POTD #315 Monte Carlo Monday Bluffing Near the Bubble of the Main Event
The easiest leaks to fix in your poker games are ones that are persistent and directionally consistent. What I mean by persistent is, let’s say you always fold A6s, A7s and A8s UTG. Well, those are three hands in the same class that you should raise, but instead you fold all of the time. That you do it all of the time is what makes it persistent. By directionally consistent I mean, let’s say you also fold A6o-A8o in the CO. This is a totally different spot, but you are still undervaluing Ax hands preflop and playing too tight. If a mistake is persistent and consistent, it can be easily identified, and once it’s identified, you can get to work on plugging that leak.
There are plays that might be persistent, but not consistent. Let’s say you think 65s is an unlucky hand, so you never play it. It’s a persistent leak in your game, but unless you have other unlucky hands, it’s an outlier. There are plays that are consistent, but not persistent. Let’s say you three-bet every bluffing combo 10% less often than it’s supposed to be three-bet. It paints a picture of a player who is too tight, but you won’t be making any substantial EV errors and can only be exploited by your sharpest opponents. However, there are also the fourth-quadrant plays that are not persistent or consistent. An example I like to give here is check-raising pairs from the BB with or without a backdoor flush draw. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. You could regularly make mistakes playing this hand class, but not with a consistency or regularity that you could easily fix. The boring, but ideal, way to fix this leak is to understand the concept inside and out and make correct on-the-fly adjustments to each specific situation.
In POTD #276, I wrote about a hand I played vs. a SHR reg nearing the money of an EPT Main Event, where I missed out on some value because I was trying to play a passive version of poker that was too ICM-conscious. Today I will write about a hand where, in a similar situation, I bluffed with total air, when I should have just given up. If you looked at #276, you could conclude my main event bubble play is too tight, and if you looked at today’s hand, you could conclude my main event bubble play is too loose. I don’t know what my overall leak here is; both leaks stem from misunderstanding of the cEV equilibria, but as I played the hand, I know I spent a lot of time thinking about the ICM of it all. There is no easy answer to having perfectly balanced and calibrated bubble play in Main Events. The hope is that you learn enough about tournament poker and how to execute to the best of your abilities such that you will reduce your total number of errors, and the hope in today’s post is that by the end, I’ll be able to figure out exactly what went wrong.
2019 EPT Monte Carlo €5,300 Main Event.
(1.5k/3k/3k) (SB/BB/BBA) ~180 Remain. 159 Cash. 30k Starting Stack
It folds to me in the HJ (150k/50bbs) with 9♣️8♣️ and I make it 7k, it folds to Juan Pardo (340k/113BBs) in the BB who calls.
Flop (18.5k) J♦️4♦️3♠️: Juan checks, I bet 4k, Juan calls.
Turn (26.5k) Q♦️: Juan checks, I bet 11k, Juan calls.
River (48.5k) Q♥️: Juan checks, I bet 25k, Juan calls (I think with something pretty heroic, but I forget).
