POTD #317 Han Feng Gets Tricky with TT

A hand from the World Series of Poker Main Event (Photo: WSOP)

Day 1 of the Main Event final table had a lot of hands, but did not have much action. This happened for a variety of reasons: dumb luck, a lack of coolers, but also just because nine-handed poker is often boring and nine-handed FTs are often boring. The flip side of this coin is, when very few people bust over a long period of time, blinds rise, stacks get short, and then there are usually a flurry of bustouts. Day 2 was a short, action-packed one, and as the day ended, I noticed there were four hands that people kept asking me to write about. I listen to my subscribers’ wishes, so I am going to write about all four of them on POTD (Note: POTD reserves the right to change scheduling if there are any spectacular heads-up hands¹), but for now, I’ll begin with the hand that people most wanted me to write about: Han Feng’s unconventional line with TT.

2026 World Series of Poker Event #82 Main Event NLH World Championship
(1.5M/3M/3M) (SB/BB/BBA) We are 5-Handed.

Saaskilahti (67M/23BBs) folds, Gagliano (24.5M/8BBs folds), Greg Mueller (75M/25bbs) makes it 6M on the button with Q♣️Jd, Han Feng calls in the SB with T♥️Td (70.5M/23.5BBs), Lucas Jumalon (310M/103bbs) calls with 7♠️7♥️.

Flop (21M) A♥️7♦️A♣️: Feng checks, Jumalon checks, Greg bets 3M, Feng calls, Jumalon makes it 18M, Greg folds, Feng calls.

Turn (60M) K♠️: Feng checks, Jumalon bets 15.5M, Feng calls.

River (91M) K♦️: Feng checks, Jumalon checks.

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What I Think

I’ll be writing about this hand from Feng’s perspective. Greg’s hand is extremely standard; I suppose he could pick a larger preflop size or c-bet size, but that’s picking nits. Jumalon could have jammed preflop (more on this later) and should have check-raised to a smaller size on the flop, but that’s minor.

So let’s start with Feng’s first preflop decision. I am sure Feng knows this is a three-bet preflop, and he consciously deviated to try to exploit one of his opponents. Jumalon has been very aggressive from the BB, including squeeze shoving A2o in a spot yesterday that was rather dicey, but was similar to this spot. Greg has shown some moves, but he has not been willing to get AIPF with a mediocre hand for more than 15bbs since he started becoming a regular on the TV table. It’s possible Han is trying to thread the needle and exploiting both players: He thinks Greg would fold 99 if he jams, but he thinks Lucas might shove A2o if he flats. A perfect storm.

When I first watched the hand, I was baffled that Feng did not shove, and my first instinct was that he was worried about getting all-in preflop vs. Greg and might have felt that three-betting would not get enough value, but would guarantee he stacked off vs. better. In hindsight, I think he’s trying to get Jumalon to squeeze. On my first watch, without the sound on, I thought Jumalon correctly read Feng’s flat as being a trap and made a really nice adjustment with 77. [On my first watch, I had the sound on, but I was watching the Winamax stream, so I thought “I wish I spoke French.” -ed] On replay, it seems like both Lucas and Greg miscounted Greg’s stack and thought he was playing closer to 30bbs. Lucas was also afraid of playing a big pot with a medium pair vs. Greg. Lucas is allowed make a play for multiple reasons, but my belief is that he was more focused on Greg’s stack depth than Han’s flat. I’d say Han got unlucky that Lucas miscounted Greg’s stack, except we know the runout, so he actually got lucky.² It’s tough to say if Han’s trap was good. Lucas considered shoving 77, but 77 is a natural hand to squeeze here. Knowing Lucas might have three bet 77 doesn’t give us much information, if he had 73o, that would tell us something.

I think I understand why he flatted, but I still think it’s a bad call. I am sure the solver would shove TT in this situation. You have one big chip leader, three almost-equal middling stacks, and one short stack. As a middling stack with TT, you are happy to win a pot vs. another middling stack and avoid confrontations versus the big-stack. However, if you were really set on inducing Lucas to do something crazy, there is another option: You can three-bet non-all-in. Lucas can still four-bet light with A2s, or A5o, or pocket sevens, or other weak holdings. Greg is probably not jamming A5s here and calling his shove would not feel great, but sometimes you have 23BBs and TT and face a button raise and need to see five cards.

On the flop, it sure feels like Han and Lucas rarely have Ax and Greg has it a lot. They both check to Greg who bets 1bb, Han calls, and Lucas has to raise. He only wants to continue trips and bluffs here, so calling doesn’t make sense. Greg is probably c-betting close to range here; I am not sure what Han’s most likely hand is here, but it’s rarely trips, and Lucas is probably supposed to raise all or almost all of his continues here. When you are raising all your continues on a paired board, whether it’s a heads-up pot or multiway pot, there is no reason to pick a big raise size like half pot. Even raising 33% (13M) feels a little big. No matter what raise size Lucas picks, he will have no trouble getting Greg and Feng all-in on the river. You want to widen their continuing range, not tighten it. I’d raise to 11M here.

Greg folds his QJ high and it comes back to Feng. Feng needs to continue some hands that aren’t Ax; Lucas’s most common bluffs are probably 7x, and Feng should rarely have a pocket pair higher than 77. His flop call seems fine so long as he thinks Lucas is capable of bluffing here. I think Feng called the flop for another reason: I think he got too attached to his preflop plan. He believed that Lucas would always or at least almost always take an aggressive action with Ax preflop, and that meant on the flop he never had Ax (this is also the dynamic that exists in Mueller’s bust out hand). However, the preflop table talk is relevant here. He asked Greg how much he was playing, and then just called preflop with 77. If he can do it with 77, I believe he can do it with a variety of Ax hands.

Feng calls the flop and the turn is a king. In theory, this shouldn’t really hit Feng, but I guess if he can have TT, he can have KK. I don’t think it should improve many of Jumalon’s bluffs, but I could see him having exactly K7s. Of course, if he did have K7s, I doubt he bets the turn, but Lucas seems to like betting middle of range hands, so I wouldn’t be shocked to see him bet the turn with it. Either way, Feng’s turn check is easy, and when facing a quarter pot bet, Feng’s priors remain the same: he believes what he believed preflop and on the flop, that Lucas can’t have an ace because he’s very aggressive with them preflop. TT beats his bluffs and Lucas is not representing much, so Feng calls a quarter-pot bet. I believe if the river were a deuce, Feng was going to call a shove. He seemed prepared to go down with the ship, but unfortunately we were not given the chance to see that, as the river went check-check.

What The Solver Says

Sometimes when there are big viral hands, it takes me a long time to post about them because I want to run sims and mine insights from them. Today was easy. I looked at 15 GTO Lab (Use code: POTD for $25 off any product. It can be used multiple times) sims of five-handed tournaments where the button covers the SB, the shortest stack is in EP, the chip leader is in the BB, and the SB has between 23 and 33 BBs. In one of those sims, the SB flats 0.7% of the time; that’s the most flatting the SB does. The sim with a tiny amount of flatting? That’s one where the BB barely covers the SB and button. In the rest of the sims, the SB is simply not supposed to flat here. Even if I adjust positions so it’s CO vs. BTN vs. BB, the button almost never flats because they’re worried the BB is going to squeeze.

In my 2026 POTWSOPME post, I began my analysis of day 1 of the FT writing about there being a gentleman’s agreement of sorts for no one to play at equilibrium preflop. Everyone opened too wide, no one reshoved wide enough, and everyone folded to reshoves too wide. What we’re seeing here is something similar. The SB is never supposed to flat because the BB will squeeze too often, but what if the SB flatted because the BB squeezed too often? Well, then the BB stops squeezing so wide. Once the BB stops squeezing so much, the SB stops flatting traps and goes back to playing more aggressively. I get the idea behind the trap, but just because there is thought behind something doesn’t make it the best play.

Final Thoughts and Grade

I spent a lot of this post writing about what Feng thought of Jumalon and why Jumalon can’t have an ace, but I didn’t really write about the hand from Jumalon’s perspective. If I were Jumalon, I’d be very skeptical that Feng could have an ace. I’d expect him to three-bet the offsuit aces he played and his bad suited aces. He could have AQs-ATs, but even in a narrow range spot, it’s a small part of your range. He could maybe have AA, but it feels like slowplaying a hand like AA or KK is giving up way too much value versus Greg to ever just flat here. You don’t want to play postflop pots vs. a big stack when your preflop range is very face-up, you are out of position, he can easily get you all-in on the river, and there is one other player in the hand.

There are benefits of flatting TT here: You’re more likely to get away from a cooler vs. Greg, you can induce loose action behind, but outside of doing something like folding out of turn, there are benefits to every play. If you wanted to exploit their tendencies, I think three-betting non all-in is the best way to do so. You can still induce loose action from Lucas, while making it less likely you play three-way pots out of position; you can also regularly get Greg and Lucas to fold hands with equity preflop. Postflop is fine, but I think Feng was overconfident in how rarely Lucas has an ace here, while also potentially ignoring a key detail that Lucas thought Greg had more chips than he did, which made him less likely to three-bet pre anytime he had an ace.

In his post-bustout interview, Han said he was happy how he played, except for when he doubled up Saaskilahti’s KK with his AJ, but he had reasons for the TT hand and he’s still happy with how he played them. With the caveat that every single player said they were happy with how they played at the FT in their exit interview, I disagree. The AJ hand seems very standard even with a live read or vibe that Saaskilahti is strong. The TT flat is needlessly fancy and leaks EV, but postflop is fine, and while the preflop flat is not the optimal play, it likely doesn’t lose any EV, unless your flatting range is so specific and unbalanced that people might be able to play very well vs. you postflop. I fear that may have been the case in this hand.

I don’t always give out grades when writing about hands that aren’t mine, but if you just cashed for more than $1,000,000, I’ll make an exception and give him a

C

1. So there was a spectacular hand, I’ll be writing about that one as well of course. I have a flight tomorrow and I am not sure what my writing schedule will look like, but I will try to get it up ASAP.

2. Except we also know that he’d bust with AA in 5th anyways. So maybe it was his destiny to come 5th.