POTD #41 Honouring The Chip Race Finale

A hand from cohost Dara O'Kearney

The Chip Race, hosted by Dara O’Kearney and David Lappin, is one of the great poker podcasts. It was affiliated with Unibet poker, and Unibet has unfortunately decided to stop their patronage of the podcast. Their final episode as a Unibet podcast has just been posted, and to honour their great run of 177 episodes (and 101 episodes of their spinoff The Lock In), two of which I guested on, I am analyzing a hand sent to me from Dara.

Dara’s hand is from April 7th of this year from the $6 million guaranteed PokerStars Sunday Million 19th Anniversary. A $215 tourney with 28,443 entries and $601,862.20 for first. Dara had a deep run and unfortunately came in 37th place; today’s hand occurs with 50 people left.

HH: Pokerstars Replayer

PokerStars Hand #255641835978: Tournament #3835034337, $200+$15 USD Hold'em No Limit
Level XLVII (175000/350000/45000)

Seat 1: SlowDoke (8102529 in chips)
Seat 3: brunodcm (18853933 in chips)
Seat 5: brizionz13 (12211006 in chips)

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to SlowDoke [3♠️ T♠️]
FeelsAbitMeh: folds
brunodcm: raises 350000 to 700000
ch@ing@ng: folds
brizionz13: calls 700000
marjan1231: folds
brazil5card: folds
HappyBustDay: folds
SlowDoke: calls 350000

*** FLOP *** [5♦️ T❤️ 8❤️]

SlowDoke: checks
brunodcm: checks
brizionz13: bets 1667500
SlowDoke: calls 1667500
brunodcm: folds

*** TURN *** [5♦️ T❤️ 8❤️] [3❤️]

SlowDoke: checks
brizionz13: checks

*** RIVER *** [5♦️ T❤️ 8❤️ 3❤️] [8♣️]

SlowDoke: bets 700000
brizionz13: raises 2100000 to 2800000
SlowDoke: folds

Uncalled bet (2100000) returned to brizionz13
brizionz13 collected 7370000 from pot

What Dara Thought

Here is what Dara messaged me (edited by me for clarity and formatting)

My thoughts in game

Preflop: it felt close and was a reluctant call. I called because opener a reg, flatter I had fish tagged, and thought that made it easier to navigate postflop than versus two regs

Flop: sinking feeling when I saw the flop. “Now I’m going to have to call one street a lot”

Turn: I considered lead but with all the high hearts missing thought he had more flushes

River: A blocker bet targeting 99/77 etc. once raised I felt my hand was almost never good in practise so folded despite amazing price

What I Thought (no cheating)

Dara had to play this hand with no computer assistance, so to be fair to him, I will provide my initial analysis without using computer assistance. Preflop seems very close; vs. a larger preflop raise it’s probably a marginal defend for chips, and it’s a hand I’d feel comfortable folding with 50 people left in a big-field tournament. However, these marginal defends are price sensitive and I’d be tempted to call vs. a minraise. On the flop, I can’t imagine an option outside of calling; I am not folding top pair to this action and shoving is overkill. We should have a lot of flushes on the turn, and leading the turn is an attractive play with a lot of hands in our range, but not this one in my opinion. If I were to pick a lead size here, I think I'd just lead all-in for value/protection and because I am never check/folding. However, I prefer checking, inducing bluffs and waiting for a safe river. The river block doesn’t lose EV, but is pretty ambitious. A lot of money went into the pot on the flop and we lose to a ten. The parlay of him betting big on the flop with worse than our hand and calling a river bet is pretty unlikely, and I would lean towards check-folding depending on the size. When facing a river raise, we have a totally fine bluff catcher, but again, I think that “bet 60% pot on the flop three ways, check turn, raise river” is a very unlikely bluff from a random in the anniversary Sunday Million. I think we are far more likely to run into a thin value raise with JJ then a bluff with QJ. I like folding.

What The Solver Says

As a reminder, when I analyze other players’ hands, we ditch the “What I Got Wrong” section for the “What The Solver Says” section. Under ICM pressure, T3s is a pure fold, but that's also assuming the HJ is flatting 1.5% of hands with a range that consists of some 66-TT, some suited broadways, and some AT-AQ suited. I don’t think that’s a reasonable assumption here. For chips, defending T3s makes around 0.25bbs vs a minraise and 0.04bbs vs a 2.25x. Either way, it’s a close defend. The flop is a pure fold, losing 0.8bbs. A HJ flat of an UTG7 raise is a tight range; UTG7 checks the flop ~70% of the time so when the HJ bets ~2/3rds pot the BB needs to be very tight putting money in the pot since they are facing a strong betting range and an uncapped range behind. When the HJ bets this large on the flop, T3 blocks value, but it only beats bluffs. On the turn, we lead 1bb 28% of the time with range and also mix lead-all in. Our small bet range is mostly flushes for value, but two pair and high equity top pair like T7 with a heart mix lead all-in. On the river, I thought the block bet was too thin, checking is the majority play and it looks like betting 1bb is preferred to betting 2bb, but we are picking nits.

What Sam Thinks (After Looking at the Answers) and Grade

I do not know what type of fish the HJ is, but I would assume they tend to be the loose/spewy type, which makes me think that even though the solver would fold the flop, I am still not interested in folding top pair. I’d expect the actual UTG7 player to c-bet much more often than the solver, so I am not as worried about them. I’d expect the actual HJ to bet a wider range with more middle-of-range hands, so I think we have more equity vs him. The turn and the river both seem fine. I wouldn’t hate check/folding the river; some loose VIPs bluff more over a block than vs. a check, but I think folding vs. his raise is fine.

I think the mistake in this hand is preflop. Some hands are fine continues vs. players who are loose/spewy, but in a multiway pot against two guys who will probably put too much money in the pot, I think we will face this sort of flop action too often. This is an unusual thing to say, but I might rather defend T3s vs. expert poker players, because they put in less money postflop. Experts understand that you play three-way pots carefully and often use small bet sizing; recreational players will bet too large and too often, which puts a lot of stress on marginal preflop continues. A marginal preflop defend, a missed opportunity to make a heroic flop fold, and solid turn and river play. I’ll give this hand a

B