POTD #271 Adrian Mateos Tries an Unconventional Bluff vs Mustapha Kanit
Italy vs Spain in Korea
I tuned into the Triton streams from Jeju expecting to see top regs battling at nosebleed stakes in Super High Rollers, and while I did see some interesting hands from higher stakes that I’ll write about later this month, there was one hand from one of the earliest streamed tournaments that really caught my eye. Adrian Mateos ran a very big, some might say unnecessary, bluff vs. Mustapha Kanit with 67 people left in an $8k Main Event that had 1230 runners. When facing weaker players, bluffs are often winning or losing, and determining whether or not they’re necessary is pretty easy to do so. If it’s winning, it’s a good bluff; if it’s losing, it’s not. When facing great players in a soft tournament, you will encounter many spots with a bluff that should be neutral-EV or close to it; many players have the strategy of playing ABC poker vs. the other great players and waiting for weaker players to dump them EV.
The problem with adopting this co-operative strategy with a fellow pro resembles a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma: If you co-operate with your fellow pro and agree to not battle, then they can defect, start bluffing you all the time, and overfolding every marginal bluff catcher vs. you and capture a ton of EV. Even in the softest of tournaments, you’ll need to bust a tournament making a big bluff vs. the best player in the tournament some of the time. Adrian and Mustapha understand this, which led to a very interesting hand where they absolutely were not co-operating with each other to play small-pot poker. The hand perplexed me and I was not sure if there were mistakes from Adrian, Mustapha, or both, which made me think it was the perfect hand for POTD.
Triton ONE Jeju 2026 $8K NLH Main Event – Event #10
(50k/100k/100k) (SB/BB/BBA) 67/1230 Remain. We are ITM
It folds to Mustapha Kanit (7M) on the button who makes it 250k, it folds to Adrian Mateos (4.3M) who calls in the BB.
Flop (650k) 8♣️5♦️5♠️: Adrian leads 200k, Mustapha calls.
Turn (1.05M) T♥️: Adrian leads 1M, Mustapha calls.
River (3.05M) 6♦️: Adrian bets 2.875M of his final 2.9M, Mustapha calls with T♣️9♥️, Adrian has J♠️2♠️.
