Sunday Special #21 Galen Hall's WSOP Final Table Punt

Galen Hall goes on an adventure as the chip leader (Photo: WSOP)

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 first time submitter

Today’s submission comes from POTD subscriber Galen Hall who kindly wrote a very long Twitter post and a normal sized POTD post explaining his thought process in a key hand he played in 2026 World Series of Poker Event #19: $25,000 High Roller, which he came second in and Kristen Foxen ended up winning.

Galen’s submission has been lightly edited for formatting and clarity

2026 World Series of Poker Event #19: $25,000 High Roller
(SB/BB/BBA) (120k/240k/240k) We are at the Final Table
1st:1.77m, 2nd: 1.18m, 3rd: 819k, 4th: 577k, 5th: 413k, 6th: 300k, 7th: 222k, 8th: 178k

YouTube Video of Hand

Kristen Foxen (10.5M) folds UTG, Calio (260k) folds, Galen (17M) makes it 800k with T♠️8♣️, Zizka (6.1M) folds, Weissman (6.7M) folds, Soika (1.2M) folds, Biao Ding (4.62M) folds in the SB, Nacho Moron (4.7M) announces minraise and makes it 1.36M in the BB, Galen calls

Flop (3.08M) K♥️T♣️5♥️: Nacho bets 300k, Galen calls
Turn (3.68M) 7♠️: Nacho bets 400k, Galen calls
River (4.48M) 5♦️: Nacho bets 660k, Galen calls and loses to Q♠️Q♦️

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I am chip leader by a decent amount and have widened my ranges considerably to take advantage of two short stacks creating ICM pressure. (I am also just happening to get a lot of good hands, though also seem to have run into more premiums than I’d expect as well)

In the previous hand, Calio put in 4.9 of his 6bbs UTG+1, I call UTG+2 with AJ. The Q96r flop checked through. The turn was a Jack he checked. I am sure I have the best hand so I bet 1bb, assuming he will call and then check river, and I can check back leaving him with 0.1bbs utg1 next hand which will allow me to win two uncontested pots with little resistance (writers call this “foreshadowing”). He ends up (correctly) tank folding and leaving himself 1.1bbs instead of 0.1.

The Punt

I am very confident I punted since I allowed my opponent to do exactly what he wanted to do on every street and applied zero pressure in a spot where I have the ability to apply infinite amounts of pressure.¹ I think I could’ve made a different decision at basically every node, but I’m not sure which one was the right one.

I open Ts8c 800k. I had been opening between 480-525, but with the guy down to 1.1bbs I wanted to make it a bigger size just to discourage any speculative calls², warn them that if they called, the pot would be big and the money would go in very fast³, and move on to the next hand. I assume this is punt #1. I know that as bet frequency increases, size typically decreases⁴, and here is a spot where I am opening nearly 100%⁵ so I should just open for the min. Discouraging flats isn’t that helpful, because so much of my ability to apply pressure comes post flop, and so if I get called that’s fine, I probably just win 2 more bbs when they don’t flop gin.⁶

I suspect I choose an unusual open size to smugly call attention to the fact that I was the big stack who got to abuse this hand because look at how savvy and smart I am for not putting my opponent allin last hand,⁷ even though opening to this size doesn’t even really make sense.⁸

It folds to Ignacio Moron in the bb who announces ‘minimum raise.’ I have played with this guy for a while and I watched the entire stream last night and he frequently 3bet light pre and on the spectrum of icm nit to yolo blaster, seemed closer to the latter than the former.⁹

So he makes it 1360. I was a little surprised he didn’t just rip it on me, I think jamming might be lower variance for him than clicking or calling?¹⁰ I figure he’s heavily weighted towards AA and KK with some QQ and maybe some AKs AQs type stuff in there, and then maybe 5% random bluffs¹¹ like A4s where he knows I am full of it, but doesn’t want to risk being allin, so maybe thinks that he can 3b and barrel and get me to fold a lot.

I just call? It’s a minraise I have T8 in position?¹² I can fold 73o here, but T8 is not the worst hand in the world, and I can win lots of pots on wet looking runouts.¹³ In terms of applying bubble pressure I think a call is better than a jam.¹⁴ I don’t think he would 4b the premiums if he wasn’t going to call off with them, but once I call in position whatever board comes out he can start imagining all kinds of random hands I have that now have him beat.

3.08m and he has 3.6m behind

KhTc5h - he bets 300k. A classic blunder I’ve made before is being in a spot where my opponent is under enormous amounts of pressure, but making a pair dissuades me from pulling the trigger and loses me the pot even though said pair almost never wins¹⁵ (and in some cases is even a helpful card for bluffing).

I don’t get to spend thousands of hours studying sims, so what time I do have I dedicate to trying to play regular spots as well as possible¹⁶, and thus I’ve never spent a second looking at ICM. I know the general principles and ideas and am familiar with the baseline distortions to ranges and bet sizing, but a spot where 6th pays almost twice as much as 8th and you have a 1bb stack and a 5bb stack at the table is not something I’m familiar with.

For example, if he has AA, and I hypothetically have something like 64hh here and turned my hand face up and jammed, should he call?¹⁷ What % does he need?¹⁸ And even if I did know what that % was, I don’t know whether Ignacio Moron will make a fold that he “should make.”

What about if I have QJ, especially given there’s a high chance he blocks two of the aces?

Is it better to just rip here, or to raise and then jam any turn that completes any draw? I would really have liked it a bit more if the 5 was a 6 or 7 and put more draws out there.¹⁹

This is an exaggerated version of a common ICM spot, where it’s obvious that one player has a MUCH stronger range, but he also needs a VERY high % in order to call it off, and so there are situations where I can successfully bluff even though we both know that my range is worse, and theoretically I can jam certain hands that are well below 50% equity, turn them face-up and still get the fold.²⁰

(To be clear, turning a hand face up would be against the rules, I’m just describing the theory of the spot)

Anyway, I default to “he bet 10% of the pot and I have a pair and I could hit 5 outs, or maybe turn a heart and start bluffing, so I call”

The turn is 7x, and now I realize all the problems my lack of foresight has caused me. I now have some extra combos of draws to threaten him with, but also half as many streets. Maybe AA would have to fold to a draw on the flop, but can call it off now? I don’t know.

He bets 400k and I decide that I really should’ve raised the flop to keep my options open and start jacking up the pressure, but I shouldn’t compound my mistake by doing it now on such a dry turn, and so maybe I just hit 5 outs on the river and/or there is some 5% tail that he has some random bluff and I actually have the best hand, and it’s so very but the price is very small, so I call again.²¹

The river pairs the 5, and he bets 660k into 4.5m with like 2.3m behind, and I’m considering all 3 options.

Call seems like the ugliest option, I have to be good like 11% of the time, and I really do believe that this player will occasionally show up with random bluffs, but 11% seems like a pretty tall task.²²

It just seems like this is so obviously a block bet begging not to get jammed on, which then means I should just jam on it. But if he’s gonna call AK AA KK and fold QQ and random AQhh and bluffs, then it’s bad news for me.²³

I can credibly rep the 5, but if I have a 5s, I also have lots and lots of other combos on the river. So If I’m going to rip all my 5s, what are the right bluff combos to pair it with? Certainly having a queen in my hand would be very bad.²⁴

Anyway I decide I’ve just made a complete mockery of this hand and I probably shouldn’t compound that by blasting my entire stack in a spot where I am so clueless. In normal spots I am pretty good at really knowing the difference between being good 1% of the time and 5% and 15%. This was such a weird spot, and my read was I was probably good some small % of the time, but I probably wasn’t good 11% of the time, but in order to fold getting those kind of odds you have to be pretty sure you understand what’s going on, and I certainly was not sure, so I just pressed call.

In retrospect, I’d bet the call is losing somewhere between 1bb and the entire thing, but if I got bluffed here I don’t know if I could’ve handled it.

Anyway, the hand felt like a disaster from start to finish, and I was very angry with myself, but thankfully the day ended shortly thereafter.²⁵

Today, my plan is to get back to my previous strategy of winning lots of preflop allins.²⁶

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. I think this framework is an okay way to think of how one executed in a poker hand, but another way to think of this hand is that while your opponent is under immense ICM pressure, he got a good hand and kept putting money in the pot. You can put pressure on your opponents, but sometimes they have a hand that is too good, they play back at you and you need to give up.

2. They are under enough ICM pressure that a minraise should be more than enough to discourage speculative calls.

3. The biggest stacks behind you are 28bbs deep. It’s going to be easy to get all the money in postflop if you want to, even if you minraise.

4. Correct

5. Incorrect. It’s very hard to open close to 100% if you aren’t also playing a lot of open jams. Let’s say you minraise 100% and it folds to Nacho Moron in the BB. He’s effectively playing (240k/480k/360k) (SB/BB/BBA) and has slightly more than 10bbs, you’re probably folding KJo to his rejam. If this were BvB and you’d fold KJo to a shove he should probably shove ATC, even with the extreme short stack blinding all-in soon. Opening 100% is basically putting out a dead blind and hoping for a walk.

6. This I agree with. One of the biggest leaks of certain weak poker players is they’re too loose preflop and on the flop, but overfold on the turn and the river. This is such a costly leak, because they play too many pots and too many pots get stolen from them when pots gets big. If you think people might play like this, you don’t want them to fold preflop, you want them to fold on the river.

7. I suspect everyone at the table was aware of the two short stacks, but making sure they’re aware is mostly costless. My preferred way to smugly call attention to this would be to ask Ihar how much he is playing in the SB and conspicuously size up the two short stacks

8. One small thing about this open size, it’s so large that if Ihar jams the button, he doesn’t reopen the action, which means Biao or Nacho can flat call if they want.

9. While this is true he also made a thin induce of QQ vs you earlier here, so it seems like he’s adding value combos and bluff combos. I’d bet all the extra value combos have T8o crushed.

10. I’d jam QQ, but it’s possible he felt you wouldn’t pick the big open size with many Ax/Kx hands and was willing to induce QQ.

11. If you think he’s only bluffing 5% of the time here and bluffing with a pretty good hand like a suited wheel ace, I’d just fold preflop.

12. One of the problems is since you opened to a large size his minraise is still giving you not great pot odds. If you made it 480 and he made it 720, pot odds would say you need 13.33% equity, so you’d need to realize around half your equity. After raising to 800 his click back is the equivalent of him three betting to 857k over 480k and you’d need to realize closer to 75% of your equity, which is hard to do with pot to play vs someone who has AA a lot.

13. I am not sure you can win the pot on a lot of wet looking runouts, if the flop is 654hhh and he has black QQ. He probably still just needs to stack off. He only has pot to play QQ is still a very good hand on ugly boards.

14. I think call is better than jam because I’d rather put an extra 560k chips in the pot with a bad hand than an extra 4 million chips, but I think I see a world where jamming makes more sense. If you really, truly believe he’s bluffing way too often and going to fold to a jam say 2/3rds of the time. Shoving is a great play, sure you’d rather shove a suited ace or even 65s, but if someone is overbluffing, shoving anything is fine. I’d still fold.

15. I think this is the problem with preflop. This is all-in-all a pretty good flop for you. If you’re already concerned about your pair not being good when facing a min-bet. I can’t see how the preflop call could be any good.

16. One thing about studying regular spot short stack cEV poker. Is you will learn that when a pot gets big and you have a pretty good hand, you aren’t doing a whole lot of folding. AQ high on 8723 is not a great hand in a three bet pot, but with a short stack, it’s enough to stack off. 65 is not a great hand on K63 facing a HJ raise, but if you have 2x pot to play you need to stack off, etc. So in this spot even though it’s an ugly flop for QQ, it’s one I would not expect many experienced players to fold unless the board ran out very badly for his hand.

17. Yes for sure.

18. It looks like he needs 54%.

19. If you’re planning on bluffing him on ugly runouts. I’d much rather call in position and see if there is an ugly runout than raise the flop. If he calls a flop raise then the stack to pot ratio will be so small that it will be very difficult to get him to make any reasonably big folds.

20. These spots do exist, but become a lot less common when one player has already put a large chunk of their stack in the middle. If you shove 20bbs preflop BvB. cEV breakeven is around 46% and perhaps ICM pressure might push someone to fold a hand with 60% equity. In this hand cEV breakeven is 35% and hands with 54% still need to call off, which should be a huge chunk of his range.

21. By this point you are basically getting priced in vs AA so the turn call seems mandatory.

22. Combinatorically, I am not sure sure. If we give him QQ+ that’s 15 value combos, which means we just need to find 2 random bluff combos, which does seem within the realm of possibility.

23. I think the other concern here is he might just decide to call you with QQ. He will also be getting a great price on his call, he also knows his hand looks face up. Sometimes it’s okay for your range to be faceup, if you call down often enough. If he calls QQ some of the time on the river, your bluff shoves can get very expensive very quickly.

24. I think you probably just want to bluff with nonsense cards that have no interaction with his range at all. So maybe 22 or a missed low flush draw.

25. I think the main thing here is you overestimated how much equity you could realize postflop. Yes you were getting great odds preflop, but you’re up against a very strong range. You have poor playability and you aren’t deepstacked enough to really put pressure on him on ugly boards. Once you get to the flop, you can’t fold the flop or turn facing a small bet. I am skeptical you could get QQ to fold on the flop or turn, when he could just put you on a draw. On the river, I could see the argument for jamming and if you are jamming a hand like say K9s on the river, you should have enough value raises that you can bluff here relatively often, but I still think I’d rather stick with weaker hands. If he’d ever play a hand like AT like this having a ten could be a pretty big disaster.

26. This was written before Galen fulfilled his plan of winning a bunch of preflop all-ins. He won a few and ended up finishing in second place. He got coolered twice by Kristen Foxen HU and that’s the way the cookie crumbles some times, but Galen had a very nice run and very nice start to the WSOP. Thank you for the submission.