POTD #241 Monte Carlo Monday: I Get Sticky With 7 BBs
With 95o. I try to make a living.
Sometime in the mid 2010s, when face-up hole cards at online final tables were a novel new way to watch online poker and not the default for many final tables, it was an interesting window to look into how final tables were won and lost at a time when play styles varied wildly. One player type that fascinated me was the crazy loose opener. I’d seen players show down K2 offsuit after opening UTG. Did they ever fold K5o in the same lineup? Did they try to time their opens based on gameflow? Were they exploiting general tightness from the population? Then I watched the streams and saw that most of the time their loose steal went through, none of their opponents got dealt a decent hand. It’s easy to steal with K2o when the best hand any of the other seven players has is Q8s.
Sometimes they were at tables where players folded 88 to their open, but for the most part, a simple pattern emerged. Their loose opens worked when players had bad hands and did not when they had good hands. I know this is true, but when I am at a tight table or have a chip lead, and open up my own game and successfully steal the blinds several times in a short span, I can find it hard to center myself. When you’re winning, it’s hard to remind yourself that you’re probably the recipient of good card distribution. Anytime you steal the blinds three times in an orbit, you are almost certainly running hot.
In Triton Monte Carlo, I had cashed the GG Million$ as a short stack, but then I won two flips, including a pretty big one vs. Alex Kulev, that gave me a solidly above-average stack as we were closing in on the final two tables. I thought of the old days and thought that I was a couple blind steals or successful c-bets away from being a top-five stack in the tournament. I had T9o in the CO and thought I could sneak a loose open in vs. a tight BB, but the button had 6bbs and shoved, so I was forced to call and lost. I folded the HJ the next hand, and the hand after that I had 98s in the LJ and tried to steal the blinds again; I got three-bet and had to fold. I puttered around for another couple orbits, and my above-average stack whittled down even more until I had become one of the shortest stacks.
In a universe where I was tighter, I’d have more chips. In a universe where my opponents got dealt worse hands, I’d have more chips, but for whatever reason I was trying to see flops on this day. Our table broke and we redrew to two tables of 8; we were on a small pay jump and I had 7bbs. It was folded to me in the SB, where once again, I tried to push the limits and make an exploitative loose preflop play.
Triton Monte Carlo 2023 - Event #10 $25K GG MILLION$ LIVE
(50k/100k/100k) (SB/BB/BBA) 16 of 187 remain. We are in the money.
16th gets $62k, 15th gets $69k.
If folds to me (705k) in the SB with 9♥️5♣️, Ferdinand Putra (1.77M) checks in the BB.
Flop (300k) 7♦️6♣️2♣️: I bet 100k, Ferdinand raises to put me all-in, I fold.
