POTD #5 Final Table Friday Trapping Pocket Kings vs Mustapha Kanit

Today we’re going to look back to a hand that is so old that there is no BB Ante. At the time I thought I was one of the best in the world, but looking through the footage of this final table all I can see is the mistakes made by me and others. Two hands before this one I shove 88 UTG in a spot where I’d always raise/fold if I played the hand today. It goes to show how much the game has evolved in the past nine years and even if you think you’re the best, there’s always room to improve.

The Tournament: 2016 EPT Monte Carlo Event #16 €100k Super High Roller

The Situation: Level 21: 25k/50k/5k (SB/BB/ANTE). 8 Handed Final Table; the bubble just burst and we are in the money. Average stack is 1.9M

The Hand:

The hand begins at 42:30

HH: My Poker Coaching Replayer

At the final table, there are 6 folds and I have 895k and look down at K♥️K♦️ in the SB and limp. Mustapha with 2.1M makes it 125k in the BB, I call.

Flop: 8♥️6♥️5♣️ I check, Mustapha checks.

Turn: 8♥️6♥️5♣️2♣️ I check, Mustapha checks.

River: 8♥️6♥️5♣️2♣️7♣️ I check, Mustapha bets 225k, I call.

What was I thinking during the hand?

This hand took place 9 years ago, so I will not be as tapped into my thought process as I am about hands that took place last month, but I’ll try my best. It folds to me in the SB, and I limp KK in the SB because at the time I played shove or limp from the SB off 15bbs. I thought if I raised non all-in with my strong hands, my limping range would be too weak and could get punished by aggressive BBs. Mustapha raises to 2.5 BBs. I didn’t want to shove a hand as strong as KK, and I didn’t think I could three-bet/fold such a large portion of my stack, so I didn’t think it was a credible play to have in my range. Mustapha will rarely raise small with ace-high hands, so I am not that worried about playing postflop if an ace flops. I decided to keep trapping. The flop is dynamic, but I didn’t consider leading. At the time, under ICM pressure, I played very defensively and would rather have too strong a checking range than risk having a weak checking range and getting bluffed too often. On the turn, the board was so connected that I wanted to end the hand right away, but I didn’t want to risk seeing a river OOP, so I checked with the plan of check-shoving and ending the hand. On the river, I thought my hand was too weak to value bet but too strong to fold, and I gave Mustapha credit for bluffing any no-pair hand, so I check-called.

What I Got Wrong

So many things. Where to start? As a short stack at a final table, when you play tight from the small blind, you can raise first in. It’s better to play aggressively and put money in the pot with good hands, than it is to get a lot of pressure put on you in limp-check nodes with a large stack-to-pot ratio. Once I limp and Mustapha raises to 2.5x, I can easily three-bet non-all-in. I started the hand with 15bbs and he made it 2.5bbs; making it 5.5bbs and folding is fine vs a polar raising range. If I bluff three-bet K6o and he has 92o, it’s very hard for him to do anything about it. Additionally, so little money has gone in preflop that while I am trapping his bluffs, I’m failing to get value from a ton of his value range. What if he has AK and the flop comes 865 with a flush draw? What if he has pocket nines and I don’t stack them on an AKQ flop?

On the flop, I could play lead all-in with my hand and range, but I think KK is a little too strong to lead all-in with. If he is bluffing preflop with hands like Q2o, I want to give him rope to keep bluffing. On the turn, my logic was sound: I could bet, but checking with the plan to check-raise all-in is a common play in the sim I ran and accomplishes what I wanted to accomplish in 2016. On the river, I didn’t even consider blocking, but I should have. He should have a lot of one-pair hands that I can get value from, and he could call ace high, which beats all my bluffs. From a tournament perspective, when I block the river, especially without a flush blocker, I set my price, and while I make it more likely I get bluffed off the best hand, I also lose less money when I have the worst hand. Not blocking the river isn’t a giant mistake, but not considering a block is. Once I checked the river and Mustapha bet, as you can hear in the video linked above, I said, “I played this hand really stupidly.” I was not wrong, but I was not done making mistakes. While calling the river here is fine, king-high should be a very common bluff for Mustapha, and without the Kc in my range, I don’t block any of his value bets. If I wanted to call with one pair on the river, I’d much rather call a pair on board.

Types of Errors

Bad Range Strategy

Bluff Catching with the wrong cards

Grade

At a big final table, I made two horrible decisions preflop that could have won me the pot and two bad decisions on the river that cost me a third of my stack. However, the worst part of this hand is that at the time, I thought I played it well and Mustapha played it poorly. In 2016, almost no one knew how to play chip-EV solver poker, and no one knew how to play ICM solver poker. After this hand, my thought process went something like “fucking Musta, what an idiot raising with 92o, I trapped him and he got there.” With 9 years of hindsight, I can say, outside of sizing a little too small preflop, Mustapha played this hand perfectly. Preflop is a high-frequency if not pure raise; the flop mixes bet or check, but it’s probably a pure check vs a SB who is never leading the flop. The turn is a pure check; the river is a pure value bet, and his size is good.

Learning to be process-oriented instead of results-oriented is an important skill for any gambler, but sometimes negative results are caused by negative processes. In this hand, I was blinded by the negative results, and it took me years to realize that in this hand my process stunk. The goal of poker is to win; it’s not to ace a poker exam. In this hand, I was confident that while I lost, I had at least aced the exam and played the hand well. In reality, I lost the hand and failed the exam. There is only one appropriate letter grade for today’s hand. F