PREMIUM SUBSRIPTION ONLY POTD #262 Fratricide on the First
April begins with a battle of the brothers
In Sunday’s Week in Review post, I wrote about how while many people pine for a return to the style of poker that was popular in my youth, there are certain types of plays that are more common in the current poker landscape and it is for the better that they are.
There was a lot more going all-in, preflop and postflop. I have found it fun to play more single-raised pots 20bbs deep or limp-check BvB hands 12bbs deep. Those are fun technical poker hands that are much more common now than they were in the past.
In the past, people judged a play based on whether or not it was +EV, but they spent less time asking “+EV compared to what?” Open-shoving AA for 50bbs is higher EV than folding it; it’s rarely the best way to play AA, but it is by some standard “+EV.” This led to an overall bias that favoured aggressive play, because taking an aggressive action can often be provably greater than 0 EV.
It’s easy to prove that an aggressive play is +EV. If I bet $1 into a pot of $1 and my opponent folds 51% of the time, I make money. If I check, I might make more money later in the hand, but I might not; it’s impossible to calculate. The consensus was to take the bird in the hand, instead of searching for more in the bush.
One play this thought process encouraged was fast-playing draws. People were so happy with the idea that if they bet, they might get their opponent to fold better, and if the bet didn’t generate a fold, they could still improve to a straight or flush, but they ignored the other ways they could gain EV. What if they missed their draw and bluffed on a later street? What if they checked and kept their opponent’s range wide, so when they hit their draw, their opponent would have a variety of hands that could bluff into filled draws? One of the solver principles that people understood in the early days of online poker is, you don’t want to bluff a draw that you’d need to bet-fold, but people often went too far the other way and went all-in with these mediocre draws so they would not need to bet-fold. In today’s hand, we return to Jeju 2018, which occurred deep enough into the solver era that I should have known better than to shovel the money in with a weak draw on a turn that was good for my range, but I did not and ended up busting to my own brother.
Triton Jeju 2018 - NLHE Main Event 2M HKD $255K
(10k/25k/25k) (SB/BB/BBA) Starting Stack 250k. 10 Remain. 6 Cash.
I (580k) raise the button with Q♦️T♥️, it folds to my brother in the BB (1.58M) who calls.
Flop (135k) J♣️7♥️5♥️: He checks, I bet 75k, he calls.
Turn (285k) K♣️: He checks, I shove for 455k, he calls with 7♣️4♣️ and wins on the T♣️ river.