Sunday Special #22 A Monster Punt in the Monster Stack

Or was it just a cooler?

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

I’m Mo Nuwwarah, full-time poker media pro and part-time poker player. I’m currently writing strategy breakdowns for Card Player and more general industry stuff for PokerScout. You can find me on Twitter @monuwwarah, though I don’t post very frequently. Though I’m not a full-time pro, I’m playing at a pretty high level and expect to be one of the stronger players in the rec-heavy fields below the $3K or so level at the WSOP. Style-wise, I try to play a mix of theory poker and exploits, but my natural tendency is to be too loose and aggressive. Many of my bustout hands sent to fans/investors start with “Punted...” and I’m wondering if that happened once again in this hand.

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

Is this where we send our punts for skewer?¹

2026 $1,500 Monster Stack, ITM on Day 2. (5K/10k/10k) (SB/BB/BBA)

I don’t have many reads on my opponent, younger fella on the tighter side. He opens the LJ to 20k off 17 BB. Hero (45 bb) defend Q♥️4♥️ in BB.

Flop (55k) Q♠️J♥️7♠️: I check, he bets 10,000, I raise to 32k, he calls.

Turn (119k) J♣️: I shove for his final 118k, he calls with 77. The river is the 9♣️ and I lose.

Preflop seems pretty normal. On the flop, I wasn’t planning to do much check-raising until my opponent bet the smallest amount allowed. I think I’m supposed to check-raise pretty aggressively with a wide variety of hands when opponent uses this size, and top pair with bdfd seems like a perfectly good candidate.² I also think opponent should be pretty condensed around AK when opening off this stack in this position into players who all cover him. Check-raise gets value from some weaker pairs, flush draws, and Broadway combos. ³

On the turn, I was quite unsure how to proceed. On the one hand, I feel like against an AK-heavy range jamming is going to be nice because we get to deny equity to the aforementioned hands.⁴ I don’t know if there are many hands in my range that want to bet small, and there’s pot to play, so I felt like small betting doesn’t make a lot of sense.⁵ On the other hand, J seems like a really unfavorable card for my XR range. I’m not sure how many Jx I get to check-raise on the flop, though I do think I get to do it sometimes vs. the 1 BB size.⁶ Opponent could have many Jx hands since I don’t think he’s going to play any checks on a double Broadway board opening in a spot where he should be quite tight preflop. ⁷

Should hero be checking this turn? Are there small sizes? What does hero do if check and facing any kind of aggression?⁸ Seemed like a tough spot overall, don’t hate my play but also wondering if it was an overaggressive punt OTT.

What the Solver Thinks

There’s a pretty close GTOW output that approximates this hand for chips. I wasn’t worried about the tiny pay jumps and we were already in the money, so that seems like a fine sim to use. ⁹

The flop is very good for the LJ, giving them 66% equity. Against a min-bet, BB doesn’t get to raise as much as I expected, playing almost twice as many calls as raises (36% to 19%). The solver actually prefers not to have a BDFD when check-raising Q4 here, but Qh4h still gets in there at a 35% frequency. I would have thought we wanted a BDFD here, because aren’t we just always stacking off when we check-raise Q-X, and therefore we want to have more equity when we’re all in?¹⁰

As I expected, the turn was really bad for BB. Solver has hero’s range going from about 53% equity to about 43%. The only J-X we’re supposed to have is Js9s and Js8s as well as a bit of offsuit J-9 with a spade.

Nonetheless, I’m still supposed to be all in at a high frequency with Q-X. It looks like my bluffs are mainly supposed to be flush draws, I guess targeting the aforementioned A-K combos for folds?¹¹ If I give the solver a small size of b25, it does get used a fair amount (about 30%), but all in is still the dominant size (48%) with my range and my hand.

Mistakes

I think I was check-raising too aggressively with range and not giving the range-vs.-range equities enough respect. ¹²

I guess overall, it was fine, but I’ll let you do the grading.¹³

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. You found the right place.

2. Yes preflop is normal. Generally across all forms of big bet poker, the smaller your opponent bets the more often you raise. Generally when you are shallow stacked you slowplay pairs with backdoor flush draws and when you are deepstacked you fastplay them. The reason for this is because at 17bbs deep all top pair is enough to stack off, you don’t need any back up and are happy to trap the stronger combos and raise the weaker ones. Deeper stacked, even if you had AQ here, you would not be happy getting 100bbs in the pot, so you’d rather raise combos with backdoor flush draws that can stack off when they turn a flush draw or even better, river a flush.

3. I agree there is plenty of value to be had from hand like AK, KJ or AT, but I think you are making a classic Sunday Special mistake where people overweight the presence of an individual hand in their opponent’s range. He should have AK as often as he has AT here, so AK can’t be that big a part of IP’s range. Nevertheless with 3x pot to play top pair is a hand worth getting all-in with.

4. There is some equity denial here, but also some value betting. If he has AK or a flush draw he should reluctantly call a turn shove sometimes. If he will ever fold hands like the nut flush draw on the turn, shoving the turn gives your range enough EV that you should probably shove any hand that’s a reasonable hand to shove with such as weak top pair.

5. The reason to bet small on the turn is because you have some hands like QJ,J7,AA or KQ that are too strong to shove, but still want to bet to charge draws. You can easily pair these value bets with bluffs from hands like K9, As2x, 4s3s that are too weak to shove, but still might want to bluff for cheap.

6. It is an unfavourable card for your range because you rarely checkraise Jx on the flop. You have correctly articulated the dilemma you are facing here. This card is bad for your range, but you have pot to play and usually have the best hand. If you were deeper stacked you’d almost always check because the card is bad for your range. With only pot to play sometimes you just want to pick the highest EV line with your hand, which would involve just shoving all-in.

7. I agree as does the solver which says he should have trips or better almost three times as much as you and 38% total.

8. Should hero be checking turn? I think it’s fine, but not mandatory. Are there small sizes? Yes. If you check and face aggression, you should stack off, unless you had some sort of read.

9. Especially since you cover your opponent by a good amount. You should tighten up, since he is tightening up, but it’s unclear if him tightening up preflop will give him more or less trips to this action.

10. When shallow stacked the solver often plays aggressively with the worst hands you still need to stack off, while they’re willing to induce bluffs with hands that have a little more backup. A classic example of this is in a three bet pot where you might check-call TT on 885, but might check-raise stack off 66. You are right that having a backdoor flush draw increases your EV when you check-raise the flop, but it also does when you check-call the flop

11. What you are actually targeting here is indifference from AK and KT. If you had a pure bluff like say Ks2s and you think your opponent is always folding AK and KT, you have an easy shove. With Q4 it’s pretty close, but what would lean me towards shoving is deep in the Monster Stack I could see someone fold the nut flush draw, which is a nice outcome for our hand.

12. I think there is another small detail here that might just me being results oriented, but since you talked a lot about your opponent’s flop min bet and the fact it led you to raise more. I do think it’s notable that he min bet the flop and he ended up having a set. If min bet is his normal c-bet size, raising is fine. If it’s a trappier size looking to induce action, then you should just call.

13. Most Sunday Special submissions I get are hands where people lose and many of them are hands where people get coolered. People love asking “I got it in drawing slim in a big spot, could I have done something different.” I know Q4 on QJ7 doesn’t feel like a strong hand, but it is. You flopped ~60% equity with 3x pot to play. It’s too good a hand to fold, but when you get all in you’ll often be disappointed. However the way you get the money in the pot does matter and I think vs most players I prefer to just check-call the flop, vs players deep in the Monster Stack, I like the turn shove because I think you might see some tight turn folds with some draws that should call. The only reason I might check the turn is if I felt very confident in my ability to size my opponent up when I checked. If my opponent were the type of player I felt I could exploit, by doing something like check-folding the turn, I might check, otherwise, I like your line.