POTD #254 Faraz Jaka Cold Four Bets Me With Napkins
And I fold like one.
I was recently doing a Q&A with students from Phil Galfond’s Beyond the Game program, and someone asked me a question about a hand where a live-read exploitative type player got the best of me. For whatever reason, my mind rushed back to 2012 and my deep run in the PCA Main Event. At the time, I was a 23-year-old who had decided, for some reason I have currently forgotten, to not shave for an entire semester of school. I had a beard that even by my standards was unkempt, and in rewatching this footage, I was taken aback by how ridiculous I looked.
In 2012, I had not won a WSOP bracelet or played a tournament with a buy-in larger than €10,000. Tournaments with buy-ins larger than $25k barely existed. My biggest live cash at the time was my first one, an 8th place finish in WPT Niagara Falls in 2008. I had made day three of the PCA Main with around 2x average, hoping to set a new career high score, and even more, hoping to come top two and have a seven-figure score. I believe I was backed at the time and I had definitely swapped with some people in the tournament, but it was all so long ago, I can’t remember much, except that I entered Day 5 with my eyes on the final table and a dream of increasing my net worth by an order of magnitude.
I don’t remember much of that day, but after consulting with PokerNews, I remember I lost a flip with 99 vs. AT and then reshoved KJs over a HJ open only to have Faraz Jaka wake up with KK in the big blind. I was drawing dead on the turn and finished 15th. The most memorable hand I played vs. Faraz was not my bustout hand, but one early on in day 5, in which Jaka was doing some Jaka shit and cold 4-betting me with 92o. At the time I thought his play was terrible, and I still think it was… not good, but at POTD we’re all about learning from my mistakes. So today I’m going to ask myself: Could I have sniffed it out? Should I have been able to fight back against his 92o cold 4-bet?
PCA Main Event 2012. 24 Remaining. 8-Handed.
(12k/24k/3k) (SB/BB/ANTE)
John Dibella (1.1M/46BBs) makes it 55k, it folds to me (2.1M/87BBs) with A♦️3♦️, I make it 136k, it folds to Faraz Jaka (3.9M/162BBs) on the button who makes it 320k, we both fold. Faraz has 9♣️2♠️.
What I Was Thinking
We are playing for big money, a rec opens from EP, and I have a suited ace. I should three-bet. In 2012, a large part of the meta game was that savvy online pros would three-bet light and that recreational businessmen types would often fold to a three-bet. A suited ace is always a fine hand to three-bet, I thought it was a good spot to three-bet, and I took it. Once Faraz cold four-bet me, I knew he was capable of making a move, but did not know just how far he’d be willing to go make a move. The day had just started, and I still had an above-average stack if I folded. I figured that I had a rare shot to win a lot of money and was not going to punt off my stack doing something stupid like flatting a cold four-bet OOP with A3s or five bet-jamming A3s.
What I Got Wrong
One macro thing I got wrong was that I overestimated my edge in this tournament. The final 24 of this tournament featured at least 13 top online MTT pros and probably more. I was not an experienced live poker player, and many of the players in the field had already had big scores in EPTs and WSOPs. Even if I were the best technical poker player of the final 24 (I doubt I was), I was certainly not the best live MTT player and should have, generally speaking, been less willing to “wait for better spots.”
That being said, I should have just folded to John Dibella’s open. This was not 2026 where I could get stream hands immediately relayed to me, or where I could watch the day 4 footage on YouTube before day 5 began, but I have a hand that mixes folds for cEV. I doubt Dibella was opening as wide as the solver does for chips, which includes pure opens with K7s, J8s or QJo. I also don’t think he’s folding to a three-bet as often as the solver, which under ICM pressure would consider folding AQo and QJs here. Later in this episode, John three-bet 85o in the BB vs. an EP open from Faraz and called a small four-bet. So maybe he would be opening wider than I am currently giving him credit for, but then, he’s also very much not the type of guy who would snap fold AQo or 88 faceup to me.
Additionally, Faraz and Phil “takechip” D’Auteuil both covered me and were capable of pulling moves behind me. So, all in all, I have an opener that might be tighter than the solver, who also doesn’t fold to three-bets as much as the solver, in the most obvious three-bet spot imaginable, with two players behind who might cold four-bet me with off-the-grid garbage. Oh, and my three-bet size was also too small, and I probably should have made it closer to 150-170k.
I should have folded to the open, which obviously means once I three-bet and get cold four-bet I have a pretty easy fold, right? No, not at all. Even looking at the solver equilibrium, almost every suited ace mixes five-betting non-all-in or flatting a four-bet. A3s pure folds, but continuing it is not losing very much. I toyed around with the solver to see what its response would be if you give Faraz a handful of janky total air combos like 92o. I assumed it would play very aggressively and just five-bet shove a bunch, but something more surprising happens: I flat a lot. If Faraz wants to four-bet 92o, then I can call with A3s and make him play a garbage hand in a monster pot, instead of risking running into AA. I don’t think the 2012 version of me would be particularly good at playing a monster four-bet pot out of position. If I flatted, I surely would have made some postflop blunders, but so would Faraz. I was in a great position to fight back and chickened out because I did not want to bust doing something stupid in such a high-equity spot. Instead, I busted in a much more classic fashion, losing a couple of “standard” preflop all-ins.
Types of Error
Made a bad three bet
Unwilling to punt in a massive spot.
Grade
There is a style of main event poker that I really hate that I call “cynical poker.” It’s a strategy where people play as face-up and straightforward as possible, and hope to capture an edge by exploiting the dummies who are waiting to blast off with something stupid, or to steal pots from those playing even more face-up and straightforward than you. This is what it felt like my mindset was entering this hand: I can three-bet the fish with every suited ace every time because he won’t play back at me, but also, the stakes were so high for me that I was unwilling to play back at Faraz in the fashion I might if we were playing the Big $109 one week later. If you play cynical poker, you open the door for more opportunistic players to wreck you, especially in a very specific high-stakes situation. If I had AJo, I’d give this hand a B. A good three-bet, not quite the right hand to fight back with vs. a cold 4-bet, but exploitatively any hand was probably a good one to fight back with. In this hand, I had a bad hand to three-bet, I picked the wrong size, and I was unwilling to fight back when I should have. However, the hand is 14(!) years old, so I will give myself a little grace and just give myself a
C