POTD #282 Monte Carlo Monday: Checkraising the Flop, but Lost on the Turn
A deep stacked hand from a $200k Triton Invitational and another deepstacked blunder to the eventual champion.
My philosophy in poker is that good early street fundamentals provide the foundation for improvising on later streets. It’s much easier to exploit someone who underbluffs on the river in heads-up pots (fold!) than to exploit a tight CO when you’re opening UTG. Even if you do add a couple extra preflop opens to exploit a tight CO, the additional opens aren’t making very much, but folding to an underbluffer is printing money. Even in a heads-up pot, there are fewer ways to exploit a weaker player on early streets than on later streets, which is why it’s important to resort to solver baselines.
A strong solver foundation helps you master early streets, but you still need to do your part and make the right decisions once the pot gets bigger on the turn and river. It’s easy to find some odd preflop three-bet or solver check-raise; it’s much harder to play tricky turns and rivers once the pot gets bigger. This week, we will be looking at three hands where I find a pretty normal flop check-raise and then end up lost on the turn.1 Sometimes it will be because an odd turn rolls off, sometimes I’ll have misgauged my hand strength, and sometimes I won’t even know that I am facing a tough decision or made an error. I pride myself on having strong fundamentals that set me up for success and make future streets easy to play, but in this week’s hand, all the off-table work did not prepare me enough to execute when I check-raised the flop and whiffed on the turn.
Triton Monte-Carlo 2023 - Event #1 $200K NLH Triton Invitational
(1k/1.5k/1.5k) (SB/BB/BBA) 300k Starting Stack
It folds to Dan Smith (332.5k/222BBs) in the HJ who makes it 3.5k, it folds to me (307k/205bbs) in the BB who calls 7♣️4♣️.
Flop (9.5k) K♥️6♣️5♦️: I check, Dan bets 2.5k, I makes it 12.5k, Dan calls.
Turn (34.5k) 6♠️: I check, Dan bets 14k, I fold.
