POTD #296 FT Friday: Facing a Three Bet with a Pocket Sixes
At the 2019 Triton London Main Event FT.
If you play perfect solver poker, you will be unbeatable, but you won’t win as much as the best players in a given game. The best poker players, especially in soft games, know the best counter-strategies for whatever their opponents are up to. Most poker players play in soft games, which is why a lot of poker instruction right now is focused on finding the best exploits and explaining the limits of the solver.
One reason I like focusing on solver baselines is because I often play versus world-class players, but another reason I like doing it is because it gives me a measuring stick to determine if an exploit is worth it. The proliferation of solver charts has led to what I will call “grid bias.” Grids are a useful way to display a lot of information, but the way they display that information often does not reflect the reality of the situation. Four combos of A8s take up the same amount of physical space as your twelve combos of AKo. A river call making 50bbs is one solid green square, as is a river call making 0.05bbs in the same hand. If you focus on a strategy being pure without measuring how much it is making, it can bias you to think a play is mandatory because the solver always does it, when you should be focusing on potentially deviating because it makes so little.
Today’s hand was a bit of an adventure. I did not have the same understanding of how ICM should affect my postflop play at a final table and deferred to a play that I thought was pure. I should have been focused on how little the play was making and if it’s possible that deviating was the correct play in this situation.
Triton London 2019 NLH Main Event £100K
(100k/200k/200k) (SB/BB/BBA). We are 5 Handed.
5th £902k, 4th £1.12M, 3rd £1.35M, 2nd £2.070M, 1st £3.080M
Michael Soyza (6.9M) folds HJ, I (4.9M) have 6♦️6♣️ and make it 400k, Wai Kin Yong (5M) folds on the button, Ben Heath (4.8M) makes it 1.2M from the SB, Paul Phua (10.5M) folds in the BB, I call.
Flop (2.8M) 9♦️8♥️9♣️: Ben bets 650k, I call
Turn (4.1M) J♠️: Ben shoves 2.98M, I fold.
