POTD #237 Deep in the 2019 WSOPME I Flop Top Two
I try to get maximum value out of a monster.
An interesting thing about poker is that almost every player is getting better. I was one of the best players in the world in 2015, and my 2015 self would be a fish in modern games. I had my highest win rate when the gap between my skills and an average player was at its largest, and that could have been in 2010. However, there is no question the 2026 version of myself is the best I’ve ever been as a poker player. There will be a point in time where my skills and cognition deteriorate to the degree where I am overall a worse player, but I don’t feel like I am there yet. The difference is, the 2026 version of myself needs to play vs. the 2026 version of everyone else, and in 2026, even VIPs are studying with solvers and are much better poker players than they were years ago.
When I write about recent hands in POTD, I tend to remember not only playing the hand, but also studying the hand. When I begin a blog post, I know what errors I made and what I should have done, which fortunately means I have learned from my mistake. Now that does not mean I will never repeat it; sometimes I lack the discipline to follow through, or I am unable to access all the knowledge in my head as I am playing a hand.
However, today and tomorrow, and likely some days in the future, I am going to add a new feature where I write about hands I played a very long time ago. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll say hands that I played last decade, so 2019 and earlier. These are hands that when I rewatched them on stream, I recoiled because I saw what I believed to be a clear error. I’ve thought to myself, if I could play that hand now, I’d have played it differently. So in addition to “What I Was Thinking” and “What I Got Wrong,” I will add a middle section, “What I Think Now,” and then when we get to the “What I Got Wrong” section, we will see if I have learned from my mistakes or if I actually played the hand perfectly in the past. In today’s hand, we will look at a small pot from some of the highest-stakes poker I’ve ever played, Day 6 of the 2019 WSOP Main Event. I fear I made a couple of big mistakes, but I won’t know until I get to the bottom of this blog post.
2019 World Series of Poker Main Event
(80k/160k/160k) (SB/BB/BBA) Day 6. We are in the money.
It folds to Chris Hunichen (6.515M) in the HJ who makes it 350k, it folds to Marcelo Cudos (10.805M) who calls in the SB, I (12.17M) call in the BB with Q♠️T♦️.
Flop (1.21M) Q♣️T♥️4♦️: Cudos checks, I check, Huni checks.
Turn (1.21M) 7♥️: Cudos checks, I check, Huni checks.
River (1.21M) A♣️: Cudos checks, I check, Huni checks.
