Week In Review #38 December 7th-13th Quiz Time!

In the Bahamas $250k when Pros play vs Pros, surely no one will make any mistakes.

The tournament of the week was the Triton Bahamas $250k, an invitational tournament that ended up having 133 total entries and that paid out almost $7,725,000 to eventual champion Kayhan Mokri. As is always the case, day one of the tournament featured segregated player pools; pros played vs. pros and invitees played vs. invitees. With so many strong poker players, you would think no mistakes would be made, but I noticed several when watching the stream— some of the bigger punts may get the full POTD treatment in weeks to come, but what I am going to do today is show you some of the punts that I’ve pulled off the cutting room floor and quiz my readers to determine what mistakes were made. As always, poker is a human game; the mistakes made in this hand might have been conscious exploits or they might have been real mistakes made while playing for high stakes. I am not aiming to write about how individual players are terrible, but I am aiming to show that even the best in the world make mistakes. The rules for today’s quiz are pretty simple: In every hand there is one clear mistake and you need to find it. I define a clear mistake as a play the solver would make 0% of the time. The answers will be posted at the end of the quiz in the footnotes. If you are an e-mail reader and don’t want to scroll up and down the page, you can read today’s post in the Substack App or on a web browser by clicking this link. Let’s start.

Hand #1 7-Handed (500/1k/1k)

Alex Zubov (300k) makes it 2.5k UTG with A♣️J♣️ it folds to Phil Ivey in the SB who makes it 14.5k K♠️K♦️, Alex calls.

Flop (31k): A♠️Q♥️J♥️: Phil bets 8k, Alex calls
Turn (47k) 8♦️: Phil checks, Alex bets 35k Phil folds.¹

Hand #2 7-Handed (500/1k/1k)

It folds to Jon Jaffe(266k) on the button with 8♠️7♥️ he raises to 3k, Alex Zubov(320k) calls in the SB with K♣️T♥️ calls, Taylor von Kriegenbergh(352k) calls in the BB with K♠️9♠️ calls

Flop (10k) J♦️T♠️3♦️: Alex checks, Taylor checks, Jon checks.
Turn (10k) 7♦️: Alex checks, Taylor bets 15k, Jon folds, Alex folds.²

Hand #3 7-Handed(500/1k/1k)

It folds to Teun Mulder (313k) on the button who makes it 3k with K♣️J♥️, Phil Ivey(254k) calls in the BB with A♣️8♦️

Flop (7.5k) A♥️K♥️T♥️: Phil checks, Teun bets 4k, Phil calls
Turn (15.5k) 5♦️: Phil checks, Teun checks
River (15.5k) 9♦️: Phil bets 15k, Teun folds³

Hand #4 7-Handed (1k/1.5k/1.5k)

It folds to Manuel Fritz in the LJ (285k) who makes it ??? (stream joined in progress) with 8♥️7♥️, Alex Foxen(420k) makes it 16.5k in the SB with Q♦️T♦️, Manuel calls.

Flop (34k) J♦️7♣️6♥️: Alex bets 20.5k, Manuel calls
Turn (75k) A♥️: Alex bets 56k, Manuel calls
River (187k) 4♣️ Alex checks, Manuel checks⁴

Hand #5 8-Handed (1k/2.5k/2.5k)

Artur Martirosian (203k) raises A♠️Q♥️ to 6k, Jesse Lonis (402k) flats next to act with 4♦️4♥️, it folds to Danny Tang (428k) in the CO who has K♦️ K♥️ and three bets to 23k, Artur calls and Jesse calls

Flop (75k) J♦️3♦️T♣️: Artur checks, Jesse checks, Danny bets 21k, they both fold.⁵

Hand #6 8-Handed (1k/2.5k/2.5k)

It folds to Artur Martirosian(174k) in the LJ who makes it 6k with A♣️K♥️, Jesse Lonis(411k) makes it 18k in the HJ with A♥️Q♥️, Artur makes it 48k, Jesse calls

Flop (102k) J♥️8♦️4♣️: Artur bets 25k, Jesse folds.⁶

Hand #7 7-handed (1.5k/3k/3k)

It folds to Brandon Wilson(460k) in the CO who makes it 7k with A♠️J♦️, Sean Winter(315k) calls in the BB with T♦️9♠️

Flop (18.5k) 4♠️T♥️2♥️: Sean checks, Brandon bets 7k, Sean calls.
Turn (32.5k) 6♠️: Sean leads 12k, Brandon folds.⁷

Hand #8 7- Handed (2k/4k/4k)

It folds to Seth Davies (335k) in the LJ who makes it 8k with 6♠️6 ♣️ Sean Winter (340k) calls in the HJ with A♠️Q♠️, it folds to Brandon Wilson(440k) in the BB who makes it 48k with A♦️K♦️, Seth folds, Sean calls.

Flop (110k) 3♦️T♠️J♦️: Brandon bets 41k, Sean calls.
Turn (192k) 7♣️: Brandon shoves for 251k effective, Sean folds.⁸

Hand #9 7-Handed (3k/6k/6k)

It folds to David Coleman (400k) in the HJ with A♣️Q♥️ who makes it 13k, Leon Sturm makes it 40k on the button with A♦️K♥️, David shoves 250k effective, Leon calls.⁹

Hand #10 6-Handed (3k/6k/6k)

Juan Pardo (720k) makes it 12k UTG with A♣️Q♣️, it folds to David Coleman (130k) who flats A♠️A♦️ on the button, it folds to Teun Mulder (270k) peels the BB with T♦️5♦️

Flop (45k) Q♠️7♦️5♣️: Teun checks, Juan bets 12k, David calls, Teun folds
Turn (69k) 2♦️: Juan shoves 104k, effective David calls.¹⁰

I hope you had fun doing this quiz and a reminder do all the punters out there, even elite players playing $250,000 make elementary mistakes from time to time. Since this is my first time doing a quiz I have not made a poll, but you can grade yourself on the honour system. If you liked this quiz and want me to keep creating fun ideas like this please consider becoming a paid or unpaid subscriber

Additional Sims For Premium Subscribers

Premium subscribers get the raw files of sims I used to write my POTDs, sims that are more accurate and appropriate than equivalent sims in the big public libraries, videos of me walking through the sims, and a text summary of how I ran the sims. This week I uploaded:

• Two heads-up PIO sims for POTD #186

• An HRC cEV for POTD #187

• PIO sims using unequal PF ranges that showcase different flop strategies for POTD #188

• PIO sims using unequal PF ranges that showcase different river strategies for POTD #189

• A PIO ICM sim that forces Jason to check the flop and one that does not force him to for POTD #190

Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers

Everyday Premium Subscribers get an extra bit of analysis not included on Substack. Today, I’ll share #onemorething from POTD #187, where I wrote about suited connectors and “playability”:

POTD #187 ⁠onemorething

It used to be that making big reshoves with suited broadways was seen as being fishy. The popular hands to make big reshoves with were small to mid pocket pairs, because when they were called they often had okay equity, since they’re flipping vs. AK/AQ. The reason not to jam QJs type hands was the magic word, “playability.” You can flop straight draws, flush draws and pairs … why would you waste a hand like that by getting all-in preflop with it. These hands like shoving preflop because they can get dominating hands to fold, something that can happen with pocket pairs, but happens a lot less often, unless you’re really committed to shoving 22-44. There are spots such as LJ vs. HJ 20bbs deep where you occasionally shove 55 to make 66 fold, but it’s rare.

The other thought was that the only consideration with flatting small pocket pairs was if there was enough value to set mine. This is before it became common knowledge that you could start turning small to mid pocket pairs into bluffs postflop. If you never shoved QJs and always shoved 55, you’d be pretty easy to play against postflop; your range would smash boards with broadway cards on it and you would almost never have a decent hand on boards with low and medium cards. Bluff shoving the suited connectors is a good play because you get better hands to fold, but it also makes your flatting range a little tougher to play against. You don’t have that much “playability” postflop if everyone knows you have trips a lot on JJx and you rarely have something good on 762r. Sometimes you have to shove your suited broadways.

Media

The media I consumed this week was watching the Triton stream so I could write this blog. Triton puts out a product that is the best in the business and was very fun to watch.

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Bluesky

1. The solver pure checks the turn as Zubov. Top and bottom pair is a very strong hand, but this deep, it wants to play pot control. Betting the turn doesn’t lose much EV and would be fine on a turn that was lower than 8 and did not fill T9s.

2. Taylor does not play overbet on the turn with range, but obviously betting a double gutshot is a fine play. His size is not.

3. Phil’s river bet is far too greedy. 300bb deep, Teun can check back strong top pair, two pair, sets, flushes and straights on the turn. Phil’s bet loses over 1bb, and that’s in a world where Teun folds some better top pair and chops.

4. Foxen’s turn size is never used with range. The biggest size I could get the solver to regularly bet is 30% pot. Betting 3/4 pot on the turn doesn’t lose much EV.

5. Artur’s preflop call is the big loser here. His flop fold looks good, but he can also lead his combo if he’d like. Danny is supposed to pure check back the flop with range if Artur never plays leads.

6. Jesse’s flop fold loses a lot of EV. You don’t fold two overcards in position with a backdoor flush draw in a three-bet pot. Jesse’s three-bet is low frequency, but it gets in there.

7. Brandon’s turn fold loses a small amount of EV. Sean’s turn lead is low frequency, but used occasionally; Brandon rarely folds two overcards and never folds ace-high hands with two overcards. The As should also give Brandon a little bit of extra bluffing equity on the river.

8. Brandon’s turn shove. Sean’s range is pretty tight and specific, and we want to try to induce bluffs from AQ or KQ instead of shoving to try to get some pairs to fold. Shoving the turn only loses around 0.25bbs and could be the best play if you can induce a lot of folds from Tx.

9. This is an easy one, but I wanted to get to a round 10 hands. Apologies to Mr. Coleman. You should have just flatted the three-bet.

10. Juan never shoves the turn with range, but it doesn’t lose much EV to do so. I am not sure what his turn bluffs would be here.
An extra punt: I was so focused on Juan Pardo and Coleman I didn’t even notice that Teun folded the flop with bottom pair and a backdoor flush draw. A bad fold in theory, but I’ll give him credit for making a good read.