POTD #84 Kenny Hallaert folds AKo at the WSOPME Final Table
What Do You Do?
One of the hard parts about going deep in any main event is, you are often playing poker with people who are playing the highest stakes they’ve ever played in their life. It is hard to play “your” game when a ladder at a final table is a down payment for a house, a college fund, or a third cliché people use when talking about mid-six-figure sums. Even if you can lock in and play your normal game, you will be playing opponents who are playing the highest stakes they’ve ever played in their life, and you need to adjust your game to the fact that they will be playing differently because of that. The WSOP Main Event has a first-place prize that is 10x as big as other main events, which means that even if you were at a final table with the top 8 on the all-time money list, those individuals would be playing some of the highest-stakes poker of their lives, and the nerves and stakes might get to them. This year’s WSOPME FT had an interesting element that has never occurred at a post-Moneymaker boom FT: It featured two players who had previously FTed the WSOPME in Michael Mizrachi and Kenny Hallaert. With 5 players remaining, they were top two in chips, and one of the two was much more intimidated by the stakes.
From his interviews, Grinder truly feels like the poker gods have chosen him to win this tournament, and it has shown in his mannerisms throughout the FT. If you feel the poker gods have determined your fate, why would you feel the pressure of the moment? I don’t think Kenny felt the pressure of the stakes or the moment, but he is a technician who wants to make the right plays, which means avoiding a big confrontation with the other big stack. Unfortunately for Kenny, he had several big confrontations with the Grinder and lost every one. Usually he had the worst hand, but on a couple of occasions, he could have chosen another option that could have slowed down the Grinder’s momentum. In today’s post, we will look at the first hand.
WSOPME Final Table 5 Remaining (1M/2M/2M) (SB/BB/BBA)
5th: $2,400,000
4th: $3,000,000
3rd: $4,000,000
2nd: $6,000,000
1st: $10,000,000
Kenny Hallaert (148.9M) raises t4M in the HJ with A♠️K♥️, Dunaway (83.3M) makes it 11.5M from the CO with 7♠️7♦️, Wasnock (105.3M) folds OTB, Mizrachi (210.4M) makes it 40M in the SB with J♠️J♥️, Bojovic (36.5M) folds in the BB. Kenny folds, Dunaway folds.
What Kenny Was Thinking
I think Kenny has a poker tournament to play today, so I did not reach out to him to ask him about this hand. I suspect Kenny understands the correct play versus the solver is to shove AK here. The SB should be four-bet bluffing a reasonable amount here, Kenny blocks AA and KK, and the SB should at least mix folds with as strong as QQ here. I do not know if Kenny knows that Dunaway three-bet him with 73s earlier at the final table. It happened an hour before this hand, but there was no break, and I am not sure if the new FT rules would have prevented Kenny’s rail from telling him the hole cards shown on stream. Even if that information could get relayed, I suspect it was not getting relayed to the Grinder from his rail. If both of them know that Dunaway can three bet hands like 73s or 77, this changes the whole calculus of the hand, but I am going to proceed as if they did not know.
Earlier I said “the SB should be four-bet bluffing a reasonable amount here,” but at the biggest FT of their lives, the question is not about “the SB,” but about Michael Mizrachi. He makes a large four-bet here, and I think Kenny views his four-bet as a hand that is willing to call Dunaway’s shove, which makes it less likely he has a hand like A5s or KJs. If you think the Grinder’s four-bet range is linear and doesn’t have polar bluffs, and you still need to generate a lot of folds to make the shove good, the question becomes, can you get the Grinder to fold JJ, QQ or AKo? I’d guess Kenny thought he could not get the Grinder to make those folds, and he decided to preserve his chip position in a spot where he is the best of the 5 remaining players.
What Sam Thinks (No Cheating)
I am quite confident that the solver would shove AKo here. There’s a ton of dead money and you should generate folds a lot of the time. As is always the case in the WSOPME, the tournament is extremely top-heavy. Grinder sizing up is good for Kenny because his shove needs to work less often for it to be winning. I doubt Grinder is systematically picking a larger size and changing his range accordingly; I think this is just the size he chose to play in the moment for whatever reason.
However, there are a couple confounding variables for me. First, does Grinder play this giant size with AA or KK? This is one hand from 5 days ago, but Grinder did choose a smaller cold four bet size with KK here. If he would pick another size with AA/KK/bluffs, then the question really becomes, will he fold a hand like JJ or QQ here? Because he’s going to have them a lot, and getting in a 45/55 for 300M in chips is a disaster for Kenny.
My other, potentially very dumb, thought here is: Grinder had AK twice at the final table; both times before he played them, he gave two big thumbs and pumped them up to indicate he was raising, 4-betting and raising first in respectively. Both times he won massive all-ins. He seems like a man who is playing the rush right now; if he gets AK, do we really think he’s not doing the double thumbs up? If you take AK out of his range, you are busting the tournament a lot more often, because you’re never getting AIPF with AK vs. AK. If you also take AA/KK and AK out of his range, we are back to where we started: Does he have AQ/TT/99, and will he fold QQ and JJ to a shove? It’s easy to say when it’s not my money, but I think he could have AQ and TT and 99, and I think he probably folds JJ to a shove, but maybe not QQ. I think we can discount AA/KK and AK, and I would shove.
What The Solver Says
I can already hear people saying, why are you looking at a solver solution for a hand played vs. the Grinder, king of the exploits, never looked at a chart in his life? Because the question here is pretty simple: How often does The Grinder need to fold preflop for this shove to be good? The exact opening, three-betting, and four-betting ranges are a useful guide for those who want to “know the spot”, but also for people who are trying to play a hand of poker vs. The Grinder.
A solver would never four-bet to 20bbs here. It’s far too large a size. Dunaway has a polar range and is rarely three-bet bluffing and calling a four-bet. There is no need to four-bet to a size that will make peeling unattractive for him, since he rarely has a hand that would want to call even a 12bb four-bet that wouldn’t want to stack off preflop. In the HRC sim I ran, the only four-bet size that I gave the Grinder was the one he used, because otherwise the solver would never use that size. The solution I ran has outputs like this: The HJ raises ~27%; mixed opens include hands like A5o, K9o, 44, and suited connectors. The CO three-bet/calls JJ+ and AK, but mixes three-bets with 66-JJ, a variety of suited aces and kings, and AJo, AQo and KQo. The Grinder cold four-bets AA-QQ, AKo, and A5s pure. He mixes with JJ, AQs, KQo, KQs, JJ, 77-55, and A4s-A3s. The only hands in that range that fold to a shove from Dunaway are KQo and KQs.
Kenny shoves AA, KK, and AK pure and folds everything else, and the Grinder calls KK+ and AKs and folds AKo.
Final Thoughts and Grade
In the HRC sim, the SB calls Kenny’s shove around 1/3rd of the time, and shoving AKo is making a good amount of money. QQ-TT and AKo are all neutral EVish calls from the SB, but mostly fold. I do not think the Grinder is four-betting A5s here, but I believe he might be four-betting AQ offsuit and suited, and TT and maybe even 99 enough, that we are generating enough folds that we should shove. This is especially true if we can discount AA and KK because of the Grinder’s huge sizing preflop.
If you are the best player at a final table, you need to balance maximizing your EV in an individual hand with increasing the chance you stay in the tournament and can continue to profit off your edge. However, there are spots where sometimes you need to play a massive pot, and when Grinder’s four-bet size potentially weakens his range and adds an extra 6-7 bbs in the pot, I think you have to go with it. It’s not a close spot vs. the HRC SB, but it is a close spot vs. the Grinder, who might just call it off with JJ-QQ, two of his most likely hands when you have an ace and king in your hand. It’s easy to say when it’s not my millions of dollars on the line, but I would shove.
B-