Week In Review #41 January 11th-17th: Quiz Time!

Looking at hands from the PGT Championship (Photo: PokerGo YouTube)

Earlier this week, the PGT Championship was played; it is a once-a-year tournament where “The top 40 players on the PGT leaderboard, along with select Dream Seat winners, combine to play for the $1,000,000 freeroll and $500,000 first-place prize.” In December, I ran a quiz where I picked select hands from the Triton Invitational and quizzed POTD readers on individual hands where one and only one mistake was made. (If you missed that first quiz and would like to give it a go, click here.) I received mostly positive feedback, so I am running it back again, but first, a disclaimer, which I will put in bold to pre-empt some of the criticisms I received from the first quiz:

This is a quiz testing the solver knowledge of readers of this blog, using real poker hands as an example. In my experience, I have found that real hands are better learning tools than hands played versus trainers, which is why I write about real hands every day. If I spot an error in one of these hands, it does not mean it was “played poorly.” Players could have easily deviated for exploitative reasons. If you are the subject of a blunder below, you’ve likely had a successful poker career; I am sure you can handle someone saying “that c-bet size was a little too big.”

All right, with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s move on to the hands. First, a reminder of the rules: Each hand will have only one blunder. (There are some hands with several blunders, which I will be discussing in the POTD discord, which you can join here.) 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 (2.5K/5k/5k)

It folds to David Coleman (224.5k) on the button with Q♣️9♥️ who makes it 12k, Alex Foxen (561k) calls in the BB with A♠️9♠️.

Flop (31.5k) T♣️5♦️4♠️: Foxen checks, Coleman bets 10.5k, Foxen raises to 31k, Coleman calls.
Turn (93.5k) J♠️: Foxen checks, Coleman checks.
River (93.5k) J♥️: Foxen checks, Coleman bets 62k, Foxen folds.¹

Hand 2 (4k/8k/8k)

It folds to Ed Miller in the CO (374k) who makes it 20k with 8♥️8♦️, it folds to Andrew “Luckychewy” Lichtenberger (1.915M) in the BB who makes it 68k with A♣️K♣️, Ed Miller calls.

Flop (148k) A♠️6♣️5♦️: Andrew bets 18k, Ed calls.
Turn (184k) Q♦️: Andrew checks, Ed checks.
River (184k) 3♣️: Andrew bet 60k, Ed calls.²

Hand 3 (5k/10k/10k)

It folds to Bryce Yockey (293k) who makes it 22k with K♠️K♦️ from the LJ, it folds to Michael Zulker (539k) who calls 6♦️6♣️ on the button, it folds to Stephen Chidwick (384k) who calls with K♣️3♣️ in the BB.

Flop (81k) T♥️8♦️2♦️: Chidwick checks, Bryce checks, Zulker checks.
Turn (81k) 2♣️: Chidwick checks, Bryce checks, Zulker checks.
River (81k) 5♦️: Chidwick checks, Bryce bets 80k, Zulker folds, Chidwick folds.³

Hand 4 (5k/10k/10k)

It folds to Chino Rheem (646k) on the button who makes it 20k with K♥️5♥️, Adam Hendrix (101k) calls in the BB with Q♦️9♦️.

Flop (55k) K♠️T♠️8♠️: Adam checks, Chino bets 20k, Adam folds.⁴

Hand 5 (6k/12k/12k)

There is no small blind. It folds to Daniel Negreanu (450k) in the HJ who makes it 25k with A♠️5♠️, it folds to Michael Wang (1.46M) in the BB who calls with K♦️8♦️.

Flop (62k) 8♠️5♣️2♠️: It checks to Daniel who bets 25k, Michael Wang makes it 82k, Daniel makes it 164k, Michael shoves, for 425k total, Daniel calls.⁵

Hand 6 (10k/15k/15k)

It folds to Eric Wasserson (565k) who raises the HJ to 30k with A♠️6♠️, it folds to Michael Wang (1.495M) who calls in the BB with A♥️9♦️.

Flop (85k) 7♦️5♦️3♠️: Wang checks, Wasserson checks.
Turn (85k) T♠️: Wang checks, Wasserson checks.
River (85k) A♦️: Wang checks, Wasserson bets 45k, Wang calls.⁶

Hand 7 (10k/15k/15k)

It folds to Eric Wasserson (450k) makes it 35k on the button with Q♦️8♥️, it folds to Chad Eveslage in the BB (1M) who calls with 6♠️5♦️

Flop (95k) K♠️T♣️9♥️: Chad checks, Wasserson checks.
Turn (95k) T♥️: Chad bets 60k, Wasserson folds.⁷

I wanted to make this a 10 hand quiz and I didn’t have time to run these hands, which are at a pretty specific FT, but I feel pretty confident about my answer to the following three questions. If someone wants to prove me wrong. Go for it.

Hand 8 8 left. 7 cash.

Stephen Chidwick (750k) makes it 60k in the CO with T♦️8♦️, it folds to Andrew Lichtenberger (2.22M) who has K♣️T♣️ in the SB and calls, Eric Blair (1.07M) calls in the BB with 7♥️7♦️.

Flop (205k) A♣️Q♥️9♥️: Chewy checks, Blair checks, Chidwick checks bets 40k, Chewy calls, Blair folds.

Turn (285k) 9♣️: Chewy checks, Chidwick checks.

River (285k) 5♣️: Chewy checks, Chidwck bets 140k, Chewy shoves Chidwick folds.⁸

Hand 9 4-Handed (40k/80k/80k)

It folds to Michael Wang (1.92M) on the button, who makes it 160k with A♠️4♦️, it folds to Andrew Lichtenberger in the BB who calls with A♦️7♥️.

Flop (440k) 6♠️5♥️3♠️: Chewy bets 80k/ Michael calls.
Turn (600k) 6♥️: Chewy bets 300k, Michael calls.
River (1.2M) 7♠️: Chewy bets 80k, Michael raises 1.3M, Chewy calls.⁹

Hand 10 3-Handed (75k/125k/125k)

Wang (3.55M) folds the button, Andrew Lichtenberger (1.55M) calls the SB with Q♥️5♥️, Chad Eveslage checks the BB with J♦️4♠️.

Flop (375k) 9♦️6♥️6♦️: Chewy checks, Chad checks.
Turn (375k) J♥️: Chewy bets 125k, Chad calls.
River (625k) K♣️: Chewy checks, Chad bets 450k, Chewy calls.¹⁰

I hope you enjoyed this quiz and if you would like to continue to support my work. Please subscribe and share this Substack widely. It would be greatly appreciated.

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:

• An ICM sim and CEV sim and a Rocket Solver sim for POTD #203

• Three different c-bet size tests for POTD #204, #205, #206

• A c-bet size test and river resolve for POTD #207

• Three bet pot sims using inequal stack sims for POTD #208-209

• A PIO ICM sim for POTD #210

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 #204-#206, which was a post I was proud of and got feedback, but was a little unwieldy, so here is a summary of what I took away from the post.

POTD 204-206 ⁠onemorething There was a lot of stuff in today’s entry and I think the main takeaways for me are this

1. When you are shallower you often need to play block on “big bet or check” boards because you with looser stack off thresholds you don’t want to always check back say a set, when you might just stack a king high flush draw or bad top pair at a high frequency.

2. When you are deeper you don’t mind overbetting even hands like top set because you still need to build a pot and OOP doesn’t check-raise nearly as often.

3. On boards where you bet range, your max c-bet size is often capped out because you need to bet more linearly. On boards where you play a lot of checks, you can usually play a bigger bet size.

Finally, I think some of the leaks today stemmed from being unable to marry playing my range with playing my hand. I knew 752 was an overbet or check board, but I knew 66 was not a great overbet candidate, so I bet a middle size. This is actually potentially a really big problem vs observant opponents in the long run. If players notice you cheat on your c-bet sizing, sizing down a little with 66 on 752 or a common one I see is on a board like J52 maybe betting 33% pot with AJ and betting 25% with AK. That can really open the door up to future exploits that cost you a ton of money. It’s more important to build a c-bet strategy that is consistent and does not have sizing tells than one that perfectly maps onto a solver strategy.

Media

Industry is back. I don’t like the show per se, but it’s soapy and entertaining and stupid. I saw Larry Fitzmaurice describe it as “Succession’s Entourage”, which seems about right. I remember I was grinding online on a Sunday and my brother had busted all his tournaments and threw on that night’s episode of Entourage. I was at a final table and afterwards said “I thought that episode was pretty good… it had John Cleese in it.” My brother said “What are you talking about? That episode was terrible” and then listed all the plot holes. I rarely grind Sundays, but spending an entire day with a toddler turns my brain into a similar amount of mush that at the end of the day I enjoy watching Industry. I mean this as a compliment. Remember to join us tomorrow for another Sunday Special.

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Bluesky

1. Foxen’s flop check raise.

2. Andrew’s turn check.

3. Bryce’s turn check.

4. Chino is just supposed to shove the flop. Adam’s fold and preflop call appear to be good.

5. Daniel’s flop three bet.

6. E-Wass’s turn check. It’s a pure bet for chips. They are near the bubble so one could argue that the turn check is fine given that situation. However, if you think you should tighten up on the turn near the bubble, then you should also tighten up on the river, which should be a pure check.

7. E-Wass’s flop check is low frequency and his turn fold is a mix, but Chad’s turn bet is never played.

8. Chewy should be all-in preflop.

9. I am going to say river call, but hand #9 and #10 are a tease for a future POTD. I will be giving one of these hands the full POTD treatment. Let me know which one you’d rather read about in the comments.

10. Chewy should be all-in preflop. For chips plenty of queen high calls on the river at this node, so I think it’s fine at a top heavy FT.