POTD #57 How To Play Quads

From the 2025 SCOOP Main Event

On Monday, May 26th, I did commentary of day 2 of the SCOOP 82-H Main Event for two hours, one hour with Joe Stapleton and one hour with James Hartigan. You can watch the archived stream here (my commentary begins at 2:02:00). In what is becoming a tradition, when I do commentary, I will pick a hand and make it my POTD. In POTD #51, I declared that I try to not be “needlessly cruel,” so I decided I was going to pick a hand I saw on the stream from someone who had a deep run in the tournament. I looked at the lobby with twenty-something people left and Fabiano “Kovalski1” Kovalski was 2nd in chips, so I decided to pick a hand he played. He was eliminated in 14th place; all of us at POTD would like to personally apologize to Fabiano for the jinx.

In today’s hand, Stapes and I saw a hand where Fabiano Kowalaski had quads, and Stapes declared “The hard part is getting quads; we all can bet big when we have it. Sam, I’ll tell you right now, I’m friggin’ great at playing quads. I am one of the best in the world.” I think most people are pretty good at playing really strong hands when they represent a normal sort of really strong hand; e.g., most people know how to play aces preflop or top set. However, sometimes when you have a rare nuts like quads or a straight flush, the normal rules for how to play the nuts do not apply. Nothing you can do with quads, outside of folding or checking back, can be all that costly, but if you know how to play them perfectly, you can make the most out of a great situation.

The Hand

Twitch Stream: the hand starts at the 2 hour and 55 minute mark

112 left in SCOOP 82-H $5,200 MAIN EVENT
87th cashes for 10.9k, Starting stack is 250k, average stack is 1.51M
(12.5k/25k/3.25k) (SB/BB/Ante)

Kovalski1 (2.5M) raises the CO to 50k with 9♦️9♠️, Beriuzy (2.4M) calls the SB with T♥️T♣️

Flop (151,000) 9♥️6♥️8♣️: Beriuzy checks, Kovalski1 checks.
Turn 9♣️(151,000): Beriuzy bets 114,760, Kovalski1 calls
River (380,520) 7♥️: Beriuzy checks, Kovalski1 bets 537,500, Beriuzy calls