POTD #68 A Double Gutter and Flush Draw in a $500k HKD Tournament in Jeju

Once again, I put in too much money with too many outs

An important skill in poker is pattern recognition. You can’t possibly remember every detail of your own play, your opponent’s play, or a solver output. So you look for a natural human shortcut-- you find patterns and extrapolate what you think should happen in a similar situation. I am blessed with a good memory and good pattern-mapping skills, which is helpful when using empirical information to improve at a game, but can be very annoying when doing other things, such as writing ~100k words on the same subject in a short period of time while hoping you are not being repetitive. If there are tics, word choices, and arguments that you, the reader, have noticed I keep returning to, I assure you, I have noticed them as well and am trying my best to not make this Substack monotonous. My biggest stylistic challenge is mixing it up and not repeating the same poker jargon within an individual newsletter, and sometimes I resort to a trick I learned from days as a lazy university student-- “ctrl+F” to see just how many times I used a specific word

If I had to guess, the most common non-article word I use in this newsletter is “range.” Often, first drafts will have dozens of “ranges” in them, and I’m torn about removing them, because “range” really is the best word to describe what I am trying to say. The concept of playing a range of hands instead of an individual hand is one of the most important concepts for any poker player to understand. I should be saying range a lot, but it still feels like too much.

If you master how to play your range, you will be an excellent poker player, but the goal of the game is not to ace a poker quiz about your range. It’s about executing the best strategies in the moment under time constraints and stress. Part of that is knowing how to play your range, but part of that is knowing how to play the hand you are holding at any given time. In yesterday’s hand, I looked at a LuckyChewy hand where he failed to get all-in with a draw when I thought he should have. Today, we go back to Triton Jeju 2018 to look at a hand where I was so interested in playing a perfect range strategy, that I forgot how to play my hand and got all-in with a draw, when a more passive approach was ideal.

The Hand

Hand 2: Starts at the 4:00
HH: Triton Poker App

It folds to me on the button, I (205k) make is 4k on the button with 5♦️4♦️, JC Alvarado (105k) defends the BB.

Flop (11k) 8♦️6♥️2♦️: JC checks, I bet 8k, JC makes it 20k, I shove for 103k total. JC calls with 8♥️6♠️

What I Was Thinking

I remember learning that low-card boards with lots of potential straight draws were often played as a big bet or check for the preflop raiser. I only had five high, but I had a monster draw, and I wanted to start inducing folds right away. Once I got check-raised, I figured I’d have enough equity to get all-in vs. anything and decided to shove over his flop check-raise and try to hit my 15 outer.

What I Got Wrong

The preferred bet size on low boards where no flopped straights are possible is often a large polar size, but it is not always a large polar size. I have a wide array of hands here, and while vulnerable one-pair hands like 99 and A8 want to bet big so they can get all-in before scare cards can roll off, they do not comprise my entire range. I have a range advantage and a whole host of hands like sets, flush draws, or middle pair, that are happy to use a smaller size on the flop. One of those hands is 5♦️4♦️: It’s an odd hand because it’s second nut low and on many runouts will remain second nut low, but it often improves into a very strong hand. It’s the type of hand that has 40% equity vs. a set, but only has 68% equity vs. J♣️T♣️. It’s a very powerful hand that I am happy to play in position, value bet when I hit, bluff when I miss, and try to win as much money as possible with.

Do you know what is a bad way to maximize my earn with this hand? Getting all in with 48% equity and collecting my share of the overlay from the pot. 54 also has poor all-in equity vs. his semi-bluffs, which are hands that often give up on the turn or river if they miss, and which I could bluff later in the hand. Bluffing ten high with five high is as good a bluff as there is, and getting all-in and losing to ten high is as bad a feeling as there is. Additionally, since a lot of my opponent’s value range is top pair, having one or two overcards to an 8 is an appealing quality for a hand that wants to get all in on the flop, so I’d rather have a Td9d, Td7d, 9d7d type hand to three-bet shove the flop with. 54 is not a hand that wants to bet big and not a hand that wants to shove over a flop bet: It’s a big draw, but on the flop it’s a bad hand, and you’d rather wait to see how the board runs out before getting all-in with a bad hand.

Grade

Today, the type of mistake I wrote about was fundamentally about trying to play my range instead of trying to play my hand. In this hand, I believed my range would play a big bet or check, without thinking about what my actual hand wanted to do. I was wrong in many ways; this board does get small bets with range, and if I could only play big bet or check, my hand would want to check. The goal is not to play your hand or range well; it is to play both well. In this hand, I didn’t do either, and while my flop big bet is not that costly, shoving over the check-raise is. I never thought getting all-in with a double gutter and a flush draw could be such a bad play, but I continue to find ways to surprise myself.

C-