POTD #87 In the money of GGMillion$ in Triton Cyprus

The Two Jacks

In the pre-solver era of poker, the consensus was that some of the hardest pots to play were multi-way pots. There were so many more moving pieces and no one knew what to do. Then solvers were created and heads-up pots could be solved, which made multi-way pots, just as hard to play, but also unsolvable. Now, multi-way solvers exist and can spit out reasonable outputs. They don’t have the rigor of a CFR algorithm solving a HU pot. From my limited understanding, multi-way solvers converge to reasonable solutions from self-play, but can’t actually prove they are “unexploitable” in the way a heads-up algorithm could.

Now that we have outputs for both, we can revisit the question, which are easier to play: heads-up pots or three-way pots? I have a friend who joked that the best heads-up players in 2009 were the players who were best at playing versus bad poker players, because every poker player was a bad poker player. In 2025, top heads-up players need to be excellent at playing vs. great poker players and this is true in ring poker as well, but multi-way pots are still on another spectrum When you consider that even computer solutions have not proven that they’ve mathematically solved multi-way pots, it means that in some respect everyone is bad at playing multi-way pots. For most of the readers of this newsletter, that means when you’re playing multi-way pots, even against winners in your game, in multi-way pots you will be temporarily playing against “bad poker players”. You want to play fundamentally sound poker, but know you will often be taken off tree or down nodes you’re not supposed to. When that happens it’s your job to channel a top heads-up boss from 2009 and become the best player versus bad players. In today’s hand, I had an opportunity to do that and failed.

Triton Poker Series Cyprus 2023 - Event #1 $25,000 GG SUPER MILLIONS LIVE
20/158 Left. We are in the money. (30k/60k/60k) (SB/BB/BBA). 250k Starting Stack.

It folds to me (1.3M) in the LJ with J♦️J♣️ and I raise t120k, Henrick Hecklen (1.4m) calls A♠️6♠️ in the SB, Enzo Vito calls A♥️Q♦️ in the BB

Flop (420k) 7♥️3♠️2♣️: Hecklen checks, Enzo leads 150k, I call, Hecklen folds

Turn (720k) K♣️: Enzo checks, I bet 250k, Enzo folds.