POTD #51 Big Game Hunting in the Big Game on Tour

Griffin Benger vs Sam Grafton vs Jeniffer Tilly vs Jordan Handrich

The most popular streamed poker content right now are split between two types of games:

• Super High Rollers: the best in the world battling each other in high stakes tournaments with fast structures which reward preflop precision at short stacked final tables.

• Deep stacked cash games: players who are decidedly not the best in the world, but play lots of crazy poker hands for lots of money.

The cash game streams are said to be “real poker” because players are often hundreds of big blinds deep, but I think that’s garbage. For one, I bristle at the idea of any poker not being real poker. One of the beauties of poker is that there are thousands of variants, and players can choose whichever one they wish. Secondly, while deep-stacked poker is challenging and difficult, these games are superficially deep-stacked. If you’re 500bbs deep, but the game is straddled or double-straddled, you are now 250 or 125bbs deep. If a normal preflop raise size in an unstraddled game is 4x, and every pot is multi-way, you will often be 250 big blinds deep but have the stack-to-pot ratio of a much shallower game where less money goes in preflop.

I do not think SHRs are the ne plus ultra of poker, and I enjoy the charms of seeing the occasional massive pots from big live streamed cash games. Although personally, I find the types of hands that go viral to be repetitive. There are a lot hands where there are 110bbs in the pot preflop, someone has JTo, and someone else has QQ. Can QQ fold for a 300bb all-in? That’s a lot of money to put in with just a pair of queens. Answer: always no, the other guy put in 55bbs preflop with JTo and their play is not out of character for them. An irony is that for many viewers, the play in big TV cash game resembles the types of games they play, even if the stakes do not. There are a lot of multiway pots, unpredictable play, and loose cannons to navigate around— it’s easier to work your way through local punters than international superstars, but it requires a different kind of maneuvering. In today’s hand we look at a hand from the PokerStars Big Game on Tour, featuring some loose cannons and one Loose Cannon. We will be looking at the hand from the perspective of Griffin Benger and seeing if he can avoid becoming cannon fodder.

Big Game on Tour hand 28/150
$100/$200/$200 (SB/BB/BBA)

Sam Grafton raises $500 in the LJ with T♦️8♦️, Gerrad Pique folds HJ, Andre Akkari folds CO, Jordan Handrich calls OTB 6♥️5♠️, Jennifer Tilly calls SB 3♦️2♦️, Griffin Benger calls BB J♠️8♥️

Flop T♥️5♥️3♥️ ($2,200): Tilly checks, Griffin checks, Grafton checks, Handrich checks

Turn 9♣️ ($2,200): Tilly checks, Griffin bets $1,200, Grafton folds, Handrich calls,

River A♥️ ($4,600): Griffin checks, Handrich bets 2.5k, Griffin folds.