Week in Review #40 January 4th-10th
When trusting your gut goes too far.
I spent this week writing about New Year’s resolutions on POTD, but today I am going to look backwards to the final week of 2025, where the conversation on Poker Twitter surrounded Jesse Lonis folding a set of kings to Ryuta Nakai. I saw many people make a version of the same point:
Jesse has been having phenomenal results the last couple years, precisely because he is willing to trust himself in these type of spots.
Benjamin “bencb789” Rolle tweeted
I don’t like the fold.
BUT - being willing to fold here, AND then trust your reads enough to make crazy folds and crazy calls, is what separates mediocre players from elite ones.
Here’s what most people are missing: the fact @JesseLonis is even capable of folding is exactly what makes him world class.
POTD subscriber Jason Strasser echoed these sentiments
A good rule of thumb for everything:
If you see someone else doing something you don’t understand or think is terrible... Yet they are having very good results over a long enough sample size... Often times you are the one who is terrible.
I think some of the points made in these four different tweets have validity— they’re not 100% wrong, but as a takesmith myself, I know when I see people working themselves up to be needlessly contrarian, and I need to object to the broader argument being made here. There are sports or competitions where the players with the most explosive skills are the best; poker is not one. It’s boring to say this, but the best poker players are the most consistent ones, not the ones with the best highlight reels. Consistently showing up and making the best plays day after day, year after year, is what makes players great. The “best play” is not the solver play, but the highest-EV play versus a given opponent in a given time while also being prepared for future counter-exploits.
I also want to be clear: This is not a referendum on Jesse’s poker skill; he’s had great results and is a skilled poker player. My thesis here is regarding the discussion on social media I have shared above: Having good results likely means you’re a good poker player; however, if you have good results and have played a hand poorly, that hand is not counter-intuitively a sign of your skill. It means you played a hand poorly.1
I find many of these defenses of Jesse to be a smarmy appeal to authority masked as an open-hearted plea for intellectual curiosity: He’s better than you, therefore he cannot be criticized, and you should do some self-reflecting about why you wanted to criticize him in the first place. Some of these posts rely on strawmen like Bencb’s character “CasinoBob,” who hate the fold, but in my experience playing poker, a very common leak I see from “CasinoBob” types is overfolding in spots because they haven’t internalized that pot odds dictate you should often call and see your opponent flip over a better hand. This is especially true in spots where there is an obvious nuts one player can have, and especially true when people make small raises all-in. Most of the time when you fold the river with a close bluff-catcher, your opponent will have you beat; that doesn’t mean your fold is good. You often only need to be good 25%-30% of the time to make a +EV call. If you always fold in these spots, you will be leaking money, but you will usually be vindicated by the results.
I am skeptical of arguments that rely on explaining why anonymous internet haters are wrong or mean instead of actually focusing on the argument at hand. Poker is a broad and complex game. I bet most of the people reading this post have poker knowledge that I do not have and could learn from; I would still play them heads-up if I could.2 However, I am not here to issue heads-up challenges, but to complain about posts online. I think it’s rich that many of the “Grow the Game” contingent are so thin-skinned about poker fans being critical of other’s play.3 For my entire life as a sports fan (which predates social media), I’d see players, especially the best ones, criticized when they make a tiny misstep. Part of the joy of spectating live competitions is you get to play armchair quarterback, and I do not think big names in poker should be discouraging fans from enjoying the simple pleasure of saying “I could have done better” from their couch. I have called Major League Baseball players “fucking morons” for chasing a 3-2 curveball, and I quit house league baseball because I sucked and kept striking out once kids learned how to throw curveballs.
Part of the project of POTD is to show that I, someone with good results, have consistently made counter-intuitive plays that I thought were correct, but were bad. I have also made fundamentally sound plays that were bad because I didn’t follow my gut. Having the courage to deviate and not look stupid is just not that valuable a skill; it’s one that many losing poker players have. I rarely applaud myself for thinking outside the box or trusting my instincts, when they end up being wrong and I shouldn’t. One should strive to learn from their mistakes, not to justify them by pointing to the times they were right. This very week, I wrote about a hand where I did not trust my “spidey sense” when I should have. Trusting your instincts is important, but you also want to hone them, and I think it’s bizarre to use an example where Jesse’s read was off as an opportunity to teach others about the value of following your gut.
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 PIO sims one using CEV ranges one using ICM ranges for POTD #198
Two PIO sims one locking €uropean’s c-bet size. One forcing me to check the river for POTD #199
A PIO sim that solves this tricky unequal stack hand for POTD #200
Two PIO sims one that forces me to c-bet the flop one that doesn’t for POTD #201
Two rocket solver sims and a PIO icm river sim for POTD #202
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 #201 that talks about a standard preflop spot I often misplay and I feel others do as well.
Solvers and preflop solutions have been around for a really long time and most people generally have pretty good preflop strategies but calling three bets loose OOP when shallow CO vs BU is something I rarely see. I’ve folded T7s, K4s and similar hands in this spot and I don’t think I’m alone because it’s rare to see people call this wide on stream or in game and show it down.
One reason this occurs is because people don’t adjust to smaller sizing. In the GTO wizard sim where CO raises to 2.1x and BU makes it 6.3x J8/T8 are breakeven calls vs a 5.5x three bet they’re worth around as much EV as 44 does vs the 6.3x. The combos that are one pip worse, J7/T7, mix calls vs the 5.5x. However the smaller size is not the only reason OOP gets to make looser calls, it’s that the shallower you can realize more equity when OOP in a three bet pot. On K96r 100bbs deep with 18.5bbs in the pot K5s no backdoor is worth 12bbs and 30 deep (vs the 6.3x) three bet it’s worth almost 14bbs with 15bbs in the pot. So a small sizer, plus being a lot less afraid of making a second best hand, plus fewer decisions played OOP on average all allow you to sneak in these very loose calls, which once again I’ll repeat, I rarely see in practice. If people have exceptions from games they play or stream or whatever, please send them my way, I’d be happy to see them.
Media
I watched the five part Apple TV “film portrait” about Martin Scorsese titled Mr. Scorsese, and as someone who loves Martin Scorsese and hates streaming documentaries that are hagiographies of their subjects, I was unsure if I was going to like it, but who am I kidding, I was always going to like this. It was an easy watch, I got to see all my favourite clips from all my favourite movies, and the director, Rebecca Miller, had access to Scorsese, De Niro, DiCaprio, and anyone else you’d want to see interviewed in a documentary about the life of Martin Scorsese. Would I have had a more enriching experience watching one of his actual movies? Probably. Was Christmas Day a day where I was in the mood to rewatch Silence? Absolutely not. I highly recommend Mr. Scorsese.
There are no media appearances from this week for me to plug, but check your inbox tomorrow. We have a Sunday Special coming in that will hopefully become a regular feature.
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Bluesky
Everyone defending Jesse is coming from a slightly different angle, and I don’t want to treat their views as monolithic, but it is notable that some of Jesse’s defenders would be a lot less likely to defend someone like Isaac Haxton if he punted in a big spot making a solver-approved or exploitative play.