Week In Review #62 June 13th-June 19th 2026
A busy, but predictable week at the WSOP
The poker topics du jour appear to be WSOP dealer incompetence. Adrian Mateos, Alex Foxen, and Bryn Kenney putting up big scores and the evergreen topic should Martin Kahbrel and Jared Bleznick be considered annoying or should they be beloved. Water is wet, the sky is blue, etc. Nothing sparked my interest enough to write a long essay and if I am not that interested in writing something, I doubt you all are interested in reading it. If someone wants me to read me write thousands of words on Darren Raddysh, or who should replace Ismael Kone, let me know. This is being published on the Saturday before Father’s Day and it’s likely I will have woken up two to three times in the middle of the night to feed a newborn. So consider this brief introduction a Father’s Day gift to me.
One topic I will certainly be writing about in the coming weeks is the Poker Hall of Fame. I have my thoughts on who I want to see get inducted, but I am curious what people who have not competed vs many of the nominees think and I don’t want to share my opinions just yet and put my thumb on the scale. If you have nominated people for the HOF or have personal favourites you’re rooting for (or personal not-favourites you’re rooting against) please share your thoughts in the comments below.
If you’d like to give me a Father’s Day present or give a Father’s Day present to your poker loving dad— I’m actually thinking aloud here, if you and your dad would like a POTD subscription. I am happy to give you a 2 for 1 deal. DM me. For the rest of you Please subscribe to POTD. By clicking the button below. You can use the discount code https://www.puntoftheday.com/WSOP.
Housekeeping
I saw an early version of Tim Adams, Daniel Dvoress and Stephen Chidwick’s newest Upswing course “Modern Tournament Mastery”. I recommend you buy it. Check it out. If you’d like be entered into a draw for a free copy of course and are a paid subscriber of POTD, all you need to do is comment on this POTD #294
Additional Sims For Premium Subscribers
Premium Subscribers are given access to a Google Drive folder where they will also be able to download 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. The past week I uploaded
A PIO sim using inequal stack preflop ranges for POTD #294
A Rocket Solver sim from the flop and two PIO sims from the turn for POTD #295
An HRC sim for PF play. Two PIO ICM sims for postflop play for POTD #296
Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers
Everyday Premium Subscribers get an extra bit of analysis not included in the main post. Today, I’ll share #onemorething from POTD #295, where I wrote about when to expand your preflop range vs weaker players.
I’ll expand a little bit on why I think preflop is such a clear fold. I think there are three reasons to expand your preflop range vs specific opponents.
They are so bad that if you make a very strong hand you’ll get paid too often. This allows you call a button raise with K2s
They are so loose preflop that you have more equity than you’re supposed to. If someone is opening 98o UTG, you should not fold A2o in the BB, just because the solver folds vs a 17% UTG opening range.
They won’t put enough pressure on your postflop. If someone will never three barrel 22 on AKT and never c-bet larger than half pot postflop. Defending K2o becomes much more appealing. You’ll showdown weak top or second pair a lot more often.
In this hand the first condition is certainly not met. I don’t know Mihai that well, but he seemed competent. Corey is a long time MTT pro and even if was not up to date with the latest solver strategies, he is not such a weak spot that I could expand here. The second condition is also not met, Mihai is not opening all that wide and Corey has a very tight and specific flatting range. I should not have more pot equity here than versus the solver. Number three I am less confident about, but my general rule of thumb is multiway pots do not get checked around often enough in big field main event tournaments, which means when I call preflop here, I’ll face a c-bet too often. This is bad. Especially when I might be facing c-bets from hands like QQ on K92 more than I should be. I think too many players decide to always expand their preflop ranges in softer tournaments, but just as you exploit a nitty fish by bluffing more often and a calling station by bluffing less, sometimes the correct preflop exploit is just to fold, even if you’re better than you’re opponents.
Media
I guess the media of the week that I and most of the world have been consuming is the World Cup. When FIFA announced they were expanding the field to 48 teams, I did not like it. The reason I did not like it was partially selfish, Canada had finally qualified in the field of 32. For most of my life Canada had such a sorry men’s soccer program that the idea they could regularly qualify for the World Cup seemed like a pipe dream. Then, against all odds, they developed some real talent and built a strong enough program that they were legitimately one of the 32 best soccer teams in the world. It’s an exciting team to be a Canadian soccer fan, but just as they climbed the mountain top, FIFA built an escalator and started letting everyone (except Italy) reach the summit.
However, my main gripe with the new format was a structural one. 48 teams qualify and 32 advance to the next round. That means they play 72 games to get rid of the bottom 1/3rd of teams and to seed the 32 that advance. The next round gets rid of 16 teams, but it only takes 16 games to do it. This format means there will be far too many meaningless group stage games. In a well structured tournament there should be stakes in all of the group stage matches and the a bad result should put your team in some danger. In this format it seems basically impossible that a powerhouse would not advance to the knockout rounds. I think if FIFA insists on having 48 teams, they should have 24 advance from group stage and give the top 8 teams byes. This would make most of the 72 group stage games meaningful as most teams would be playing for a bye or to advance, while still allowing a county like Cape Verde can have their World Cup moment.
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