RERUN POTD #56 Monte Carlo Monday I Fold QQ vs KK
But was it a good fold?
Today’s post was originally published on June 9th 2025, there was just one small problem, I only emailed it out to paying subscribers and very few people read it. So today I am republishing it in full for all to read. At the conclusion of the post there will be a #onemorething that I shared with Premium Subscribers in the Discord channel. If you’d like to become a Premium Subscriber you can do so here or you can pay for an hour of private coaching with me and contact me at any of the methods outlined here.
I didn’t make it to Triton Montenegro; like many of the readers of this newsletter, I was at home watching the streams and criticizing the play from the same chair I’m typing in right now. No one likes an armchair quarterback, so over the next couple of weeks, I am going to share punts where I made similar errors to the ones I saw in Montenegro. This project started with POTD #55 and continues today. A reminder: I am choosing to write about hands that have errors which are conceptually similar, but different enough, that I won’t be repeating myself too much, and hope we can all learn some new things along the way
The first of these hands will double as a Montenegro B-Side and a Monte Carlo Monday. I’m going to pair a big fold I made on the bubble of the 2024 Triton Monte Carlo Main Event with Kristen Foxen’s big fold with K4s (and Stephen Chidwick’s slightly less big fold with AQo) that I wrote about in POTD #42. In that hand, Kristen raised all of her chips except one SB and folded hoping to ladder once Chidwick called and Nacho Barbero raised all-in. In today’s hand, I am facing a pseudo all-in, a call and a jam; I have 9bbs and pocket queens and, somehow, am in the blender.
Triton Poker Series Monte-Carlo 2024 $125K NLH MAIN EVENT
20k/40k/40k (SB/BB/BBA) 28 left. 27th gets $199k
Curtis Knight (260k) makes it 255k UTG7, it folds to Adrian Mateos (520k) who calls on the button, Jesse Lonis (2.4M) goes all-in in the SB, I have 360k behind and Q♣️Q♥️ in the BB. Curtis had KK, Adrian had 88, Jesse had AJo. The board was all low cards, Curtis tripled up, Adrian doubled up through Jesse and bubble remained intact.
What I Was Thinking During The Hand
I had not played much with Curtis Knight; he’s a professional lacrosse player who has a lot of experience playing online poker and has been coached by Fedor Holz. I don’t think he’s a stranger to making loose preflop shoves on the bubble, but this was the biggest tournament he’s ever played, and while I don’t think he’s open folding pocket tens, I expect his shoving range to be a little on the tight side. Adrian calls half his stack without using a time bank—this is a pretty normal spot to use a timebank; even with a great hand, someone might want to debate between flat-calling half their stack vs. shoving. Given Adrian’s relatively quick call and my profile of Curtis, which I assumed Adrian would share, I thought Adrian’s continuing range looked something like 99+ / AQ+ and wasn’t sure how’d he split it between shove and call. I assumed Jesse would recognize that both players had pretty tight ranges and yet he shoved pretty quickly as well, so I thought he had something like JJ+ / AK. I only used one timebank and was pretty confident I was folding the whole time, but I just wanted to make sure I could get away from the hand. I thought once I called all-in, Curtis would be able to fold hands like ATo, and I would be at risk of bubbling the tournament. With two queens in my hand, one player with JJ+ / AK, and another with 99+ / AQ+, I’d be up against KK+ quite a bit.
What I Got Wrong
Let’s start with the most obvious thing. I was slightly off in ranging Adrian; he called one pip wider, and I might have been tricked by his timing. When ranges are narrow, even expanding a range by one pip can make a big difference. I was way off in ranging Jesse. I thought he had top 3% of hands; it looks like he had top 8% of hands. In a GTO Lab sim of a similar spot, Adrian goes with 99+ / AQ+, Jesse goes with JJ+ / AKs (AKo mixes), and I am indifferent with QQ. In a GTO Wizard approximation, Adrian adds AJs, Jesse has the same range, and I pure fold QQ. That’s all well and good in computer land, but I was playing this hand vs. two men and one gorilla, and I was off on both of their ranges.
The other thing— and this ties into the Kristen Foxen hand in Montenegro— I was very concerned Curtis would fold once I went all-in. Like the Kristen hand in Montenegro, he didn’t leave himself enough behind where he could plausibly fold, and he told me so at the table, although perhaps if he did have ATo and got this much action he’d find a fold. On the bubble of this very tournament, Leonard Maue was put in a similar situation as Curtis and folded, and of course Kristen folded, so it is possible, but it would be a mistake. Some players would fold in this spot, but probably not Curtis.
In my writeup of POTD #42, I was able to conclude that Kristen couldn’t fold anything getting a much worse price than Curtis is getting in this hand. However, I could not come to that same conclusion when I needed to guess what Curtis would do facing all this action. I also underestimated that in the event Adrian or Curtis did fold, it would net me a ton of cEV. You never want to be all-in flipping on the bubble, but if you have to be, being able to quadruple up while all-in versus one other player is as high EV a situation as there is. Maybe in a world where Curtis raises 5bbs off 10bbs, Adrian flat calls off 20bbs, Jesse goes all-in covering, AND I correctly range all of them as being appropriately tight, I could hero fold QQ, but this is not that spot.
Types of Error
Bad Read
Grade
Poker is a technical game, but all the technique in the world does not matter if you fail at the human element. In this hand I thought all four of us were playing a similar tight bubble strategy, but one guy was playing Spanish Poker and the other was playing Gorilla Poker. I made a close fold versus two versions of me, but not versus these guys. The name of the game is to make good reads and I did not.
C-
POTD #56 onemorething
After the hand I tried to justify my fold to the table and told Curtis "I thought you might fold", he said "I was never folding" and then I asked "well then why did you leave one chip behind?" and he gave a bemused look. One reason to leave a chip behind might be to induce a flat call and hope to occasionally check it down postflop and save yourself. However there is a problem with this plan, most people at the table want the bubble to end immediately. If I got all-in vs Curtis I would not want to let give him a second life and potentially run it up on the bubble, if I won, I'd still be a short to midstack at the table, so I'd make sure to put Curtis all-in. Wai Leong Chan and Lonis would be incentivized to co-operate and not put him all-in, but they to not fit the profiles of players who would collusively check it down to get some +EV blind stealing opportunities. If they were the type to co-operate the fact that Curtis is UTG lessens the incentive for big stacks to co-operate. Even if he were UTG+1 big stacks could steal a SB/BB/BBA worth 100k while the whole table waited for Curtis to be blinded all-in, but in this case they'd steal 15k and have a chance to win another 10k in a side pot, which isn't nearly as exciting.