POTD #82 Folding 100% Equity on a 58k Bubble

I get bluffed by an Iranian Beauty Queen (Photo: Neil Stoddart)

One fun thing about playing SHRs is that you play versus a small population of players, so you end up playing a micro game, “What should I do versus this player in this hand?”, and a macro game, “What should my big-picture strategy look like vs this player?” The repeated long-run game is some of the most fun poker to play; you might get one over on a top player, but once they see your hand show down, they’re already thinking of a strategy to counter what they just saw. The repeated game vs. top players is much more nuanced; it’s about noticing minor details and thinking of the best ways to exploit your opponent, ideally without alerting them to the fact you’ve noticed a weak spot in their game. Have you noticed that your opponent makes thin, greedy two-barrels a little too often? Should you start folding the turn more? Bluff-raising more? Should you exploit them by getting greedy when the turn checks through? All viable options, but there is no clear right answer, and, you know, whatever you decide to do, your opponent will adjust and you’ll need to be ready to weather some counter-punches. Not every player in a SHR is prepared to expertly counter punch, but you still need to play the long game vs. VIPs. The repeated game vs. VIPs does not require fine-grained, detailed exploits the way it might against a top pro, but it is often about observing their tendencies and finding the strategy that exploits those tendencies the most.

It’s rare to play a big hand vs. a complete unknown at Triton; even if you’ve never played with someone, you can observe how they’re playing in person, on stream, or via the Triton Poker App. The less you know about a player, the less precise your profile of a certain player is; if you’ve played thousands of hands versus a VIP you might know that they bluff a lot, but never on ace high boards, or that they like three-betting offsuit connectors, but early on you might just tag them as “loose.” In today’s hand, I was playing a hand vs. Melika Razavi. I’d played with her earlier in the tournament, and she seemed tight and scared of making a big mistake on stream. In today’s hand, I used that read to make a tight fold, but found out that while my read may have been true at some point in the tournament, it was not accurate as we were playing the hand.

Triton Cyprus 2022 Event #2 $30k NLHE
200k Starting Stack. (20k/40k/40k) (SB/BB/BBA) 18 left, 17 cash. A mincash is $58k

It folds to Melika Razavi (3M) who raises t90k on the button, I (595k) call in the BB with J♣️T♦️.

FLOP (240k) 3♣️J♥️Q♠️: I check, she bets 80k, I call.

Turn (400k) 2♠️: I check she shoves for my final 425k, I fold. After the fact I see she had 8♥️5♣️