POTD #235 FT Friday: GGMillion$ Blind vs Blind vs Limitless
I flop a big draw and keep betting
I’ve written on POTD about many hands where I put in too much money with a combo draw, and it’s tough to say whether it’s a persistent error in my game or a selection bias in the punts I pick. Hands where I bet when I should have checked tend to be more memorable for one pretty simple reason: The pots are bigger, and big pots are harder to forget. I’ve written about hands where I checked a draw that I should have bet, but the siren call of betting big with a draw is always tempting. If you get a fold, congratulations; you’ve won the pot. If you get called, don’t worry; you can improve on the river. If you get raised, don’t worry; you can call and win the hand on a later street.
After I wrote about “linear bluffing” in POTD #177, I reached out to members of the POTD Discord to ask if there were other concepts people would like me to write about. A user “jez” asked about why the solver sometimes slowplays higher-equity draws and fastplays lower-equity draws. The example he gave was check-calling KsJs and 9s8s on QsTs7c, while check-raising As2s and 8s6s. Why he asked me, the famous misplayer of combo draws, was something I did not understand [Ever hear the one about the drunk and the lamppost? -ed.], but today’s hand gives us a good look into what I was thinking playing a big pot with a draw, and what criteria can help my readers in navigating these spots. As is often the case, all these guidelines are general and do not always hold in every situation.
When playing aggressively, the solver tends to like to be polar. That means that on, say, Js6d2s, they’re more likely to raise Ks4d than, say, Kc2c. K2 is a higher equity-hand, has more outs to improve to a very strong hand, and has similar blocker value to the K4. However, it also has showdown value, and when you check-raise with a polar range, you don’t need to pick middle-of-range hands. You usually want to raise hands that can get better hands to fold, and K2 does not really do that.
The polar vs. linear distinction also holds with how you play draws. AsKs is almost always a higher-equity draw than As2s, but AsKs doesn’t fold out any dominating ace-high hands when it takes an aggressive action, and it’s more likely to win at showdown unimproved than As2s. Additionally, if you have a nut flush draw, you want your opponent to have as many worse flush draws as possible, and As2s is more likely to be up against king-high flush draws than AsKs (obviously).
So the solver tends to play aggressive with draws that are a little more on the polar spectrum, while it “slowplays” hands like KsJs or 9s8s that are much more robust, can induce bluffs on lots of turns, can credibly check-raise all-in on many turns, etc.
When you are picking draws to bluff with that are more on the polar side, the questions you want to ask yourself are: Am I getting better draws to fold? Am I getting better made hands to fold? Can I call a raise at the next node? If the answers to those three questions are yes, you have a good hand to occasionally bluff with as part of a balanced overall strategy.
The concern with fastplaying hands like KsJs on QsTs7c is that you are to some extent wasting them. Monster draws that are very robust and easy to play usually realize more than 100% of their equity. If you get all-in with them, they will definitionally realize 100% of their equity, which is not ideal. KsJs has ~42% vs. QQ, but only ~50% vs. AK high. So while there are spots you want to fastplay your stronger linear draws, there are many spots like the example jez provided where you want to play your draws more polar. If you’d like to read more about how to fastplay draws in a manner that is more polar, you can read POTD #101, today’s hand, or the hand I paired with today’s hand, POTD #142. In POTD #142, Alex Ponakovs ran a big bluff with an open-ender and a flush draw vs. Cristoph Vogelsang blind vs. blind, and in today’s hand, I tried a similar move against Wiktor Malinowski at a slightly smaller FT.
GG Super Million$ E37
(50k/100k/12.5k) (SB/BB/BBA) We are at the final table. 6 remain.
6th: $123k, 5th: $160k, 4th: $207k, 3rd: $269k, 2nd: $349k, 1st: $453k
Mikita (1.9M) folds, Yuri (5.8M) folds, David Yan (5.2M) folds, Ferrrariman (1.5M) folds, Wiktor Malinowksi (4.85M) completes in the SB, I (3.03M) check 8♠️5♠️ in the BB.
Flop (275k) T♦️9♠️6♠️: Wiktor checks, I bet 181.5k, he calls.
Turn (638k) J♣️: Wiktor checks, I bet 571k, Wiktor makes it 1.3M, I call.
River (3.238M) K♣️: Wiktor shoves for my final 1.5M, I fold.
Today is this week’s free hand. If you’d like to see my explain concepts like when to find polar bluffs with draws. You can do by subscribing or joining the POTD Discord and simply asking me. I am easy to find and eager to please. If you are reading this and not a subscriber you can do so by clicking the button below
What I Was Thinking
I was going to raise a polar range preflop, and 85s struck me as far too strong a hand to bluff-raise with. On the flop, I flopped a very strong draw, and I remembered seeing a mechanic where you tended to fastplay flush draws with a one-card straight draw if you could fold out straight draws that you chopped with. So I figured a big size that could fold out hands I’d likely chop with, like 84, or hands that had me dominated, like K8, was the way to go, especially if I could also fold out bottom pair.
On the turn, my logic was the same as the flop, except with one added wrinkle. Since I was open-ended, I thought that if I could fold out a higher gutshot (Kx), that would clean up a lot of equity for me. Normally you don’t want to bet too linearly with big draws in position if you can’t call a check-raise all-in, but I figured that if I got raised on the turn, my straight draws would often be for half the pot or zero percent of the pot, so I decided to keep bluffing with my hand. I got check-raised very small, decided I could not fold this hand, and peeled one off. On the river, I am just grateful that Wiktor didn’t check because I would have needed to bluff and it would not have worked.
What I Got Wrong
Suited eights are actually a very high-frequency preflop raise from me; 82, 83, 84 ,86 are almost pure, but 85 is a 60% check. My frequencies were way off, but I found an acceptable play. On the flop, people familiar with postflop ICM on flops where there are lots of one-card straight draws will see a shape they’re familiar with here. Wiktor stabs the flop 87% of the time, because as the short stack, I play defensively and never raise. Rarely raising in position to wait and see how the board runs out is common when playing cEV poker on boards like this, but rarely to this extreme. I have position and know which river cards are action-killers. There is no reason to make the pot big now when I can use my position to navigate tricky turns and rivers, such as tens, nines, sixes, sevens, eights and spades or even as ended up being germane in today’s hands, running JK.
Given that I never raise over a 1bb bet, you’d think that means I’d play cautiously once Wiktor checks, but I bet reasonably often, around a third of the time, but never my size. I bet 1bb or check with range. Practically, I don’t think my size makes much sense, T8-86 always have a pair or better, J8 and Q8 have a double gutter, A8 is ace high, so what exactly am I hoping to fold? Exactly K8 without a spade or a backdoor? Chops like 85-82? It just doesn’t make sense. I can get some bare 6x to fold… so what? Big deal. Betting 1bb is fine, although the solver prefers checking, but my size is making it far too likely I play a big pot in a spot where I don’t want to play one.
So what happens when I try to force Limitless to check the flop a little more by making his biggest flop size 66%, and I force myself to go down the incorrect node I chose by forcing myself to play 66% or check? Wiktor’s betting frequency decreases, and he only bets 53% of the time, I never raise over his bet. When he checks, I bet 23% of the time, but tend to have a much more polar betting strategy than the solver. I rarely bet worse than AT for value, and the 8x I bet most frequently are 82 offsuit with and without a spade. My exact combo bets 10% of the time, so it’s an acceptable flop bet, but the only better hands my bigger size forces Wiktor to fold are 65-63 and the occasional junky unpaired hand with a backdoor. I can’t even get K8 to fold, and his other better unpaired hands are often KQ/KJ/QJ hands that also never fold. So even though I have eight high, I am really only successfully bluffing hands with one card lower than a five.
My turn error is the same as my flop error: I bet too big. The preferred solver size is 30%, with a bit of 60% sprinkled in, and almost no 90%. I thought my big size could get Kx to fold and clear up my queen outs, but that’s not really what happens. Hands with an open-ender and double straight blockers like K8 often bluff-raise the turn; hands like K9-KQ have a pair and a gutshot and won’t fold. Wiktor is not peeling the flop with, say, K5 with a backdoor flush draw that will fold to a turn bet. A small block that can fold out some very weak one-pair hands is acceptable, but a bigger size does not accomplish much with my hand. Of course when I get check-raised I need to try to hit my draw, but some 7x+ flush draw which only has a weak gutshot can fold to a check-raise, and of course I need to fold the river once he shoves into me.
Types of Error
Too Much Money: Betting too often and betting too large
Grade
There are spots you do want to bluff more polar with draws, but in order to do that, you need to occasionally fold out better draws. In today’s hand, I put in a lot of extra money mostly vs. pair-plus-straight or pair-plus-flush draws that have me dominated. On the spectrum of draws, there is no polar element to this bluff; I am just getting money in bad. In addition to that, I twice chose sizes that were too large given the ICM pressure I was under at the FT, and it ended up costing me half my stack. Sizing too large on the flop is an especially costly mistake, because it’s a mistake that compounds on the turn. I just barely passed the “bet/raise or check” test today preflop, on the flop, and on the turn. However, my flop and turn sizes were far too large and cost me a lot, and I did not properly think about what specific better draws I was targeting with my line.
C-