I’ve written a lot about how at the end of big trips, everyone’s poker game is diminished, and if your game deteriorates less than your opponents, you will reap the benefits, even if you are not showcasing peak performance. This fatigue and deterioration does not only affect players; it affects dealers, floors, people who work at the cage, broadcasters, and live reporters. I’ve been playing poker tournaments with live reporters for basically as long as I’ve been playing live poker, and it’s become old hat to complain about them. If I send a friend an update with an odd hand history, their first response is usually “maybe the live reporter got something wrong”. When I share a hand history from the app during a Triton, I also get the same response. Live reporters are human and they make mistakes, but sometimes, poker hands show down in ways that you simply can’t believe. Ask Garret Adelstein or Robbi Jade Lew about this. When a hand plays out improbably, I’m grateful that we have people documenting them.
I was able to recreate today’s hand in part due to the excellent reporting of Blaise Bourgeois (Subscribe to Range Advantage) and tomorrow’s1 due to the excellent reporting of Remko Rinkema (Check out the Face the Ace podcast). Live reporting is a difficult job, it has never been compensated all that well, and unlike playing tournaments, they don’t get to late reg and they don’t get to leave once they’re knocked out. They need to stick it out until the very end of the tournament, which leads to a lot of late nights and early (by poker standards, they’re not waking up at dawn) mornings.
When I play vs. a trainer, a goal I set for myself is that I find the correct play around 90% of the time. The bar for live reporters is much higher than that. If they make one blunder, they might hear about it from indignant players for weeks. So before I delve into today’s hands, I want to thank Blaise and Remko and all the other live reporters whose updates have been instrumental in helping me reconstruct and remember hands, so that I can write about them for all of you on POTD. Today’s hand comes from one the last trips of the tournament and the reporting is accurate, my play on the other hand …
2022 PokerStars EPT Barcelona €25,000 No-Limit Hold’em II
(1k/2.5k/2.5k) (SB/BB/BBA) 100k Starting Stack.
It folds to Nick Petrangelo (310k/124bbs) on the button who makes it 5k, it folds to me in the BB (295k/118bbs) with J♣️7♣️ who makes it 15k, Nick calls.
Flop (33.5k) A♣️K♥️Q♠️: I bet 20k, Nick calls.
Turn (73.5k) 3♣️: I bet 55k, Nick calls.
River 183.5k) 6♥️: I check, Nick checks and wins with K♣️Q♣️.
