POTD #256 Trying to Exploit Danny Tang in a $200k

I make a dicey flop check-raise, turn a draw and keep betting.

As I wrote earlier, this week will be the final week with five POTDs, a Week in Review, and a Sunday Special. Starting next week I will be writing the same amount, but I will only be publishing three in order to create a backlog, such that there will be no interruptions when my second son is born. For the final (for now) five-punt week, we are doing a theme week that I am calling Idiot Week. Welcome to Idiot Week! These are not hands that I necessarily played like an idiot, but hands where I was confident my opponent played them like an idiot. The types of hands that have me muttering to myself “this guy’s a fucking moron.” Of course, since this is Punt of the Day, that means I will be wrong and my opponent played the hand totally fine, which means even if I didn’t play the hand like an idiot, I sure acted like one. Fixating on your opponent’s mistakes instead of correcting your own is as big a punt as missing a thin river value raise. So enjoy this week where I show you my inner Helmuth.

Poker is a game of incomplete information; sometimes, that is as simple as “I know what my cards are and you don’t know what mine are,” but in the solver era, there can be macro games of incomplete information competing in an individual hand. “I know that this spot is a range check, so if my opponent bets, I know they don’t fully understand all the details in this hand, which opens the door for me to exploit my opponent.” One of the benefits of studying is not just that you know how the solver would play in a given spot, but you become more aware of when there is an information gap between you and your opponent’s understanding of the equilibrium in a given situation. If you know a spot is a range c-bet and your opponent checks, you are given the green light to play max exploit poker. The more you study, the more you know, the more often you’ll see these signs on early streets that will allow you to and outplay later on.

In today’s hand, I had a good start in the $200k Triton Invitational in Monaco and had over two starting stacks as day one was about to conclude. I felt something was off about Danny Tang’s c-bet strategy, so I gave myself the go-ahead to put him in the cage, but he ended up being stickier than I anticipated and I was not able to exploit him the way I wanted to.

Triton Monte Carlo 2023 - Event #1 $200K NLH Triton Invitational
Level 9 (2.5k/5k/5k) (SB/BB/BBA). 300k Starting Stack. Registration is Open.
The field combines at the conclusion of level 10.

It folds to Danny Tang (554k/110bbs) in the LJ who makes it 11k, it folds to me (660k/133BBs) in the BB with J♠️T♣️ who calls.

Flop (29.5k) 7♠️4♠️2♥️: I check, Danny bets 11k, I make it 40k, he calls
Turn(109.5k) A♠️: I bet 55k, Danny calls.
River (219.5k) 9♦️: I bet 220k of Danny’s final 448k, he calls with A♥️6♥️.

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What I Was Thinking

This deep vs. an EP open, you three-bet bluff hands that are stronger and have smoother equity than JTo, which among other things normally means suited hands and rarely offsuit ones. So I pure called, especially in an invitational when fields would combine soon. I thought this flop was going to be a big bet or check board from Danny; he has a range and nuts advantage, but he also has a lot of unpaired middle-of-range hands that don’t mind or outright prefer checking. He pretty quickly bet an in-between size, and I read that to mean he was c-betting too often and didn’t consider overbetting. Since I thought he c-bet too many middle-of-range hands and I thought I could discount sets and overpairs a little, I decided I was going to raise more often with any combo that mixed raising. Having two overcards, the Js, and a three-straight seemed like a fine hand to start raising.

Once I raised and got called, I figured the ace was bad for me as it gave Danny a lot of top pair, but I should still have more straights, flushes and sets than him, so I figured I could bet sometimes with hands like mine.It’s rare to overbet on flush-completing turns; usually you play some small-medium sizes and then occasionally go for big overbets on the river. I felt that half pot was an appropriate turn size that could fold out pocket pairs without a spade, but should never fold out top pair.

The river is about as blank as they come. I rarely pair a bluff and rarely improve to a value bet. I have a whole host of hands like mine, unpaired high cards with one spade, but I figured I had to bluff my hand in case Danny had a hand like KsQx. However, I was still worried enough about Danny having a flush that I couldn’t overbet all-in with range, so I figured pot was a reasonable size I could bet with hands like mine, flushes, straights, and sets. When Danny looked me up with Ah6h, I felt similarly to how I did when Samuel Vousden looked me up with A6 in POTD #255. Does this guy fold anything ever? What a station. I should have 800k and I am stuck with starting stack. Unbelievable. If it weren’t for luck I’d win every time, etc.

What I Got Wrong

50bbs deep, JTo starts three-betting facing an early-position open, but this deep it’s too weak a hand to three-bet. My general rule of thumb is that if somebody c-bets too wide, you exploit them by playing back at them with a lot of aggression. It makes sense, but it doesn’t hold in all situations. For instance, if someone c-bets too often on AKK, it means they have a lot more top pair than they’re supposed to and their range is too strong. You can’t check-raise the flop to exploit someone c-betting too wide unless you’re prepared to fire the turn and the river to get them to fold an ace. In this hand, Danny has 56% range vs. range equity on the flop, has sets and overpairs more often than me, and his unpaired hands are stronger than my unpaired hands. The problem is that a representative hand in his range might be something like AK or 33, which has around 55-58% equity depending on their suits. If I can get those hands to fold to a check-raise, great; if I can’t, I’m just putting money in behind too often.

I said I thought Danny’s c-betting range was too weak, but the proper description there is too wide. If he has a bunch of hands better than jack high that will call a check-raise and my hand can mostly only improve to mediocre top pair, it might not be the right hand to exploitatively check-raise. If can’t get him to fold those middle-of-range hands like 33 or AK, then check-raising the flop with JsTx is like check-raising AKK with JT: I’ll just called by better a lot of the time, and I’ll need to make my money later in the hand by keeping up the pressure on the turn and river. Danny bet 37% pot, which is on the large size for a “small c-bet,” and I raised to 55% pot, which is also on the large size for a check-raise. If I’m already concerned about putting in too much money with a bad hand, that concern should be heightened when we’re both using sizes on the larger side. I probably should have just folded the flop to 11k, but I could have been willing to get frisky if he bet 8k. However, the solver still does mix some low-frequency check-raises with JsTx, but mostly wants JsTh, which also blocks hands like AhTh that will call a flop check-raise with a nut backdoor.

On the turn, half pot is my most common size with range, and my range checks the turn around half the time. Across all unpaired cards with one spade, they also bet the turn around half the time. It’s all 50-50. Flip a coin. Who cares? JsTh, my only high-reach JsTx combo, does frequently bet the turn, and half pot is supposed to be enough to get top pair to start folding right away. On the river, I rarely pair the nine (only 3% of the time), and the only unpaired hand with a spade I never bluff is KQ. So any of the offsuit broadways (or the Ks5c) type hands can bluff the river. I can pick a variety of different river sizes, including quarter pot with two pair, half pot with sets, and full pot and larger with flushes and straights. For whatever reason, my hand prefers betting full pot or 1.5x pot and never shoves. Danny’s hand is supposed to fold the flop, turn and river, but he is not the idiot in this hand, I was. I tried exploiting something in his flop c-bet strategy and started overbluffing, and he found an easy counter of just continuing wider. I don’t think he was setting me up with his flop c-bet, but as we got deeper into the hand, he came to the realization that I was overbluffing and made a nice call.

Types of Error
Wrong exploit: Check-raiser wider for value not as a bluff

Grade

If I wanted to exploit Danny, who was c-betting too wide, on a board where he has a range advantage but also won’t struggle to find continues with middle-of-range hands, there is a simple solution. Check-raise wider for value. If someone opens too wide preflop and calls three-bets an appropriate amount or maybe too loose, you don’t start three-betting A2s, you start three-betting AJs. Getting rid of slowplays, pure check-raising 88, check-raising some more strong linear draws like As2s, those are the types of exploits I should have been making on the flop when I gauged his c-bet strategy was off. When I force Danny to c-bet 100% of the time, my check-raise frequency increases from ~15% to 20%, but I need to be precise about where I pull the extra 5% from, and JsTc is not one of those hands. My turn and river sizes look fine, but those bets are probably just losing plays vs. someone who isn’t folding top pair enough, which is another reason I should have focused on having JsTh so I could block hands like AhTh on the flop, but also in this case on the turn and the river. A bad exploit, followed by getting called down, followed by thinking that my opponent is an idiot when he really just outplayed me.

C-