POTD #246 Monte Carlo Monday: I Miscount Jason Koon's Stack

A hand where I should have asked "How much are you playing?"

“How much are you playing?” is an innocuous question that causes all sorts of reactions. I’ve seen people politely respond with their chip stack (or sometimes with how many BBs they have)¹, I’ve seen people defiantly put their hands in front of their stack so their opponent can’t see, I’ve seen people say “It’s none of your business” or tell the question asker to shut up, but most “How much are you playing?” stories end up being an active story about someone asking an annoying question or someone acting unreasonably to a fair question. Today I’m going to write about the passive version of this story, a cautionary tale where I did not ask “How much are you playing?” and ended up playing the hand in an unintended manner.

I’m going to start by splitting the difference here. Asking your opponent, “How much are you playing?” is annoying², especially if you do it over and over again to the same opponent. It’s also a totally fair and reasonable question to ask; you always want to know how much your opponent is playing. You are always in your right to ask the question and your opponent is allowed to find it annoying, but for me, there are some criteria that make asking the question especially annoying.

1. If you make it part of your routine in every hand.

Much like tanking 10 seconds every single time you raise preflop so your opponent can’t get a read on you, it is an annoying tic that slows down the game and doesn’t actually protect you from giving off live reads. If your routine is that regimented, it means that any mild deviation could mean something. Observant opponents will be able to get a read on you. If you always tank 10 seconds before opening preflop but then tank 20 seconds before opening preflop, you’re likely signalling that you have a close decision. If the time you take before acting preflop varies, then people are less likely to get a read on you when you deviate. If you always ask your opponent how much they’re playing just to be balanced, you are wasting your time and energy. When you don’t ask your opponent might just think that their chips are stacked clearly or you know how many chips they’re playing. You should always roughly know how much your opponent is playing; you don’t always need an exact count, and you don’t need to ask every single hand for fear of giving off tells when you don’t ask.

2. If you regularly ask several times in the same hand or ask the same player several times in a short period of time.

You know how much they had preflop because you asked. You know how much money went into the pot preflop. You don’t always need to ask how much they’re playing on the flop. Similarly if someone opens preflop two hands in a row, you don’t need to ask to see their stack two hands in a row. Sometimes people do this to try to get a live read on their opponent; it’s within the rules to do this, and I don’t even really think it’s unsportsmanlike, but I’ll repeat the same adjective to describe this behaviour, it’s annoying. Poker is a game and a customer service business; you don’t want to annoy all the customers.

3. If you are cagey when people ask you how much you’re playing

This is within the rules, but this is unsportsmanlike. If you’re asking everyone to show their stack all the time, you better be prepared to show your stack and have your chips stacked legibly.

With all that being said, you should still err on the side of asking. Your goal is to play the best poker you’re capable of and if that means you’ll sometimes be annoying so be it. Knowing how many chips your opponent has is important. Most of the “How much are you playing?” stories involve someone getting very angry and things escalating, but there are likely a larger number of hands where someone was too shy or careless to ask to see someone’s stack and they played a hand poorly because of it. Those stories are ones that the two people who played the hand might remember for a long time, but the other six people at the table might forget. Stories where someone tells someone else to “mind their fucking business” tend to be stories that all eight people remember.³ Today, I’ll write about the less discussed, but likely more common in frequency hands, where one player didn’t ask and made a mistake.

Triton Monte-Carlo 2024 $150K NLH - Event #12
(1k/2k/2k) (SB/BB/BBA) 200k Starting Stack

It folds to Jason Koon (115k) in the LJ who makes it 4.5k, I (186k) call on the button with Q♥️9♥️, it folds to Chris Brewer (64k) who calls in the BB.

Flop (16.5k) J♣️T♥️5♥️: Chris checks, Jason checks, I bet 5.5k, Chris folds, Jason calls.
Turn (27.5k) 7♦️: Jason checks, I check.
River (27.5k) A♥️: Jason bets 7k, I make it 61k, he calls and mucks.

What I Was Thinking

Preflop, I can’t fold on the button. A three-bet could get Jason to fold QTo, QJo and A9o, but calling is also fine. I flopped a huge draw and they both checked to me; I figured a bet could get a whole host of hands better than mine right now to fold. Maybe Chris could fold a ten, and he’d definitely fold some 5x. Jason could fold a ten if Chris called a flop bet. All of this is to say, I have an open-ender and a flush draw and I bet. Easy decision. On the turn, I was unsure if I could bet and call a check-raise; I thought my hand was slightly too strong to bet and, fearing a check-raise, I checked. On the river, Jason blocked; I thought Jason and I had roughly the same stack and did not think I could shove 400% pot, and I felt that raising to around 150% pot was the play with the second nuts. So I did it and got called.

What I Got Wrong

Whether we’re 57.5bbs deep or 93bbs deep, Q9 suited is a majority call that mixes some three-betting preflop. On the flop, my hand is a pure bet, and betting can get Chris to fold some Tx. If I bet and Chris calls, Jason starts folding Tx as well. On the turn, the deeper stacked Jason is, the more I want to bet. If Jason had my exact stack size, Qh9h is basically a pure bet, in part because I fold out AQ, which I want to do in case the river is a king. The shallower I get, the more likely Jason is to check-shove the turn, and I’d need to fold to a check-shove since many of his bluffs have me dominated. AlI of this means that the shallower I am, the less interested I am in betting my hand. That being said, betting is still fine; I can get a lot of hands better than mine to fold and rarely get check-shoved on.

On the river, I misjudged his stack size, but my play does not and cannot lose too much EV. It’s hard for overbetting with the second nuts to lose all that much EV compared to overbetting to a larger size. That being said, I spent my whole timebank on the river thinking about how big a raise of 150% pot was. I was so locked in that I didn’t even notice Jason only had 240% pot to play. I was also not locked in enough, because I raised to 130% pot instead of 150% pot, which is not a horrible error, but sure made me feel dumb when I revisited this hand.

If we were as deep as I thought we were on the river, I can raise half pot with as thin as AT and almost never raise larger than full pot with my range. My most common raise is KQ, and I almost never raise larger than full pot because I don’t have a flush often enough to pick a raise size mostly built around the size I might want to pick with flushes. If I had asked Jason “How much are you playing?” and knew exactly how much he was playing on the river, I mix a little bit of all-in and a little bit 132%, but full pot remains my most common river size. In either case, my play does not lose EV with my hand, but is not part of a strong overall range strategy.

Types of Error
I did not know how many chips my opponent was playing
Sizing error on the river

Grade

A funny thing about this hand is that I probably won the max by misreading Jason’s stack size. If I knew how much he was playing on the river, I probably would have shoved, and I think it’s likely Jason would have folded his weak bluff catcher⁴. My preflop play is fine vs. either stack size, as is my flop play, but my turn play was not. I am supposed to check the turn when Jason is shallow because I don’t want to get check-shoved on, and I am supposed to bet when we are too deep to get check-shoved on. I (incorrectly) thought we were deeper than we actually were, which would have made the turn a bet, but I lucked into finding the check. I (incorrectly) thought we had 4x pot to play on the river and I couldn’t shove my hand, but we actually had around half that, which made me choose a weird in-between size, which was actually a pretty good size in theory. So I thought about this hand totally wrong, made two bad plays given the incorrect assumptions I was playing with, but ended up playing the actual hand pretty close to perfectly. Poker is funny sometimes, but I am not going to give myself a good grade for not counting my opponent’s stack and getting lucky.

C

1. Horrible behaviour. I do not approve

2. Fourth time in the article thus far. Are you annoyed yet?

3. If you find yourself being told or telling people to mind their own fucking business so often, that you often forget about it. You likely need to work on your social skills.

4. He told me what he had after the hand