POTD #250 FT Friday: Three Betting a Garbage Hand and Getting Myself in Trouble

I have A6o, what's the worst that can happen?

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I don’t want to spend too much time on POTD critiquing the content of other poker strategy I see on Twitter— if I did, I wouldn’t have enough time to write about the actual hands I played— but a recent post caught my eye because of how vociferously I disagreed with it. Gareth James posted

Poker is played forwards.

But it should be studied backwards.

Most players study in this order:

Preflop
Flop
Turn
River

Which means the highest-leverage decisions get the least study.

The best players start at the end of the hand.

Because the river determines everything that came before it.

I think it’s important to study poker as you play it, forwards. Your preflop play sets up a solid foundation for your flop play. You can’t understand what a c-bet strategy should look like if you don’t understand your preflop strategy. The most potential EV loss occurs on the river because that is when the pot is at its biggest, but situations further down the game tree also occur less frequently, so it’s unclear if mastering them is more valuable than lower-EV spots that occur more frequently. What’s most important is that strong preflop play sets you up to succeed on flop, sets you up to succeed on the turn and the river. It’s important to study and play the early streets well so you can play the rest of the hand well. Good flop play leads to good river play, and it’s a pipe dream to hope that you will make up for poor flop play by playing great on the river.

In today’s hand, I tried an exploitative preflop play that I thought had some merit, but mostly just led to me playing a big pot with a bad hand out of position. I did not end up seeing the river in this hand, so I am not sure if I would have played it well, but I can confidently say I could have avoided a preflop blunder.

Pokerstars $5k High Roller. We Are Three Handed.
(30k/60k/7.5k) (SB/BB/ANTE) 3rd: $71k, 2nd: $92k, 1st: $119k

You can watch me discuss this hand in a Run It Once Video here (19:00)
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Sergi “srxaxgirona” Reixach (5.5M) raises to 120k on the button, I (1.6M) make it 360k in the SB with A♣️6♦️, Lrslzk (2.3M) folds in the BB, Sergi calls

Flop (802.5k) 7♥️5♠️4♠️: I check, Sergi bets 240,750, I call
Turn (1.284M) Q♥️: I check, Sergi shoves for my remaining 987k, I fold.