POTD #217 Bluffing of Half a Million Dollars of Someone Else's Money

In the 2024 Triton Million

Next week, the team at the Onyx Club in Cyprus will be running a new format of a high-roller tournament called a “Grand Slam.” [Does anyone remember “Slam” by Onyx? -ed.]¹ It will be a modification of an invitational tournament. For those who don’t know, invitational tournaments have segregated VIP and pro fields. A VIP will invite a pro, which will guarantee the tournament has a 50/50 split of VIPs and pros. The pros will spend all of day 1 beating up on each other before the fields combine at the start of day 2. The modification of the Grand Slam is that there will be two separate day 1s. Day 1A is exclusively for VIPs who the team at Onyx have determined meet the criteria to be a VIP. The twist is that Day 1B will not be full of invited pros, but is open for all, including VIPs who did not make it through Day 1A. I love this idea from the Onyx team, because they are trying to create soft high-stakes tournaments, but they are eliminating the most annoying part of playing invitational tournaments, brokering deals to secure an invitation.

Today’s hand comes from a tournament called the “Triton Million,” but it was actually a $500k; the “Million” was implying that each partnership would buy in for a million dollars, even though there was no team playing in the actual tournament— it was just a marketing gimmick. I guess the “Triton Half Million” does not have the same ring to it. As part of the deal I brokered, I had around 11% myself, which is still a lot of money, but obviously not close to $500k worth. Normally, I sell action to the same people in tournaments, and generally speaking, I’ve made them money. I don’t feel pressure to put up results to make them money, because there is always next time. Invitationals are a slightly different beast; someone has personally invited you to play a tournament and is making a one-off six-figure investment in your poker action. I want to play well to make myself money, but there is also pressure to perform well and make money for your benefactor; it might help you secure an invite for the next tournament. In the Onyx Grand Slam, I would not have such concerns flitting through my mind, but in the Triton Million I did. I had a hand that fit the theme of the week: I Bet twice with air, got to the river, and needed to decide if I should pull the trigger and bluff off a lot of my money, but even more of other people’s money.

$500K NLH Triton Million - Event #2
(10k/20k/20k) (SB/BB/BBA) 6-Handed. Starting Stack 1,000,000. Last Level of Day 1.

Nick Schulman (1.405M) makes it 40k in the LJ, it folds to me (570k) OTB and I flat Q♠️J♥️, the blinds fold.

Flop (130k) 7♦️4♥️3♣️: Nick checks, I bet 40k, Nick calls.
Turn (210k) 9♦️: Nick checks, I bet 120k, Nick, calls.
River (450K) 3♠️: Nick checks, I shove for 370k, Nick calls with 5♥️5♣️.

What I was Thinking
I thought vs. a minraise from Nick with deeper-stacked Phil Ivey and Daniel Dvoress in the blinds, I could comfortably call all the offsuit broadways here. Maybe I’d fold JT and QT, but QJ seemed too strong, so I flatted. On the flop, I didn’t have a great strategy beyond that I should bet every unpaired offsuit hand with some frequency. We were shallow enough that I didn’t think betting big made too much sense. I rarely have a strong one-pair hand, and a set or straight does not want to bet a large size, which might scare off Nick. Perhaps I’d carve out a specific big bet size built around some 7x and 88, but I did not think that was necessary.

On the turn, the 9 pairs a lot of my suited hands that might stab the flop like Q9s, and it gives JTo and T8s straight draws, which might be just too much of a hand to bet/fold, so they’d want to check back. QJ high with no draw seemed like a prime two barreling candidate even if I figured I’d rather have a diamond to barrel the turn so I can block hands Nick would never fold on the turn, like KdQd. Even without a diamond I thought I had one of my worst hands with no pair, no draw, and two overcards, and that is a class of hand that often barrels the turn in all sorts of different situations in NLHE. So I fired a size that I thought would fold out hands like AK high and set up a river shove.

The river was a total blank, and I felt I would need to shove to get Nick to fold hands like A5 and KdQd. I was not sure how often he was supposed to call the river with ace high or how often he should fold a small pair, but it sure felt like he had that class of hand rather often. Given that re-entry was about to close and I could re-enter with 1,000,000 chips tomorrow when the field combines, I was not that interested in joining the combined field of Pros/VIPs with 37% of a starting stack. So I decided to shove, and after several timebanks, got looked up by the type of hand I thought Nick might have.

What I Got Wrong

I do get a little bit of big bet on the flop centered around A7s and 88 and 99, but my most frequent bet size is a small block around my size. My exact combo of QJ bets around half the time and is one of the more passive QJ combos; the most frequent bets are ones that don’t have a spade and block two backdoor flush draws. However, all in all, my queen-high hands are amongst my most frequent unpaired hands that bet the flop, and my flop size and decision to bet seem appropriate.

When I bet the flop, I have an unpaired hand 60% of the time; on the 9d turn, I turn top pair 10% of the time, and my unpaired frequency drops to 50% of the time. When I have no pair, no draw, no ace high, I bet 90% of the time, and QJ is a hand that never checks the turn. I only played one turn size, something around 60% pot, but 30% pot is actually frequently used, often as a value/protection bet with a hand like A4/A3 or 55. So my logic for betting the turn— total air, two overcards, no draw = bet— was sound; JT and T8 check back, but overall, I just bet a lot of unpaired hands on a 9 turn.

On the river, I was over-bluffing; QJ mostly checks, and the combos that bluff tend to not have my suits in them. However, I would have given up almost all the flush draw combos, and the solver occasionally bluffs hands like JdTd, QdTd and Kd8d, in addition to regularly bluffing some ace-high hands like A5 and A6. My thinnest value bet is 76s, and while I am not sure I’d find that value shove, I think I’d shove A7. So even though my hand pure checks on the river and makes around 0.2bbs by doing so, I am not sure that I am under-value-betting or over-bluffing the river myself. There are specific blocker dynamics which might not apply in real life— I tend to give up hands that turned flush draws and have two diamonds, but tend to follow through with hands with one diamond, because Nick will often call AxQd or AxKd on the river. Even at very high-level poker in the biggest buyin of the year, I am not sure we can count on these adjustments and counter-adjustments to be made. “I mostly give up with diamonds, so Nick starts hero-calling with diamonds, so I balance it back by bluffing offsuit combos with diamonds” makes sense as I write it; both players thinking it in game is much harder. My preflop, flop and turn strategies were correct, but my river strategy of “I have queen high, I can’t win if I check, therefore I’m all-in” was wrong.

Types of Error

Overbluffing on the river: sometimes you just need to wave the white flag,

Grade

As I said above, my preflop, flop and turn plays were all fine, and my pure turn barrel was better than fine and a really nice play from me. The general questions about this hand are, do I stab with too much total air on the flop, and do I keep firing with all that air on the turn? If I say yes to both, I’m probably over-bluffing the river if I always bluff QJ, and especially so if I start bluffing hands like KJ or KQ. However, if I give up with A5 and A6 and just pull too much bluffing volume from QJ-type hands, the only real exploit Nick can make is to start hero-calling with exactly AK high and 55 a little too much. So even though my river shove is a mistake in solver land, I think I’m generally pretty happy with how I played this hand. But POTD rules are POTD rules, and one clear mistake and losing half a million dollars is a

B-

1. Sam here: not only do I remember that song, as a Raptors fan, I remember the sequel song Slam Harder with the hook “Who slam harder? Onyx, or Vince Carter? (Onyx!)”