POTD #309 Monte Carlo Monday: I'm Lost after a Loose Preflop Call

And end up saving myself some chips

NB: I accidentally paywalled Saturday’s Week in Review post where I wrote about the WSOP adding an action clock in the middle of the main event. It’s no longer paywalled. Read it here.

When I first started studying by looking at solver solutions, my play was too robotic. My goal in a given hand was to find the correct solver play, and there were times where my opponents’ strategy made this impossible. They checked in a spot where they were supposed to pure bet range, and I had to Frankenstein up some sim that forced them to do some checking. Then I didn’t find the correct solver play, but the solver play against an opponent I’ve forced to play differently. The mantra I started telling myself to make my play less robotic was “Once they go off tree, you can do whatever you want.” This is not quite true— I can’t (or at least shouldn’t) start jamming the turn for 8x pot on AA23 with 87— but it was freeing. We are off the game tree, and are no longer bound by solver equilibria, have fun.

Sometimes you are thrown off tree because your opponents pick a strategic option you don’t expect, like open limping preflop or donking when they should pure check, but the most common way to get off tree is when your opponent picks the wrong size. The simplest adjustment is that you get worse pot odds vs. a larger size and should continue less often, and better pot odds vs. a smaller size and should continue more often. Sometimes those sizes tell you something about your opponent’s hand: They three-bet to an extra big size because they have AKo, or they three-bet to an extra small size because they have AA. However, sometimes they are just mistakes. They just happened to pick the wrong size and it tells you nothing about their range. When that happens, you can make some loose continues vs. small sizes. Ignore what the GTO Wizard preflop chart says to do when you’re facing an 8BB three-bet and focus on the 5.5BB three-bet right in front of you. In today’s hand I faced a small three-bet, thought it was just small enough that I could make a loose preflop peel, and I did make the right adjustment, but preflop is just one street, and making a correct preflop play does not make a hand well played.

Triton Poker Monte-Carlo 2023 - Event #3 $125K NLH Main Event
(3k/6k/6k) (SB/BB/BBA) 250k Starting Stack. Registration is Open.

It folds to me (369k/61.5BBs) who makes it 14k in the HJ with Q♦️8♦️, it folds to Quan Zhou (424K/71bbs) on the button who makes it 39k, it folds back to me who calls.

Flop (93k) A♣️Q♣️8♥️: I check, Quan bets 23k, I call.
Turn (139k) T♥️: I check, Quan checks.
River (139k) 5♥️: I bet 110k, Quan calls with with A♦️8♣️ and I lose.