Week In Review #43 January 25th-31st 10 Main Event Lessons Part 1
Looking at the first five lessons.
For Run It Once, I made a six-part video series inspired by my Punt of the World Series Main Event, titled “10 WSOP Main Event Lessons.” The premise of the series is that I noticed 10 very common leaks from the WSOP Main Event stream that are also 10 very common leaks I’ve witnessed playing big-field main event tournaments, and I picked individual hands from the WSOP Main Event stream to illustrate those leaks. Not all POTD subscribers are RIO subscribers (however, if you’d like to become one, sign up using code: POTD for 10% off). Some people might learn more from reading than listening/watching, and some people might not have ~5 hours to watch my whole series on Run It Once. So this week and next week, I will summarize five of the lessons, and I believe next week’s post will coincide with the final video in this series posting on Run It Once. I hope you enjoy this blog and the video series.
Stop Betting and Raising for Information
Small-stakes poker players tend to be very afraid of getting bad beat. To counteract that, they often bet and raise whenever they think they have the best hand. If someone wants to suck out on them, they’re going to need to pay the price. The problem is, they’re actually the ones paying the bill. They keep betting and raising to determine if their hand is the best. Once they find out it’s no longer good, they fold, but they’ve spent a lot of money to gain that information. Putting a lot of money in the pot to fold later on when you’re beat is a lot more costly than putting no money in the pot and running the risk your opponent will turn top pair.
Pot Odds Matter
You “know” this guy always has it. Define “always.” Is “always” 70% of the time, and did he bet half pot? Then you need to call. If you face a river bet and you think you might be good 49% of the time, you don’t have a decision; it’s a snap call. If your opponent is “never” bluffing as in 0%, you can fold a bluff-catcher; if they’re rarely bluffing you might need to fold a bluff-catcher; if they’re “sometimes” bluffing, you probably need to call, but be prepared to see a better hand. You should still call.
C-Bet Tighter Out of Position
A friend recently sent me a hand $800 deep playing $2/$5 live. He raised the hijack, the button called and my friend c-bet Ah6d3c with As5s. This seems like a fine play: He has more strong top pair than his opponent, and he can have top set and the button can’t. It tracks that the HJ can bet often and bet with mediocre top pair. The problem is, the HJ doesn’t actually have much of a range advantage. Sure, they have AA and the button doesn’t, but they have JTo and the button does not.
The in-position player can make life really tough for the PFR because they often have nothing. If you c-bet an unpaired hand and get floated, what’s your plan on the turn? Keep betting and hope your opponent has 88? Keep betting and try to get the button to fold top pair? If you have bad top pair, what’s the plan? Check-call twice on the turn and the river? If you are deep-stacked and out of position, good players can put a lot of pressure on you; building the pot out of position with a mediocre hand is not appealing. On the other end of the spectrum, if the board is more dynamic— say, JhTh5s— and you bet a pretty good hand like J9, what’s your plan if a heart, ten, or straight card turns or rivers? Getting in 3bbs with 60% equity on the flop is not worth needing to sometimes call 100bbs with 33% on the river. Try to keep pots small out of position.
Play Various C-Bet Sizes
This ties into the lesson above, but too many people blindly c-bet and always c-bet a small size. Some boards require auto-betting quarter pot; say you raise under-the-gun, the BB calls, and the flop is AA5. Many other boards, even boards favourable for the preflop raiser, do not— boards such as AK8 or 952 play big bet or check. You are leaving a lot of money on the table blindly betting quarter pot on any board that looks good for your preflop range, especially when you are OOP.
Don’t Always Bluff Marginal Hands
Just as “pot odds matter,” you can’t bluff every time you get the river with fourth or fifth pair or ace high and you think you “never” win at showdown. There is a big difference between “never” and “rarely” or “sometimes.” If you bluff every hand that has a chance to win at showdown 15% of the time, you will be over-bluffing and your bluffs will rarely work vs. observant opponents. This is especially true in blind vs. blind pots, where you have a ton of bottom-pair-type hands that aren’t worth much, but are worth enough that trying to win 1/6 times is better than turning your hand into a bluff.
If you enjoyed this blog, feel free to check out the video series:
And if you liked my Run It Once series and like POTD and are not a subscriber, 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:
A PIO sim that uses preflop ranges that consider 1k/1.5k blinds for POTD #216
A PIO sim that uses inequal stack preflop ranges for POTD #217
A vanilla PIO sim and an IOU for Premium Subscribers POTD #218
A PIO sim that forces us down a geometric node for POTD #219
An HRC sim that uses top heavy payouts and a PIO ICM sim for POTD #220
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 #216 where I write about finding a stable long term equilibrium with a VIP at the table.
POTD #216 onemorething
One other punt in this hand was that Vladimir Korzinin was on my direct right. It’s probably not wise to blast off 100bbs when I have direct position on a guy who might blast off 100bbs himself. However, I still will have good hands here from time to time and if I did have AA or 44, I’d want to try to win as much as possible such that I could cover Korzinin and play as many pots versus him as possible. So it’s a tricky balance, I can’t just say “well there is a whale at this table, so I should never, ever bluff the other pros and I should also fast play all my really good hands” it becomes rather easy for the other pros at the table to print money vs. me by overfolding everywhere.
Coincidentally, tomorrow’s #onemorething is about a similar dynamic in a different situation, but my general advice is this. If you’re playing vs. a VIP you don’t always need to be balanced, if you’re adjusting your overall strategy to maximize your EV vs. a VIP, you need to consider the EV pros might gain by counter-exploiting you. Generally speaking, I am of the belief that conditions needs to be pretty extreme to give up a lot of EV in the current hand in the hopes you can recoup the EV in later hands. I today’s hand, I might have wanted to cut out a big flop size like full pot and made my biggest size 70%, but once I bet big twice, I need to follow through, maybe Kristen will look over at Vladimir Korzinin and over fold on the river.
Media
I’ve been catching up on Wesley Morris’s excellent podcast Cannonball. On an episode where he discussed South Park with Wyatt Cenac, Wesley tells a story about co-hosting the show previously named Siskel and Ebert and discussing South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut. I found the episode on YouTube and if you are interested in nostalgically looking at pop culture ephemera from a previous era, this clip is for you. Ebert hated the movie and Morris loved it.
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