POTD #301 I Give Up vs Limitless

And I still win?

When you are shallow-stacked in a poker tournament, one of the most important qualities of your hand is its immediate hand strength. If you have A2 on AK5 rainbow 20bbs deep, you might be concerned that you’ll run into stronger top pair, but you should almost never be concerned enough that you’d start folding it. When you are deep-stacked, you care more about a hand’s ability to make very strong hands and the implied odds that you can benefit from when you make those hands. When you are even deeper-stacked, you start worrying about reverse implied odds— if you’re 300bbs deep and a lot of money is going into the pot on KJ286, your pocket twos might not be the powerhouse you felt it was on the flop. On other boards, your second or third nut flush might not even be able to raise the river. The flip side of this is, if you are playing opponents who are savvy deep-stacked poker players, you need to account for the fact that even if you’re drawing to the nuts, you might not always win a huge pot vs. the second or third nuts yourself.

This is a common mechanic I see in PLO, where people overplay hands with a nut suit preflop, while also understanding that people will regularly fold inferior flushes to them postflop. Calling bets to draw to the nuts can be a good gamble, but it can get rather expensive if your opponent won’t pay you off if you hit. In today’s hand, we look back at Day 1A of a January 2022 GG Super Millions, where in one of the early levels I flopped a three-outer to the nuts that I felt I could profitably draw to. I was wrong and was not getting the right price, but I got lucky in a surprising way that allowed me to win a pot I had no business winning.

January 2022 GG Super Millions Main Event 1A
(400/800/100) (SB/BB/ANTE) 100k Starting Stack.

It folds to Wiktor Malinkowski (104,385/130BBs) he makes it 1,760 from the LJ, it folds to me in the SB (98,131/122BBs) with A♦️T♠️, I call.

Flop (5,120) K♥️J♠️2♥️: I check, Wiktor bets 3,584, I call.
Turn (12,288) 9♣️: I check, Wiktor checks.
River (12,288) 4♦️: I check, Wiktor checks. I beat A♥️8♥️.