POTD #220 Andrew Lichtenberger makes a Hero Call vs Michael Wang

The reader's choice from the PGT Championship

In Week in Review #41, I gave readers of POTD a quiz of notable hands from the PGT Championship. The first eight hands were all hands where I determined that exactly one mistake was made; the final two hands were hands where I was not sure how many mistakes were made, and I conducted a poll in the comments of that post and in the POTD Discord (Join Now!). In the choice between hand 9 and hand 10, you overwhelmingly voted for hand 9. If you want to read my admittedly less thorough analysis of hand 10, the queen-high call down blind versus blind, you can read it in the #studywithsam section of the Discord server. I’ll warn you ahead of time: The analysis will be sharp, but the prose may have a few more typos, dangling modifiers, and split infinitives than what you expect from the POTD posts I publish here. [Despite how it may seem, I am not in fact everywhere all the time. -ed]

Most of the posts I shared in the quiz occurred before the bubble. That’s partially because there were more hands played in the early levels of the tournament, but also, a tournament like this with such top-heavy payouts— $500k for first, $200k for 2nd, all the way down to $40k for 6th— is not a format many players, myself included, are prepared to play. I didn’t feel all that confident claiming a mistake made in a format I am unfamiliar with was a “clear mistake.” Obviously you should “play for first” in a tournament where 50% of the prize pool goes to the winner more than you should in a tournament where 30% of the prize pool goes to the winner, but exactly how much is tough to say. Usually if you’re in a spot like this you can only hope to change your strategy directionally, but today I am going to take a deep dive into a tricky hand and see exactly how extreme the adjustments made by the final four players should be.

PGT Championship Final Table 4-Handed
1st $500k, 2nd $200k, 3rd $120k, 4th $80k
(40k/80k/80k) (SB/BB/BBA)

Chad Eveslage (3.52M) folds the CO, Michael Wang (1.92M) makes it 160k on the button with A♠️4♦️, Daniel Negreanu (1.11M) folds in the SB, Andrew “LuckyChewy” Lichtenberger (3.975M) calls with A♦️7♥️ in the BB.

Flop (440k) 6♠️5♥️3♠️: Chewy bets 80k, Michael calls.
Turn (600k) 6♥️: Chewy bets 300k, Michael calls.
River (1.2M) 7♠️: Chewy bets 80k, Michael raises 1.3M, Chewy calls.