Week(s) in Review #68 August 2nd-August 15th
The Ten Biggest Punts of the WSOP ME
For those not in the POTD Discord or the POTD Subscriber Chat, you may have missed that last week, I traveled out of town for a wedding with my wife and two children, spent all day Thursday in an airport, and all day Friday sleeping off being stuck in an airport with two children. So there was no Week in Review post last week. That means I have a lot of catching up to do this week, but first, let’s countdown the 10 Biggest Punts of the WSOPME. You can read all the contenders here.
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I did not include this hand because it Pokernews did not include the whole hand and it looked reasonable to me. K2 was repping 22 and happened to run into 66. A user on Twitter was at the table and DMed me the whole HH:
Felix K opens UTG to 5.5K
Folds to Gaspar on the button, he makes it 17.5k
UTG callFlop (41k) 6❤️Q♠️T♠️
UTG: Check
BU: bet 15k
UTG: c/r to 43.5k
BU: raise to 105k (or something like this he like clicks it back essentially)UTG: tankkkk call
Turn (261k): 6❤️Q♠️T♠️2❤️
Utg: check
Bu: bet 135k
Utg: tankkkkk callRiver (531k): 6❤️Q♠️T♠️2❤️T♣️
Utg: check
Gaspar all in
Utg tankkkkkkkkkkkkkkk calls lolUTG wins w/ 66
Gaspar had the K♦️2♦️
That’s a high-quality punt that just misses the top 10, but which I needed to include to correct the oversight of missing it the first time.
I don’t know what it is about the Main Event, and specifically Main Event Feature Tables, that makes people fall in love with bottom 10% hands. (This year we also saw Michael Mizrachi four-bet 42s.) In this year’s Main Event, they were about to go on break at 15k/30k blinds, and Francisco Fragoso (great name) decided that Hossein Ensan in the BB wanted a smoke break or to go to the bathroom and that this would be the perfect time to steal his BB. He decided to 3x pre to make sure he’d steal the BB, and then when Ralph Perry three-bet him, he figured Ralph must have known he was making a move and responded with a four-bet. Ralph had JJ and Fragoso fortunately hit the dream flop for bluffing JJ and took down the pot. Next time just go to the bathroom.
I can’t not include the most notable hand that occurred after one table decided to straddle for an orbit on Day 5 of the Main Event. At 50k BB, Loai Elayday straddled UTG nine-handed. Will Givens made it 175k next to act; it folded back to Elayday who shoved 1.5M chips— 30bbs, but only 15 straddles with 74o. This play is very bad, but EV-wise, it might not be as bad as it looks. If Will is raising A3o and is calling a jam with something close to, let’s say, top 10% hands, then Elyaday is shoving 3.5x pot, getting called around 30% of the time, and has around 30% equity when called. It’s not a good play, that’s why it’s on this list, but it’s why straddling and jamming 74o is not ranked even higher on the list.
8. Eshaan Bhalla Catches an Opponent Overplaying AK
A common Main Event punt is someone overplaying AK by getting too many BBs AIPF with it or underplaying it by not getting nearly enough BBs in the pot with it. Normally, when people have AK and they whiff, they don’t put too much money in the pot. This hand was an exception, where we saw an unknown player go nuts with AK high on T973 double flush draw. If you are playing any sort of reasonable poker, it’s impossible to get all-in on a board that connected drawing dead, but our mystery man found a way to.
7. Baptiste Tries to Bluff AA (Winamax stream)
A rhetorical question I often see asked on Day 1 of a Main Event is “How did they get so many chips?” and a question I often see asked on Day 2 is “How did they lose so many chips?” Jourdan Baptiste gave us a window into the roller coaster of trying to win every pot and running hot and cold. He cold calls a three-bet and a four-bet with K5s and tries to bluff AA, and it doesn’t work out for him.
6. Not Shoving QQ Just to get Bluffed Off It Post
In my coverage this year, I wrote about how one of the biggest punts someone can make is putting in a bunch of money with a medium-strength hand just to fold it later. Paul Guilbeau three-bet QQ from the SB and got four-bet by Allan Sannier. This is a wonderful spot to be in; he could shove and get called by a worse hand or take down the pot preflop. Instead, he just called. Not my choice, but an okay play. The flop was ace high, which is not ideal, but a spot QQ could still navigate with ~2x pot to play. Guilbeau chose the worst option and check-raise/folded 1/3rd of his stack. On Day 5 of the Main Event, he was 92% to double up to 3M in chips and somehow chose the line that allowed him to lose half his stack without even showing down.
In order to go deep in the Main Event, you need a lot of good fortune, and for a while it seemed like Allan Sannier was destined to go on a miracle run. He also found a bizarre way to get AA to fold when he had 66 that I almost included in this countdown, but like most Main Event runs, his eventually came to a halt.
5. To Quote the Pokernews Headline “Stop Being a B**ch, Shut Up!”
Normally I don’t include hands where I don’t have the full action, but I need to make an exception here. When you call all-in with A3 high and lose to an AT high bluff, then throw a tantrum as you’re leaving the table, you make the top 5 of the POTWSOPME.
4. Chris Moneymaker Bubbles the Main Event
Chris opened a hand he should have folded preflop, called a three-bet with it, and then called a ~40% pot river shove on the bubble playing the board. I can’t really defend preflop here, but I can defend the rest of the hand. He flopped a gutshot and two overcards and calls twice. Then on the river, he thinks his opponent is bluffing or has AK. In theory, you probably call the river with a chop here some % of the time… why not J9? However, when a legend of the Main Event bubbles in spectacular fashion, when he could have just folded J9o preflop and locked up a mincash, he makes the list. Even if he was actively trying to get the Bahamas package reserved for the bubble boy, I’d rather he shove preflop instead of playing a hand like this.
I’ve heard some people say that Ryan folded here because he’s a limit player who is inexperienced in NLH. The year is 2026, even players who never play NLH are pretty good NLH players. Ryan had 20bbs and managed to fold QQ as an overpair after putting 60% of his stack in the middle. As I wrote in my initial writeup, he called almost half his remaining stack to set mine, then folded when he was getting 4:1 on his flop call. Aren’t limit players supposed to understand pot odds?
To me, the great Main Event punts are ones where both players punt in some capacity. This one fits the bill. We have two clearly losing preflop plays: The J7s open has got to be extremely bad given Konishi defends 42o. We arrive at the flop and Konishi has 3% equity. If you asked me to bet on how likely he was to win the hand, I’d have happily laid 100:1. Then I would have watched in horror as he did not check-fold the flop, but check-raised it, turned a pair and managed to get Masato to fold second pair. Folding second pair is often a reasonable poker play, but not when you have 615k back and there is 440k in the middle on the flop. Every decision in this hand, outside of Masato’s c-bet and call of the check-raise, were absolutely shocking to me. What a great hand.
1. The Punt of the 2026 WSOP Main Event
The POTWSOPME is not strictly, what was the worst hand played in the tournament? It’s also about what hands are the most notable and memorable. If there was a Casino Royale-type four-way cooler that occurred, that would be the most memorable hand of a given year, but it would have zero punty elements in it and I would not include it.
This year, we had a spectacular hand that was one of the biggest pots in Main Event history. In my writeup, I defended Lauri’s play and I believe it. I think there is a rationale to the hand and it’s not as bad as it looks at first glance. However, when you’re heads up for $4,000,000 and a World Title, and you call off 90% of your stack with third pair on a board where you lose if he has one spade in his hand, and you run into the nuts… It’s a punt. And it’s the POTWSOPME.
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 for POTD #315
A PIO sim including a second sim with a resolved river for POTD #316
An IOU for POTD #317
An IOU for POTD #318
Preflop HRC sims and postflop ICM sims for POTD #319
A variety of different HU sims for POTD #320
Two different HRC Sims for POTD #321
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 #320 where I write even more thoughts about The Hero Call heard around the World.
POTD #320 onemorething
One reason I am not crazy over leading the river as Lauri is because Lucas is supposed to fold hands with Kx in it because a lot of Lauri’s bluffs have a K in them. Which means a river bluff needs to get Lucas to fold KK or AK sometimes, but I’m skeptical that Lucas would fold those hands on the river (they’re also probably heavily discounted given his preflop limp). I am not sure if Lauri would have led the river in game with his range, he didn’t find one here, but that doesn’t mean he’ll never lead.
If you force Lauri to check the river, Lucas shoves much more often and his value shoving range is almost entirely the Qs, but there is some shoving with the Ts and much more shoving with hands like Qs5s. This means if Lauri checks dark on the river, his river calling range should be much more linear. You can’t fold the Ts if your opponent might shove Ts6c for value, and you’d rather call the river with Jd5s than Jd3d if your opponent might have Qs5s. If you force Lauri to check the river, calling a hand like J3, loses around 2bbs on the river and calling a hand like KxTs makes around 2bbs on the river. If you allow Lauri to lead the river, Lucas’s range is even more polar to nuts/air and any bluff catcher that Lauri might have is still doing alright.
Versus most people, I’d much rather call linearly, you need to be very confident that Lucas never jams a two card nut flush or a second nut flush or is wildly over bluffing to want to call Jd3d and even then Jd5s or KcTs should still be much higher EV calls. There are opponents who bluff so much that calling anything is +EV, but it’s still nice to have the right cards such that you have a buffer zone where your call still might be +EV, even if you’re wrong about your opponents range.
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Respectfully, this post is long enough already. See you next week. As always, I can be reached on: