POTD #47 Analyzing an EPT Monte Carlo Main Event Hand from Maria Konnikova

The Biggest Check Back

As much fun as I have playing High Rollers, there is nothing like a deep run in a main event. There’s a reason why at EPTs, the Main Events get all the TV coverage and the high rollers often play in a small conference room in another part of the hotel. I like the peace and quiet of a half-empty private room with free food and beverage service, but I also like feeling the energy of being in a packed room, full of people excited to play poker. When High Rollers slum it in big field tourneys, they often need to classify their opponents into two groups: People who don’t want to tangle with great players, and people who want to go home with a story to tell their friends: “The Time I Bluffed Sam Greenwood.”

When you’re a known player, you need to identify which type of player you’re playing against and adjust accordingly. There is a similar dynamic when Joe and Jane Pokerplayer are playing versus high-stakes pros in main events. Pros often go full Harlem Globetrotter mode: opening and three-betting too wide from every position; making crazy bluffs, calldowns, and folds. They were playing by the book in the Super High Roller, but not in the $5k after they just lost $100k. This opens up a window for seasoned poker players; you won’t beat an end boss in the long run when they’re in their NBA mode, but you can when they’re in Globetrotter mode.

In today’s hand, Pokerstars Ambassador, writer of the Substack The Leap, and author of The Biggest Bluff, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, and The Confidence Game, Maria Konnikova, tells me about a hand she played in the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event vs. one of the most underrated and long-tenured regulars in high stakes MTTs, Dimitar Danchev. Maria flops the nuts and wants to get paid. We don’t know if Dimitar is playing his normal solid game or if he is in a main event mode, but we will try our best to find a strategy that allows us to make the most money.

EPT Monte Carlo Main Event Level 4 200/400/400 (SB/BB/BBA) 8-handed

Dimitar Danchev opens t900 (50k) UTG8, it folds to Maria on the button calls with K♦️T♦️, the blinds fold

Flop J♦️9♦️Q♣️ (2.8k): Check, Maria bets 1600, he calls.

Turn 7♣️ (6k):. He checks, Maria bets 6k. He calls

River K♠️ (18k): He checks, Maria checks. He has Q♥️8♥️ and Maria wins.

What Maria Was Thinking

Sometimes we at POTD are forced to guess what people were thinking, not today. Maria has generously shared her thoughts with us and they will be shared below and have been edited for formatting and clarity.

You asked for a punt, so I gave you my puntiest punt from the whole EPT Monte Carlo series that I could think of--and it was a pot I won! I really fucked up the river here, and I think it's so important to recognize that the biggest punts sometimes occur when you fail to extract max value: the bets you miss and the chips you don't collect that you should have. (Obviously there are a few other smaller mistakes in the hand with bet sizing, but the river is the real punt.)

In this particular hand, there are of course the usual excuses - I was tired and not feeling 100%, blah blah. But I think there were two things that led to this horrible river play.

One: my opponent had gotten in my head a bit in prior pots we played. Just a few hands earlier, he'd check-raised me in a nasty river spot and I ended up folding what I suspect was the best hand. That's no excuse to misplay this hand, but it was in my head for sure. When the King rolls off on the river here, my initial reaction is, oh, damn, now AT beats me. But only AT beats me, and even if Dimitar raises my bet, I have a fairly easy call. I also want to be able to bet my bluffs here, so not betting with KT is atrocious. I should have taken a bit more time to think before checking. Just a few more seconds would have led to the correct decision, I think, when I realized that, given the sizing on the turn, it was just incredibly unlikely he had AT.

Two: I really wanted to know what he had. He'd been my trickiest opponent by far at the table, and I wanted to see what hand took the line he'd taken. The only way I could guarantee showdown was by checking back - and I thought that I couldn't really get another street of value after the big turn bet, so I'd just check and get the information. (I realize this goes against being afraid he could possibly have AT, but sometimes, we aren't rational like that! Again: biggest punt of my Monte Carlo trip here, so clearly my head space is off!)

Anyway, massive EV loss. Massive fuck-up. Sometimes I'm a horrible poker player!

What I Thought (no cheating)

When you’re deeper, you three-bet more linearly, and KT suited should get in there a little as you fold out KJ/AT, but call is the majority play. Generally, boards with two broadways on them tend to play big bet or check, unless the OOP player has offsuit straight combos and the IP player does not. Technically neither of them should have much KTo preflop here, so I’d guess we do get to big bet, and while you might trap sets or two pair or even bare KT, I’d suspect K♦️T♦️ is too strong and pure bets. I’d pick 2100 into 2800, so if he calls, the pot would be an even 7k on the turn and I wouldn’t need to waste brain power counting the pot size later in the hand.¹ On the turn, you need to bet: You have the nuts and a redraw and are pushing a ton of linear equity vs hands like A♣️ J♣️ . On the river, you need to bet. Calling a full pot bet on the turn with AT is not something Dimitar would do, so you only lose to A♣️ T♣️ . I don’t expect to get called by worse than a straight all that often here, and I’m sure Dimitar is aware that it is hard to find bluffs on a board like this. But your hand has so much equity that I’d comfortably bet half pot and probably call a raise, because we block A♦️T♦️, the other AT combo he could have.

What We Got Wrong

Not to toot my own horn here, but the only thing I got wrong is that we should bet larger than half pot with a king-high straight on the river. How well this works vs. humans is unclear. OOP is supposed to check/call the river with hands like A♣️K♣️, AA, and KQ quite a lot. IP is supposed to bluff 44-22, and the most common straights for IP are AT and KT, so blocking an ace and a king make AK an attractive bluff catcher.

Maria knows her river check is a big mistake; she told me so, describing her play privately as “awful” and "a fuck up” before describing it publicly as “atrocious” and a “massive fuck-up”. It loses around 5bbs in theory; however, that is in a world where when Dimitar has worse than a straight, he calls the river 30% of the time, and I don’t think that happens in this hand in reality. It’s still a very large mistake; we’re so rarely beat that I think betting anything on the river is practically a freeroll, and not cashing in a freeroll is never sharp gambling.

What Sam Thinks and Grade

This was a fun hand for me to analyze, because I have often been the high-roller regular playing hands versus seasoned but non-expert poker players in main events. By analyzing this from Maria’s perspective, I am, to some degree, determining what you, the reader, should do if you ever played versus me. My instinct is that Maria would not be bluffing with total air like small pocket pairs enough, and that when a king rolled off on the river, too many of her bluffs would pair or be straights. That means it is likely a great exploit for someone with Maria’s image to blast off with pocket twos here a lot vs. a top pro. In this hand, she had a much better hand with pocket twos, and while the river check loses a lot of EV vs. the solver, it loses less vs Dimitar who will usually fold one pair. The impulse to not bluff and to not value bet thinly often come from the same place: playing scared poker. Maria was intimidated by Dimitar and more curious about what he had than trying to win the most money. She was in the wrong headspace and made an indefensible play, but one that doesn’t lose all that much EV all things considered. I give this play a

D+

1. Intentionally or not Maria did the same thing on the flop creating a pot size of an even 6k