POTD #92 Should I Turn My Hand Into a Bluff?

Isaac Haxton makes his POTD Debut

Today’s post is the POTD is the debut of one of my most frequent opponents, Isaac Haxton. We have played a lot of poker together, but unlike Mike Watson, most of the notable hands we’ve played vs each other are 5 minute limp-check BvB hands where no money goes in the pot postflop. Today, we will be looking at a hand more interesting than that, an online poker hand from a GG 5k in November 2021.

Ike has been a fixture in the live tournament scene since his memorable bluff in the 2007 PCA. He has been a big winner in live and online cash games; he’s an excellent NLHE, PLO and Short Deck player; he’s currently 8th on the all-time money list; and he was at one point in time an excellent mixed game player. He is by any metric one of the best poker players of all time. When he went deep in the recent WSOPME, he also did some on-the-ground reporting for Punt of the Day, texting me “Holy fuck we got a real pint [sic] of the day coming up on stream in 30 or so." When I tweeted a screenshot of that text, two replies in this thread caught me off guard.

Niall Farrell tweeted,

“The fact this is something Ike would write in a group chat makes me very happy for some reason”

While another twitter user wrote,

“Wow, so this guy rly is a human??”

These responses surprised me, and I was reminded of these posts when I read Stephen Chidwick’s beautiful first post on Twitter and listened to some of the conversation around Scottie Scheffler’s press conference before the British Open (which Justin Bourne analyzed well here¹). Back in the first poker boom, poker players were marketed differently: Phil Hellmuth was the “Poker Brat,” Doyle Brunson was an old-school Texas gambler, Howard Lederer was “The Professor,” Patrik Antonius was a stoic Scandinavian, etc. I know almost every top poker player of this generation, and almost every single one is marketed as, to use a term coined by Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari, a “wizard.” Why “The Magician” was a cool, charismatic guy and “wizards” are boring nerds is beyond my linguistic comprehension.²

Since the rise of solvers, the term “wizard” to describe individual players has fallen out of fashion and the en vogue way to refer to these players is as “human solvers” or “human calculators.” This isn’t new-- ESPN leaned on Chris Ferguson and Annie Duke having Ph.Ds-- but what happens when you market every player as “the human algorithm”? It’s like giving every WWE Wrestler the same gimmick-- you need variety. So what surprised me about the reaction to my Tweet about Ike and the response to Stevie’s post?³ I was shocked at how many people believed that people who became the best in the world at a game where you need to understand human behaviour might not have an inner life. I am fortunate enough to know many of these players and have interacted with them socially, and I do not want to scold my readership, but if you think all of the well-studied SHR regs are “emotionless robots” who wouldn’t do a normal thing like curse while texting friends a funny hand history, I would suggest having more curiosity when profiling people in your life. It will help you on the poker tables and away from it.

GG Hand History

November 22nd, 2021

GG Poker Sunday Blade, $5,250 buyin, $300k guaranteed
Blinds 80/160/20 (ante)

Preflop: I (6,239) raise HJ to 384 with A♣️T♦️, Ike Haxton (9,344) 3-bets to 1,038 from BTN, it folds back to me and I call.

Flop (2,456) T♠️ K♣️ J♠️: I check, Ike bets 672, I call.

Turn (3,800) 9♠️: I check, Ike checks.

River (3,800) 6♥️: I check, Ike checks and wins with A♠️A♥️

What I Was Thinking

I thought preflop was close, but hijack vs. button facing just a 2.7x three-bet, I needed to call it. The flop feels like preflop; I have a bad pair and an unexciting gutshot and will often be dominated, but I have too much equity to fold. On the river, I thought I could show down a winner vs. some of Ike’s preflop bluffs that gave up on the river, and I thought I wanted to wait until I had a spade before bluffing.

What I Got Wrong

Preflop is a close defend, but four betting non all-in is a common play, though it makes nothing. Folding is technically not the best play, but it easily could be if you’re a human who makes mistakes postflop (more on that to come). On the flop, I could fold to a bigger bet, but quarter pot is too small and my hand is too strong, even if it is not great. On the turn, I have a large range advantage; I have a straight or a flush 47% of the time. Ike rarely-three bets suited hands on the button this deep, and almost my entire three-bet calling range is suited hands. The non-suited hands that don’t call a three-bet are underpairs to the board, which fold the flop, or KQ or AQ, which are straights. I split between two turn lead sizes: a block that gets some top pair no draw and AJ to fold, and 50% pot, which can get hands as strong as two pair, AA, and AK to fold.

Whether or not I am supposed to bluff the river with AT no spade is a function of how often I lead the turn. If I play turn leads, I am supposed to have ~49% equity on the river, and ATo without a spade mixes on the river. If I pure check turn, Ike’s response is to pure check back with range; I have 54% range-vs.-range equity, and AT no spade still mixes on the river. However, I think the reality is, I am not leading the turn nearly as often as the computer, and Ike is probably betting the turn vs. my too-strong checking range more than 0% of the time, which means I probably have closer to 56-57% equity on the river, making AT a hand I should be bluffing. Certain AT no spade combos pure check and certain pure bluff, but I am not 100% sure why. Mine is a pure bluff, but it doesn’t make any EV by doing so.

Types of Errors

Too scared to find an odd turn play
River coward

Grade

So many of the POTDs have been about me trying out a fancy play only to have it blow up in my face. Today, I think my biggest error was not having the confidence to go through with a fancy turn lead vs. one of the best players in the world. However, once I got to the river, I still feel pretty confident that bluffing is the right play, because humans usually do not slowplay as often as the solver and certainly do not bet middle-of-range hands like Kh8h as often as the computer. It’s a tough spot vs. a tough opponent, and I didn’t execute to the best of my abilities, but I did not punt massively either.

B-

1. He recently launched his Substack, but if his writing here is as good as his writing on Sportsnet, it’s worth subscribing to.

2. A pedantic friend noted that “magicians are performative and wizards are not, so i think there's the linguistic difference”

3. Which I should note was almost universal praise