Week In Review #6 April 27th-May 3rd
The Plan: Subscribers get free hand history analysis in the comments
We at POTD are running a promotion, with each playoff series the Toronto Maple Leafs win. I will do line checks and analyze hand histories that are subscriber’s request. Initially the promotion was that unpaid subscribers, can respond to this post on Twitter. Then I thought, it would be unfair to give unpaid subscribers the same benefits as paid and premium subscribers. So paid subscribers can ask an additional question in the comments here and premium subscribers can ask a third question in the Discord channel. Don’t be shy, the question does not need to be about a hand you played or a hand I played. If you don’t have a question now, the shop will remain open— the coupon I’m giving out does not expire. Ask right now or weeks from now, it will be answered. As always the different subscription tiers are outlined here and I can be contacted via all of the methods linked at the bottom of this post.
Testimonials
We got a big one this week as PokerStars Pro and #6 on the All-Time Money List Jason Koon wrote on Twitter
“Sam is an incredible poker player. His Substack is a fun read, highly recommended.”
Additional Sims For Premium Subscribers
Monday’s hand I picked a non solver approved turn size and I went down the tree if we were forced to bet that size
Tuesday’s hand, I sized too small preflop and we looked at what would happen if my opponet exploited my small three bet size and called wider preflop
Wednesday we used ICM ranges approaching the bubble to see how it altered CEV strategy
Thursday’s hand I uploaded a whole three way Rocket Solver Sim
Friday’s hand I uploaded a PIO ICM sim
Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers
This week the additional analysis does not just come from me, a premium subscriber looked at POTD #6 and ran their own sims if we nodelocked Daniel Dvoress’s range due to timing tells.
In one of the many bits of extra analysis was that I analyzed the cooler that I busted my first bullet in and mentioned in the week’s free post POTD #29.
I thought the way this hand played was his range that calls a 4b would have a lot of suited hands in them, so I didn't need use big sizes postflop because I wasn't worried about denying equity. However he has a large reach pocket pairs with a spade that not only has 9 flush outs, but also has two set outs. My range strategy is built around charging that class of hand and my preferred flop size is half pot. Another thing is almost every turn card gives him some reach of sets that I would not give him credit for. This whole hand looks very different versus humans than CPUs. I think humans are a lot more likely to have KK than 55 on this turn, but that's not true of the computer. In theory my hand is a shove on the river and is worth a lot, but it's also assuming he never folds top pair and has pretty low reach in AA/KK and I am bluffing the correct aamount. So it's possible a hero check back is the way to go here vs some humans, but vs a player with a lot of high stakes cash experience, I think shove is still best, but my flop size is too small
Media
No media apperance’s this week so just some recommendations
Leafs win and Joe Bowen is a national treasure
As an attention addled screen addict the idea of writing in complete silence is unnerving, but writing and editing while listening to music with lyrics is distratcting. The solution of course is ambient music. My knowledge of ambient music is limited, but many of this weeks’ posts were written while listening Ambient 2 by Brian Eno and Harold Budd.
Of course I’d be remiss without mentioning that episode 2 of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal expanded on one of his all time great bits from Nathan For You: Summit Ice Apparel. Per GQ Nathan Fielder plays poker in Timothee Chalamet’s poker game and is a good serious poker player who has a poker coach. Nathan, I promise you as a Canadian who graduated from business school in Canada, I am a better poker coach than whoever is currently coaching you. Please reach out to me.
Subscribers with commenting privileges who want to ask about HHs, post below.
Ok here’s a final table hand history from a small stakes online tournament. Roughly 1k runners and we’ve just hit the 9 handed final table.
I have 20x and am 8/9. Smallest stack had 6.5x in the CO, three other stacks from 20-25x that just cover me. First hand of the FT I look down at AKo UTG. Big stack is in the BB with over 80x.
I assumed open raising for 2.3x is right? But I look at the stack sizes, know I’m in a pretty heavy ICM spot, knowing jamming can’t be *too* bad and just panic open rip. My question is less is this right, I assume it’s not, and more at what stack size does it become right? And I guess contingently where does the ev advantage of a normal open over the oversized rip come from.
Well I am flabbergasted by the circumstance that noone else uses the chance to ask you a free question, but I guess I ask enough questions in other POTD's so I just thank you for beeing that generous!