Sunday Special #23 Deep in a Deep Stack Tournament

Dennis Moore vs Matt Moss (Photo: Travis P. Ball)

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

My name is Dennis Moore and I am a big fan of Punt of the Day. I retired four years ago and have been playing and studying poker fervently in my retirement. My favorite game is PLO, but I also play NLH MTTs. As I write, I am in Las Vegas for the WSOP. I recently had a deep run in Event #43, the $800 8-Handed Deep Stack. The hand described below happened late in the event and left me wondering if I played it too passively and cost myself a chance to go even further.

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

Day 2 of the event began with 230 players remaining from the field of 3903. Because the event used a 30-minute blind level structure, stacks were compressed, with the average stack on Day 2 hovering below 20 BB. The morning before the re-start, I spent some time on GTO Wizard looking at 15 BB ranges using the ICM/5% left option to simulate what I thought would be common conditions that day. And, its good I did. Before studying, I assumed there would be much “all-in or fold” poker. But, GTO showed that there would be plenty of SRP with the shape of a min raise and blind defend.¹ And sure enough, it played out that way, and I was able to maneuver from 160^th place (where I started Day 2) to the final 50. Its at this point that our hand occurred.

Matthew Moss (4.3MM/22 BB) raises to 2BB from the Cutoff. We defend the BB holding 7♥️8♥️ (2.6MM/13 BB). We are well ITM with a prize of $7700 guaranteed and 5 spots away from a pay jump to $9400.

Flop (1.1M) A♥️A♣️Q♥️: I check, Matthew checks.
Turn (1.1M) 7♠️: I lead 300k, Matthew calls.
River (1.1M) K♣️: I check, Matthew checks, and I lose to his Q♦️J♥️. (I should add that Matthew not only won this hand, he went on to win the bracelet. Congrats!)²

What I was thinking

Suited 78 has to be a call. If GTO tells me its not, then I’m going to quit MTTs and just play PLO.³ I don’t want to play a game where you can’t defend 78 suited against a min raise.

Obviously, I am glad to see two hearts. Equally obvious, I am at a range disadvantage as the BB defender with two Aces on the flop. I have a pure check here and am planning to call any reasonable sized C-bet Matthew might make.⁴ He makes my life even easier by checking back.⁵ But, confusion is starting to set-in for me because while I know I am at a range disadvantage, I don’t know how big that disadvantage is. Said differently, I don’t know how often I have an Ace here.⁶ My best Aces would almost certainly have 3-bet preflop. Because I am unsure how often I have an Ace, I am unsure how often to bluff. I was not considering check- raising the flop.⁷

The turn is interesting. I pick up a pair so I am now beating Matthew’s unpaired hands (mostly Kx) as well as his small pairs. I decide to lead 300k into the 1.1MM pot. My thinking was that I had a “mergy” hand here as I had reason to deny the equity of any Kx, Tx, type hands he might have⁸, and I always had the back-up plan of making my flush.⁹ But again, I don’t know if I have enough Aces in my range to bluff river, so I’m uncertain about this lead. Once he calls, I am assuming Matthew is heavy with Qx.¹⁰

The river K adds more intrigue. If I am right about my turn lead, Matthew should have folded his Kx, although not his KK.¹¹ Do I have any? Well sure I do, specifically I have the Kh in the form of suited Kings that defended the BB.¹² But, is a K a value shove on a board with AA.¹³ And back to my original confusion, do I have enough Aces in my range to get Matthew to fold a Q. Bottom line, I suspect Matthew has a Q, but I don’t know if I can represent an A or K enough to get him to fold.¹⁴ I check hoping he has something like 66¹⁵, but he tables QJ and I am left to wonder if I could have gotten a bluff through.

What I Learned

First and foremost, I don’t have to quit MTTs. 78s is an easy defend. In fact, I defend nearly 70% of my range here. I got the easiest decision in the world right, yea me!

I also got the 2^nd easiest decision correct, which is I pure check the flop. Interestingly, Matthew should Cbet 85% of the time, but his exact hand, QJo, is a mix, so everyone is in-line so far.¹⁶

The turn is where GTO objects to my play. The solver wants me to check 95% of time and the few bets it has are slivers of Ax and slivers of no equity bluffs. As a practical matter, a human of my intelligence would have to convert the solver play to a pure check.¹⁷ I recall Sam saying us amateurs worry too much about denying equity and I suspect my turn probe here falls into that category. Had I checked, solver Matthew would have bet, likely small, and solver Dennis would have mostly called, but interestingly, solver Dennis would have the option of XR. Specifically, if I had checked turn, and Matthew bet small, the solver would mix 70% calls and 30% XR with 7h8h.

I could not generate a good solver solution for the river since I strayed from the solver line on the turn and only have the cheap subscription to GTO. But, had I played check-call on turn, the solver pure checks river in my spot.¹⁸ Interestingly, if I had played XR on turn, Matthew’s hand mixes folds on the turn, and pure folds if I follow through by jamming the river. I guess that means that the passive line is reasonable and if you want to bluff, you need to do it with the more forceful line of XR followed by jam.¹⁹

I don’t hate my play in this hand. Whenever you defend the BB and an Ace hits the flop, you’re going to have to proceed with caution. I also think picking up a bit of showdown value on the turn also pushes me toward passive play. I just wished I had a better sense of how plausible it would have been for me to represent a K or an A with a river bluff.²⁰

As a postscript the hand, I battled on to next pay jump to book $9400. I open shoved my last 8 BB with Qh8h from the cutoff, which I think is borderline, but okay as I can get folds from better like Kx and am likely live if called. I got called by both the button and the BB, and they both had AKo, and neither of them had a heart. I had 43% to more than triple up! But alas, no Q or 8 was to be found, and I had to settle for 36^th place.²¹

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 one way that solvers have made poker more fun is that short stack poker has a lot more playability. It used to be that push/fold software or apps like Snapshove would tell you which hands were +EV to shove, compared to folding, but not compared to minraising. Solvers were able to compute that minraising and playing a more finesse style of poker was more profitable and it’s certainly more fun.

2. Congrats to Matt Moss! A great poker player and a legend of the game who created the game “Moss Poker” and coined the phrase “Jack-Nap” to refer to a jack and low card (napkin). Dennis is politely calling Matt, Matthew throughout his submission, but I’ve only known him as Matt and will call him that throughout the footnotes.

3. Even if an ICM solver suggested you’d fold here, I’d have taken umbrage with that output and suggest you call anyways.

4. Correct

5. I wrote about this in Sunday Special #4, but I’d expect Matt to pure c-bet range here. When he checks back I’d assume he is trying to exploit someone who looks like they may have never opened GTO Wizard like Dennis. Dennis said he has been retired for four years and his Hendon Mob has him cashing a Seniors event in 2023. I’ll assume Dennis is exactly 53 years old, congrats on retiring at 49.

6. I think your error here is thinking about your range and not Matt’s. You checked range on the flop, so your turn range is the same as your flop range. You will be at a large range disadvantage, unless Matt is checking back an extremely unbalanced flop range. Given that I expect him to bet almost all of his total air on the flop, I think it’s very likely he flopped something and that something is on average ahead of your range.

7. You should shove a lot of your Ax preflop, but if you have a hand that flops trips you must stack off with it. So I wouldn’t be too concerned about only having weak kickers with your Ax. Just as you can check-raise stack off with Ax you can check-raise stack off with many flush draws (even yours) or Qx, but mostly check-calling the flop is reasonable given how weak your range is.

8. Generally when you are betting to deny equity, you also want to be able to get some better hands to fold and that’s not going to happen here. I think Matt would bet most his air on the flop and your turn size will never get a gutshot, flush draw or higher pair to fold. You don’t have enough equity that you’re far ahead of his lowest EV turn calls and you don’t get better hands to fold, so betting doesn’t accomplish much.

9. A 7 should also be good.

10. The reason you can’t bluff the river is because you should rarely have showdown, mostly vs chops. The question isn’t if you have enough Ax that you can bluff. Given that you have some Ax that might want to value bet, you should have some hands that could bluff, but you want to make sure you’re bluffing with the right hands at the right frequency.

11. Or KT,KJ,KQ, king high flush draws.

12. For the same reason you would not bet 7x with a flush draw, you should not bet too much KJ/KT or king high flush draws ott. A little too much showdown and they play better as check-call or check-raise.

13. I am not sure if it’s a shove, but it is definitely a hand you could block for value.

14. The boring answer here is you want to make him indifferent, but Matt will probably not play a mixed strategy vs you on the river here. He either has you pegged as a bluffer and will call down or a nit and will fold.

15. While I don’t think your hand has too much showdown, you do have a lot of missed flush draws here and not too many value bets. So you need to be careful to not overbluff, I’d stick to shoving to my flush draws that have no showdown (or interaction with his range like 3h2h) at all and check 7x with a flush draw.

16. For chips this is a pure c-bet from Matt.

17. You are still at a large range disadvantage, however I’d still bet occasionally with my range because so many hands in Matt’s range are trying to pot control. When you do have a hand that wants to get all-in, Matt won’t do much to help you. You need to force the issue. You rarely bet the turn because you rarely have a hand that’s good enough to.

18. I don’t think the check-call line is a great approximation here. If you checked the turn with an ace you’d almost always check-raise it.

19. This just largely because the your checkraise range is much stronger than your betting range. A betting range could have Qx in it or some total air, but your checkraise range never does. So once you check-raise the turn and the gutshots either pair or fill on the river, you bluff with your 77 blocker.

20. One of the common things I see in Sunday Specials is people regretting not bluffing in hindsight knowing what their opponent had. Sometimes you do have a hand that is supposed to check-call and lose. That’s fine. It always hurts to lose to a hand that’s supposed to fold, but in order to justify your turn play you need the parlay of hitting a good river to bluff and running into a hand that would fold. I think your main error in this hand is not noticing that Matt’s flop check is odd. Even if an ICM solver does it occasionally, it’s a rare play to see from a pro against a retiree. When he checks the flop it’s probably because he has a hand that he doesn’t want to stack off with, that is well protected, but he also doesn’t believe you will put enough pressure on his relatively face-up check back range. Which to me makes betting once the worst option, your turn bet almost never goes through and you rarely win on the river unimproved. That being said, you did bet a size that is close to the size he would have bet facing a check. So it’s not too costly a play.

21. An unfortunate end to a very nice run, but you can take some solace in the fact that your preflop shove is good.