POTD #4 Triton Monte Carlo Event #2 Monotone Flop vs David Yan

As long as I can remember, I’ve had an excellent memory. It’s helped me remember reads on opponents, solver strategies, and secret bathrooms at different tournament stops. But it’s also been a crutch, something I rely on when I can’t think straight. As I wrote today’s entry, I was confident the hand took place in 2024. But when I looked at the screenshotted hand history in the Triton App, I realized that (according to Hendon Mob) there was no 7-Handed $30k NLHE in 2024; this hand took place in 2023.

Is my memory slipping as I age? Have I experienced too many things to possibly keep track of all of them? Will anyone ever remember me? How do you play monotone boards? All of these questions will haunt me and are unanswerable, but I’ll try my best to impart some wisdom about playing monotone boards in the blog below.

2023 Triton Monte Carlo Event#7 $30k 7-Handed

Level 8: 3k/6k/6k (SB/BB/BBA). Starting stack is 200k. I have 360k; David Yan is in the BB with 222k.

The Hand:

Hand History: Triton App

Hand History: My Poker Coaching Replayer

It folds to me in the HJ with Q♦️T♣️. I raise to 13k; everyone folds except David Yan who calls in the BB leaving 209k to play.

Flop (35k) 9♣️6♣️2♣️: David checks, I bet 9k, David calls.

Turn (51k) 9♣️6♣️2♣️5♦️: David checks, I bet 30k, David calls

River (111k) 9♣️6♣️2♣️5♦️T♥️ David checks, I check.

What was I thinking during the hand?

Preflop, you open any two Broadway cards from the HJ, so I raised. On the flop, monotone flops rarely get big bets unless you’re shallow enough to comfortably stack off with bare top pair, so I played one small bet size with my range. Monotone boards are often scary vs a BB range, which will have a lot of janky suited hands, but 962 is disconnected enough that I thought I’d have a pure bet or close to it so I did. On the turn, I thought this was a pretty good card for David’s range because a lot of his pairs or one-club hands picked up additional outs, but I thought I still had an okay candidate to two-barrel as I had two overs and a club. I can get him to fold pairs immediately, and getting him to fold anything that peels the flop is a win for me. On the river, I thought I had a hand with a lot of potshare, but one that was too thin to value bet. If I could have shoved for pot, I would have, but with 1.5x pot to play I wasn’t sure if I ever played a size smaller than all-in or if my hand was strong enough to shove all-in. So I checked.

What I Got Wrong

My preflop and flop thoughts were correct. I don’t get flop checks on monotone boards in this spot until the flops are a little more connected and he can have one-card straight draws, or my range contains many hands that have a lot of equity, but want to pot control-- hands like K♦️T♦️ on A♣️K♣️8♣️. On the turn my thought process was … fine, this a spot where 2008 poker and 2025 solver poker basically come to the same conclusion: Betting unpaired hands with a club is always an acceptable play. The highest frequency turn bet is A♣️Tx and the lowest frequency is AxK♣️, but betting them will always be a fine play.

The river is where I slipped up. QT has 80% equity and we only have 150% pof to play; also, QT probably has a lot more equity vs. humans than vs. the computer. Humans, including experienced, tricky poker players like David Yan, like fast-playing good hands out of position. I think David is capable of slow-playing here, but he probably has 4♣️3♣️ on the river a lot less often than the solver does. I probably have more than 80% equity vs most human ranges, which means my check back loses more money in real life than in solver land. I also thought that my river value-betting range would be very polar and I wouldn’t be allowed to make thin value bets, but if I did a better job of constructing David’s range in-game, I would have realized he has a lot of pair-plus-draw hands, like his actual hand-- 98o. All the pair-plus-draw hands are credible bluff catchers, so it’s not as if I’m worried about the BB not having enough worse hands to bluff catch. Finally, a small, but significant blocker effect: Having the T♣️ is better than having the Q♣️, because I block potential rivered two pair he might have with T♣️6 or T♣️9, but don’t block potential bluff catchers like Q♣️9.

Types of Errors

• Misunderstanding blocker effects

• Misunderstanding range strategy

• Playing scared poker

Grade: The two big errors here were, first, misunderstanding range strategy. I didn’t consider that I’d frequently be betting less than all-in with my range on the river here. The other error was playing scared poker: I was too concerned about the low-frequency play of him check raising all-in. I missed out on value with a hand that has a lot of equity. If I’m so concerned about getting check-raised bluffed too much, I should just bet/call instead of checking back. My hand is a strong bluff-catcher because the Tc should only be in his value bets and not in his bluffs. Playing scared and not understanding the river strategy are two pretty big mistakes. C-