POTD #308 Another WSOPME Hand: Someone Punted, But I Don't Know Who?
Another big hand from Day 8 of the WSOPME
Antonio Galiana had a deep run in the 2026 WSOP Main Event before bowing out in 12th place. Normally, a deep run in the Main Event would feature the highest-profile hand one would play, but Galiana has a legendary hand heads up for a bracelet. Johan Guilbert limped the button and Galiana checked. The flop and turn checked through on Tc6c3c8c2c, and Galiana bet the river with 7s5h, Guilbert raised, Galiana re-raised, Guilbert re-re-raised, and Galiana re-re-re-raised and got Guilbert to fold Js2d. At the risk of stating the obvious, a solver would never play a hand like this, because the solver would have the nut flush or a straight flush some percent of the time. The way this hand actually played out was a game of chicken: Galiana is repeatedly telling Guilbert “I know you would never check the Ac, 5c4c or 9c7c twice.” Guilbert is saying “I know you would not check the Ac, 5c4c, 9c7c preflop or on the turn.” The hand played out in a thrilling fashion, but it doesn’t represent any sort of stable equilibrium. If you believe your opponent would think the way either Galiana or Guilbert does, you should check the Ac 100% of the time and guarantee you’d get stacks in on runouts like this.
There are lots of poker hands that effectively play out like this. One player has an assumption about how their opponent plays and is willing to adopt an extreme strategy to exploit that tendency. One of the more interesting hands to me on day 8 of the WSOPME was in a four-bet on a board with four clubs on it, Malcom Trayner bet half pot with KcKs and Tolga Karakaya folded JcJs. One player value betting the second nuts for half pot and another folding the third nuts is not a stable equilibrium. In order to make this fold, either Karakaya had to believe Trayner was not bluffing, or Trayner had totally miscalibrated what a reasonable value bet is on this board. So I wanted to investigate the hand to see what should have happened.
World Series of Poker Main Event 17 Left (400k/800k/800k) Average ~32M 9-Handed
It folds to Malcom Trayner with K♣️K♠️ (63M) UTG/8 and he makes it 1.6M, one fold to Tolga Karakaya (41.4M) who makes it 4.2M with J♣️J♠️, it folds back to Trayner who makes it 9.2M, Karakaya calls.
Flop (20.4M): Q♣️6♣️2♣️: Malcom checks, Tolga bets 3.5M, Malcom calls.
Turn (27.4M) T♥️: Malcolm checks, Tolga checks.
River (27.4)M 3♣️: Malcom bets 14M Tolga folds.
