bet on the larger size, QJ and QT seem appropriate. My guess is that my flop size is too large, but once again it doesn’t lose EV.

I really don’t like my turn shove. I think shoving KQ/AQ/AA/KK that don’t have backup in the form of a gutshot is the way to go, but shoving and folding out a hand like T9 that I have dominated does not seem like a good move at all. My guess is that my turn bluffs would be hands like T8 and J8— pairs with a gutshot that can fold out 9x and Qx. I would also not be shocked to see turn shoves from hands like Ah2h, but I think the combo draws with pairs and straight draws are too strong to shove.

What I Got Wrong

It looks like I mostly just shove preflop, but minraise and 2.5x are both used and don’t lose EV. When I shove, the solver has Matthias stacking off as wide as 55, A8s, A9o, KQs, and David calling 33, A7o, A4s. So there is a good chance shoving is making even more money vs. their actual ranges and is the best play, but raising non all-in is fine. On the flop, my 2019 self is sharper than my 2026 self. 50% is my most common size with range, and QJo bets half pot almost 100% of the time. AQ and KQ block from time to time, but QJ never does. Even QT mostly bets half pot and stacks off, while Q8s and Q7s check the flop so that we have some top pair in our check-back range when playing a pot versus the chip leader.

However, my 2026 self was correct about the turn. I don’t play shoves, and almost all my bluffs are of the no-equity variety. Hands like A3o and K6s bet-fold the turn; the only draws that bet the turn are some KT offsuit with a heart and some J8s that can fold out 9x but also get shoved on by some flush draws. Shoving the turn does not lose much EV, around £500; by comparison, checking the turn would lose around £2,000. There are no hands of mine that want to shove the turn, not even KK or AQ, so there is no reason to have bluff-shoves on the turn, only polar two-barrels.

Types of Error
ICM Error: I underestimated how much cEV I’d need to sacrifice in this hand.

Grade

Not shoving preflop was a small mistake given what I think their calling ranges were, my half pot size on the flop was the perfect size, and my turn shove was not the right play for pretty obvious reasons: I am turning my hand face up and don’t have enough bluffs. Even in 2026, I thought I might have some turn shoves, but the solver disagrees. I guess I did an okay job guessing that 8x hands that turned a gutshot might shove, since they do bet half pot and sigh-call a shove while praying Peters might show up with KhJh. In the “What I Think Now” section, I mentioned that since I split between shove and raise non all-in preflop, I should not get a big c-bet size, since my preflop range has so many traps in it. The thing I neglected about splitting my preflop range is that I shove most of the suited hands I’d play from the button, which means I rarely have draws on the turn to shove— even if I wanted to shove Ah5h or KhTh, I’d already be all-in with them. That makes it even harder to find a hand I’d want to bluff-shove the turn with. I could maybe get away with shoving AA, KK, AQ, KQ sometimes and pairing it with J8s and T8s, but once I start shoving hands like QJo, David can probably start folding every top pair combo rather comfortably. I am ending turn two-barrel week with a hand where my preflop and flop plays were good, but my turn play was not, and my grade reflects that.

C+