At the CoinPoker Mid-Stakes Cash Game World Championship, one player suffered a brutal cooler that’ll resonate with any online poker player.
It served as another reminder that, sometimes, you can play perfectly and still lose.
Action
Playing six-handed at $2-$5 stakes with a $500 max buy-in, “BetaPersonality” raised to $15 from the hijack and “PTSD” three-bet to $65 with A
J. “BetaPersonality” four-bet to $135 and “PTSD” called.
The flop came KQ
T
. “PTSD” checked and “BetaPersonality” bet $69.37. “PTSD” called.
The turn brought the 4. “BetaPersonality” went all in for $332.27 effective and “PTSD” called. “BetaPersonality” showed K
K.
The two players agreed to run the river twice. The first river was the 4, giving “BetaPersonality” a full house and at least half the pot. However, the second river was the Q
, which remarkably paired the board for a second time and gave “BetaPersonality” another full house, which netted him the entire pot worth $1,080.76.
Analysis
After “BetaPersonality” opened with his pocket kings, “PTSD” has ace-jack suited and opted to three-bet. At about 100 big blinds, a game theory optimal strategy against the hijack would have “PTSD” call 75% of the time and three-bet the other 25%.
With pocket kings, the machine wants “BetaPersonality” to mix jamming and four-betting small, while also calling about 25% of the time. However, the general player pool will almost never flat the three-bet.
“PTSD” had a clear call with his ace-jack suited. A solver wants to mix five-bets and five-bet jams about half of the time. But once again, this will rarely happen in practice since most players at these stakes simply don’t four-bet bluff as much as a mathematically sound strategy would dictate.
On the K-Q-T rainbow flop, “BetaPersonality” had a range bet using mostly a small size. He bet 25% of the pot, which is well within a solver’s output and “PTSD” had a simple call.
The turn was a blank that also gave “PTSD” the, rather unnecessary, nut flush draw to go along with their nut straight. The solver wants “BetaPersonality” to bet about a third of the size of the pot. But it’s hard to fault him for jamming and protecting his equity.
The problem with a jam is that “BetaPersonality” will rarely get called by anything other than the nuts or a hand with a lot of equity against top set. Moreover, he is only beaten by ace-jack or jack-nine and is forcing a fold from plenty of other hands that could call a smaller bet.
Meanwhile, betting 33% pot allows your opponent to call or jam 71% of the time. At this point, 33% pot is still about $140, or 28 big blinds, which is a lot of money over the course of a session.
It ended up working out but should serve as a lesson. Unlucky “PTSD”!
