POTD #227 A "Bread and Butter" hand vs Steve O'Dwyer in Paris

A simple hand, with a big punt.

Prolific POTD commentator “Lion King” commented in the replies of POTD #189,

I still love the posts that talk about the “Bread and Butter” spots and lines. This is one of them.

The concept of “Bread and Butter” lines reminded me of a Twitter thread from GTO Wizard’s Head Coach, Tombos21, where he wrote about what’s more important to study, single-raised pots or three-bet pots. The dilemma is that single-raised pots occur more often, but three-bet pots are larger and therefore mistakes are more expensive. Fortunately, you’re allowed to study and master them both. However, when I study, I tend to focus more on single-raised pots, because I tend to have, to borrow a term from a series of Run It Once courses, a “From the Ground Up” approach: I try to master the most common spots, so that they become a solid foundation that will allow me to get more creative and exploitative on later streets.

The irony of this is, my own study deviates from the content I produce on POTD. When I select hands for POTD, I tend to look for hands that have a little more sizzle or are esoteric and odd. The odder the spot, the more likely I am to make a massive blunder. That means proportionally, POTD hands should be more likely to feature multiway hands, tricky final table spots, or three-bet pots than single-raised pots in level 3. Lion King has inspired me, and today we’re returning to EPT Paris to launch a new feature, pain et beurre. Today’s hand will be paired with POTD #152, where I castigated Kayhan Mokri for folding A9 high on the turn of an eight-high paired board in a pot between a preflop raiser and the SB. I can’t imagine I’d ever do anything like that.

2024 PokerStars EPT Paris Event #7 €25,000 NLH II
(1k/1.5k/1.5k) (SB/BB/BBA). Registration is open.

It folds to Steve O’Dwyer (150k) on the button who makes it 4k, I (150k) call A♣️9♣️ in the SB, the BB folds.

Flop (12k) 8♣️8♠️4♦️: I check, Steve checks.
Turn (12k) 6♥️: I check, Steve bets 5k, I fold.