In January of 2023, I entered a “Last Chance” flight in the GG $10k Super Million$. These tournaments are usually pretty tough tourneys and have big fields and lots of variance, but there used to be some hidden EV in registering “Last Chance” flights. All of the flights, last chance or not, played down to x% of the field or X number of levels, but the Last Chance flights were turbos with shorter level times. Last Chance flights play fewer hands, so they bust fewer people, and thus they tended to end day 1 after a certain amount of play. This meant that, while ~12.5% of players cashed normal flights, ~15% of players cashed Last Chance flights. The Super Million$ usually had a pretty big min cash, so any edge I might gain from playing +EV poker for a couple hundred more hands is more than made up for by making the money 20% more often. I had fired up this Last Chance flight on a Monday morning with dreams of having $1.5 million on Tuesday night. The big winner ended up being Asher Conniff; however, I still cashed the tournament and ended up making the final three tables, cashing for $77k. Not bad for a day’s work.
I had two notable punty hands from that tournament, one of which I will be writing about later, but the other is a nice hand to pair with POTD #318, a hand with four remaining in the WSOPME where Lucas Jumalon doubled up Lauri Saaskilahti. In that hand, Lucas defended the BB vs. a CO raise with a questionable hand, led the flop when he had second pair, and ended up bluffing the turn when it looked like he might have turned two pair or a straight. My hand matches his in a lot of ways, except I checked the flop when I could or maybe should have led, and my big punt was on the river. I suppose one could say that Lucas punted on the river by not sucking out, but that’s a little unfair to him. Either way, Lucas ended up winning $10M, and for him, all’s well that ends well. I had to settle for high five figures, which is not too bad, but not the low seven figures I was hoping for.
GG SuperMillion$
(50k/100k/12.5k)
We Are In The Money. 7-handed.
It folds to the HJ (4M/40bbs) who makes it 200k, it folds to me in the BB (1.4M/14bbs) and I call 8♦️5♠️.
Flop (537.5k) 7♥️5♥️3♣️: I check, he checks.
Turn (537.5k) K♣️: I check, he bets 269k, I call.
River (1.075M) 6♠️: I shove for 1.06M, he folds.
