POTD #291 In a $500k Tournament I Flop a Set and Scare Off Jason Koon

Pictured: another Set.

In my own study and in my private coaching, I always make sure to review complete sessions. If you only focus on “trouble” hands, you’ll only study from hands you know you struggled with, while ignoring leaks that are in your blind spots. For most people, the biggest room for improvement in their game is not about mastering rare but unusual spots. It is about identifying common mistakes they make in hands they think are “standard.” So it’s important to study every pot, big and small. If you only notice your c-bet strategy is bad because the hand ended up being raised on the river, you need to spend more time thinking about the hands where your opponent folds to your c-bet.

In today’s hand, I picked a larger c-bet size and Jason Koon made a comment that if I had c-bet smaller, he might have done something frisky. Did Jason’s comment fill me with enough regret that it forced me to look up a simple c-bet decision in a three-bet pot, or am I just a diligent poker player who practices what they preach and reviews every hand? The punt I’m writing about is from a $500k buyin, so perhaps I felt obligated to look up every hand I played in such a high-stakes tournament, or perhaps I am so unsure of my deepstack no-limit play that I felt the need to look up any questionable deep-stacked hand myself. The answer is probably “all of the above.” Today’s hand played out in a way that felt totally standard to me, but it was only after the fact that I learned that the solver equilibrium strategy here is much more passive than I expected.

$500K NLH Triton Million - Event #2 Triton Poker X WSOP Paradise 2024
(2k/4k/4k) (SB/BB/BBA). 1 Million Starting Stack. Registration is open.

It folds to Jason Koon (1.381M/345BBs) on the button who makes it 11k, it folds to me (741k/185bbs) the SB with Q♣️Q♦️, I make it 46k, Jason calls.

Flop (100k) A♦️Q♠️6♥️: I bet 50k, Jason folds.