Sunday Special #25 Robert Cooper's Main Event Bustout Hand

Overplaying (?) An Overpair in the 2021 WSOPME

My (Sam’s) thoughts are included in the footnotes. If you are reading this via e-mail, it might be an easier read on Substack where the footnotes require less scrolling back and forth. Click here. On to the Sunday Special where we have a second time submitter. Our submitter today is the pseudonymous Robert Cooper. You can read about his background in his first post here,

Robert’s submission has been lightly edited for content and clarity

For my debut submission, I submitted a very complicated hand where I busted my first WSOP Main Event, and upon reviewing it with GTO Wizard almost a decade later, found several nuances I had never even considered. Unfortunately, the second year I played the Main, the most interesting punt was a 3-way pot, and thus I can’t get a concrete solution. While technically this is not my bust-out hand, I thought this stack crippling hand was the more interesting one to analyze from the tournament, because my actual bustout hand was losing jacks to AK at a shallow stack depth a few hands after this one occurred.

2021 WSOP Main Event – Day 2

1,000/1,500/1,500 on day 2 of the WSOP Main Event.

UTG (73k) opens to 3k, LJ calls (150k), I (120k) 3-bet SB with J♥️J♦️ to 16k, they both call.

Flop (51k) 8♠️4♦️3♦️, I c-bet 25k, UTG jams 57k, LJ tank folds, I call.
Turn: 3♣️
River: 6♥️

I lose to K♥️ K♣️. LJ told me later he folded queens.

What I thought during the hand

Preflop: My read of my opponents was that the opener was a very face-up regular, and the LJ was a very nitty recreational player. The LJ took a long pause before calling the open in a way that made me think he was pretty strong preflop, but I didn’t know if strong meant AQ or aces.

When it folds to me, I was unsure of whether to call or 3-bet. The case for 3-betting is obvious in that I can take control of the betting lead out of position and build the pot while I am ahead of their range, and can get a hand like KQo to fold that I am flipping against while getting a hand I dominate like AJs or TT to call. The con is that because I am at a stack depth where UTG’s 4-bet is a jam, I generally like to 3-bet very polar so that I either have slam dunk calls or folds vs. a jam¹, and I felt like jacks was very much in no man’s land.² At the time I intuitively thought I was supposed to call off a jam with jacks in theory, but was planning to fold to a jam as I think people don’t bluff enough in the main event.³ So, if I want to deviate from what I assumed was GTO, I thought 3-bet/folding is the better exploit than just calling the open, with the additional benefit that I can potentially lose the minimum vs. QQ-AA by finding out where I am at if he jams.⁴

Flop: The flop is a weird spot, because I assumed I should almost always be good here in GTO world as I mainly just lose to 88 and discounted QQ⁵, but in practice I think their range is much more nutted than theory.⁶ I decided to bet because I wanted to charge draws like AQss or KQdd and planned to jam most turns to realize my equity. When UTG jammed the flop, I thought it was very likely he had QQ-AA that he trapped preflop, because I think people mainly call their draws in position on the flop hoping the turn checks through.⁷ When the LJ tank folded, I was relatively confident that he folded exactly queens or possibly the last combo of jacks based on his physical mannerisms, because he was acting like he had an agonizing choice and was an extremely nitty player. So I thought that likely killed two of the four queens for UTG, and if so, I am only losing to the last combo of queens, KK-AA that slow played preflop and 88⁸ and am getting around 5-1 and also have a backdoor flush draw and set outs, so figured if he can ever have a bluff or overplay TT⁹ I priced myself in to stack off.

What I learned from studying

Preflop: Obviously KK is an open for UTG. The LJ should be flatting QQ 25% of the time. I think in practice it is better to pure 3-bet queens because part of the EV of flatting queens comes from people squeezing behind, and people in the main don’t squeeze enough, but good to see there hasn’t been a punt yet.¹⁰

I should 3-bet JJ 100% of the time to 11 bigs so I picked a good size.¹¹ My 3-bet range is pretty intuitive, with JJ+, AKo, AQs, KQs, and KJs all being pure 3-bets, and then hands like AQo, A5s, A4s, QJs, JTs, 76s, and 65s getting in the mix at lower frequencies.

Back to UTG, the solver never flats, and either 4-bets small or jams (I’m not sure if it’s because the solver doesn’t allow UTG to have the option to call to simplify the output, or because any hand that wants to continue wants to pure more money in the pot since the LJ is capped).¹² KK makes the most sense as a jam for UTG, because most of my bluffs have an ace and therefore have ~30% equity vs. KK, so either getting it in ahead of my 3-bet range or taking down the pot without seeing the flop are both good outcomes. Whether UTG wants to have flats or min 4-bets, I do think the solver is right with the hand selection of AA/AKs as traps and using KK as a jam. In hindsight, I think he was exploitablely calling KK here because he thought the LJ was strong as well and wanted to keep the LJ in the pot, but given the fact that the LJ got away from QQ postflop anyway, I don’t thinks this was the right exploit.¹³

Because UTG is never supposed to flat, the solver doesn’t have a range for the LJ. While if UTG folds the LJ is never supposed to back-raise because we are deep and his range is capped, I am curious to know if UTG calls if the SB can have some back jams with AKo/QQ to try to pick up dead money from UTG.¹⁴

If UTG jams, I am supposed to call off JJ+/AK, but JJ is making close to 0 EV, so in the main event I think a breakeven bluffcatcher becomes a trivial fold in this spot.¹⁵

Flop: While I cannot use a solver multi-way, given the 5 years of experience I have had since this hand, I think I royally punted the flop. I think the size I picked is very bad, because it essentially turns my hand face-up for what it is.¹⁶ I think it is a very viable strategy to bet small given it is a multi-way pot to put AQ or 77 in a bad spot and give a cheap price to my bluffs, with the added benefit that if UTG jams and LJ calls then I can get away from a hand like JJ.¹⁷ Alternatively, I think I prefer actually jamming at this SPR, just trying to get the max from 99 or KQdd before the runout gets worse, and can also jam some higher equity bluffs to get max fold equity. ¹⁸Regardless of whether small bet or jam is best (I do prefer jam but I’m curious to see what Sam thinks), I think by betting medium I picked the worst of the 3 options.¹⁹

Once he jams, I need 19% pot odds to call, and I have around 10% against overpairs. I think it is close, because there is a chance that he is bluffing (especially because a flush draw is out there) or possibly could be jamming 99-TT, which would be a disaster if I fold. What leaned me to eventually calling is as I mentioned before, because the LJ tanked so long, I thought it was extremely likely they folded exactly queens (which he confirmed later), so that reduces the combinations of the most likely value combo my opponent has. In hindsight, given the future game edge my ego tells me I have, even getting 5:1 I think this is a spot I can let it go.²⁰

If you made it to the end of the post and are interested in being the subject of a future Sunday Special, let me know. Do not be shy if you lack poker skill or accomplishments. No solver analysis is required from you and I’d much rather have hobbyist poker players, who are good writers that can produce clean copies and clearly articulate their thought process than editing the writing of 99% of accomplished poker players

1

One thing you are missing here is that you are squeezing. The more people that are in the pot the more linear your ranges here (think of preflop opening ranges as an example). When you squeeze you are somewhat polar, but you rarely three bet the bottom of your range and often pull your three bet bluffs from the middle of your range, hands like KJs or AQo.

2. I’d still always three bet JJ and never three bet TT. I can’t quite explain why, but this is my intuition here even adjusting for Main Event factors.

3. You need to be careful with this logic here because often with so much money in the pot if your opponents are “bluffing” with TT and AK. You still need to call off JJ. This is not a spot where you can fold if your opponents miss A5s or KJo type solver shoves.

4. One thing you don’t talk about here is your sizing, which is rather large. Especially if your plan is to three-bet/fold. I’d save myself some money by three betting a size closer to 12-13k.

5

In theory the LJ should have a little bit of 44 and the opener should have a lot of AA.

6. I disagree with this, in my experience people hate slowplaying big hands preflop because they’re afraid players will suck out on them. Obviously I know the results, but I am shocked that the opener flatted KK here.

7. Once you bet almost half his stack, I expect most players to play all-in or fold here and wouldn’t read too much into the relative strength of shove vs call here.

8. If he can have 88 he should have 12 combos of 99/TT and AdQd, maybe AdKd or KdQd as well.

9. If you think stacking off TT here would be an “overplay”. Then I do not care for your flop size. Yes you should be a little worried that he might have an overpair or a set, but if you bet half pot and think it makes one pip worse than your hand a marginal continue. You have not set yourself up for success in this hand.

10. The other thing is many main event players flat very wide behind and unless you flop a set, you’re not going to want to play a big multiway pot with one pair of queens. Three betting makes it more likely you play a HU pot, which is what you want with QQ.

11. Earlier I said I didn’t care for the three bet size and that if your plan was to three-bet fold I’d cheat down a little with my size, I’ll elaborate here. You are deep with the LJ, but that doesn’t matter that much because his preflop range for calling twice is often face up. I’d tailor my three bet size to the PFR who is only ~55 blinds deep. The reason is because the flatter’s range is capped so they can’t call twice all that liberally. If you look at the 56bb symmetric sim in GTOw you will see the 8bb three bet size is used and I’d much rather pick 8bbs than 11bbs in this spot. If the opener was 90bbs deep, I’d like a bigger three bet size.

12. This is just done to simplify the output and because of that I have deleted some of the analysis that Robert posted about the PFR’s continuing range.

13. I am not sure why the PFR just flatted KK here, but I think you are giving him too much credit in this analysis.

14. When everyone is 100bbs deep AKo and QQ can backraise here. So certainly when the PFR is shallower it can.

15. I think it’s a good fold with the right reads, but I don’t think it’s trivial. It sounds like you had a good read on your opponents and these are probably the players you want to fold versus though.

16. I think you are a little too harsh on yourself here, but I think your hand looks faceup and it looks like you are never bet-folding, which is never good when you have a bottom of range value hand.

17. I think you are ignoring another strategy, which is still bet on the bigger side, but just bet a little smaller. Bet 19k instead of 25k. It’s marginal, but 19k-fold would be a much more comfortable play with something like AdQx than 25k-fold.

18. If you’re going to shove here, you want your bluffs to be a little more polar hands like AK high and AQ. If you just shove overpairs and flush draws you make life pretty easy on hands like TT.

19. I still like betting medium. You have the Jd, which gives your some backup if you see a turn and betting medium let’s you play more bet-folds with bluffs. My issue is that your medium size is a little too big. If stack to pot is 10x, it doesn’t really matter if you bet 40% pot or 50% pot. When stack to pot is 1.1 vs one player and 2x with another player it makes a huge difference.

20. I’d call he can have 99/TT or flush draws, but there is another factor here that’s important. Main Event unpredictability. Do I think you’ll run into 9c8x or 66 or AhKh or 6d5d? Probably not, but any random weird combo that a main event player might have here is almost certainly a combo you are ahead of and you’re getting a great price. To make these sorts of folds you need to be extremely confident in your profile of your opponent and in this hand, the worst case scenario is calling is losing tiny amount of EV and the best case it’s making a lot. Overall I think your preflop and flop sizes are a little too big, both from a technical perspective, but also from a behavioural perspective— you played your hand in a way that screams “I have JJ or AK”— which makes your hand relatively easy to play versus. That being said I would not beat yourself up for doubling your opponent up here, the preflop squeeze is mandatory and everything else follows pretty naturally. Sometimes you get coolered.