Even the best players in the world make mistakes. Join Sam Greenwood as he breaks down and analyzes hands played from the high roller circuit on his Punt Of The Day Substack.
As much fun as I have playing high rollers, there is nothing like a deep run in a main event. There’s a reason why at EPTs, the main events get all the TV coverage and the high rollers often play in a small conference room in another part of the hotel.
I do like the peace and quiet of a half-empty, private room with free food and beverage service, but I also like feeling the energy of being in a packed room, full of people excited to play poker.
When we high rollers slum it in big field tourneys, we often need to classify our opponents into two groups: People who don’t want to tangle with great players, and people who want to go home with a story to tell their friends. They want to tell people about “the time I bluffed Sam Greenwood.”
When you’re a ‘known’ player, you need to identify which type of player you’re playing against and adjust accordingly. There is a similar dynamic when Joe and Jane Pokerplayer are playing versus high-stakes pros in main events.
Pros often go full Harlem Globetrotter mode: opening and three-betting too wide from every position, while making crazy bluffs, call downs, and folds. They were playing by the book in the super high roller, but not in the $5,000 after they just lost a $100,000 bullet.
This opens up a window for seasoned poker players. You won’t beat an end boss in the long run when they’re in their NBA mode, but you certainly can when they’re in Globetrotter mode.
In today’s hand, PokerStars ambassador Maria Konnikova, writer of the Substack The Leap, and author of The Biggest Bluff, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, and The Confidence Game, tells me about a hand she played in the EPT Monte Carlo main event against former EPT champion and one of the most underrated and long-tenured regulars in high-stakes tournaments, Dimitar Danchev.
In this hand, Maria flops the nuts and wants to get paid. We don’t know if Dimitar is playing his normal solid game or if he is in a main event mode, but we will try our best to find a strategy that allows us to make the most money.
Event: 2025 EPT Monte Carlo Main Event
The Hand
With blinds of 200-400 with a 400 big blind ante, Dimitar Danchev raised to 900 from under-the-gun. Maria Konnikova called on the button, and the blinds folded.
Flop: Q♣J♦9♦ (pot: 2,800)
Danchev checked, and Konnikova bet 1,600. Danchev called.
Turn: 7♣ (pot: 6,000)
Danchev checked, and Konnikova bet 6,000. Danchev called.
River: K♠ (pot: 18,000)
Danchev checked again. Konnikova checked behind, and her K♦10♦ won at showdown against Danchev’s Q♥8♥.
What Was She Thinking?
Sometimes at POTD are forced to guess what people were thinking, but not this time. Maria has generously shared her thoughts with us below.
“You asked for a punt, so I gave you my puntiest punt from the whole series that I could think of… and it was a pot I won!
Obviously there are a few other smaller mistakes in the hand with bet sizing, but I really fucked up the river here. I think it’s so important to recognize that the biggest punts sometimes occur when you fail to extract max value, or the bets you miss and the chips you don’t collect that you should have.
In this particular hand, there are of course the usual excuses – I was tired and not feeling 100%, blah blah. But I think there were two things that led to this horrible river play.
Firstly, my opponent had gotten in my head a bit in prior pots we played. Just a few hands earlier, he check-raised me in a nasty river spot and I ended up folding what I suspect was the best hand. That’s no excuse to misplay this hand, but it was in my head for sure.
When the king rolls off on the river, my initial reaction is, oh, damn, now A-10 beats me. But only A-10 beats me, and even if Dimitar raises my bet, I have a fairly easy call. I also want to be able to bet my bluffs here, so not betting with K-10 is atrocious. I should have taken a bit more time to think before checking. Just a few more seconds would have led to the correct decision, I think, when I realized that given the sizing on the turn, it was just incredibly unlikely he had A-10.
Secondly, I really wanted to know what he had. He’d been my trickiest opponent by far at the table, and I wanted to see what hand took the line he’d taken. The only way I could guarantee showdown was by checking back – and I thought that I couldn’t really get another street of value after the big turn bet, so I’d just check and get the information.
I realize this goes against being afraid he could possibly have the nuts, but sometimes, we aren’t rational like that! Anyway, it was a massive EV loss, and a massive fuck up. Sometimes I’m a horrible poker player!”
What Was I Thinking?
Before looking it up (cheating), I’ll share my thoughts.
When you’re deeper, you three-bet more linearly, and K-10 suited should get in there a little as you fold out K-J and A-10, but call is the majority play. Generally, boards with two Broadways on them tend to play big bet or check, unless the out-of-position player has offsuit straight combos and the in-position player does not.
Technically, neither of them should have much K-10 offsuit preflop here, so I’d guess we do get to bet big, and while you might trap sets or two pair or even bare K-10, I’d suspect K♦10♦ is too strong and pure bets. I’d pick 2,100 into 2,800, so if he calls, the pot would be an even 7,000 on the turn and I wouldn’t need to waste brain power counting the pot size later in the hand.
On the turn, you need to bet. You have the nuts and a redraw and are pushing a ton of linear equity vs hands like A♣J♣.
Similarly, on the river, you need to bet. Calling a full pot bet on the turn with A-10 is not something Dimitar would do, so you only lose to A♣10♣ specifically.
While I don’t expect to get called by worse than a straight all that often, and I’m sure Dimitar is aware that it is hard to find bluffs on a board like this, but the hand has so much equity that I’d comfortably bet half pot and probably call a raise, because we block A♦10♦ and other A-10 combos he could have.
What We Got Wrong
Now to look at the results. Not to toot my own horn here, but the only thing I got wrong is that we should bet larger than half pot with a king-high straight on the river.
How well this works vs. actual humans is unclear, however. The out-of-position player is supposed to check-call the river with hands like Ac Kc, A-A, and K-Q quite a lot. The in-position player is supposed to bluff 4-4 thru 2-2, and the most common straights are A-10 and K-10, so blocking an ace and a king make A-K an attractive bluff catcher.
Maria knows her river check is a big mistake; she told me so, privately describing her play as “awful” and “a fuck up” before publicly describing it as “atrocious” and a “massive fuck-up.” It loses around five big blinds in theory; however, that is in a world where when Dimitar has worse than a straight, he calls the river 30% of the time. And I don’t think that happens in this hand in reality.
It’s still a very large mistake. Maria is so rarely beat that I think betting anything on the river is practically a freeroll, and not cashing in a freeroll is never sharp gambling.
Grade
This was a fun hand for me to analyze, because I have often been the high-roller regular playing hands versus seasoned but non-expert poker players in main events. By analyzing this from Maria’s perspective, I am, to some degree, determining what you, the reader, should do if you ever played versus me.
My instinct is that Maria would not be bluffing with total air like small pocket pairs enough, and that when a king rolled off on the river, too many of her bluffs would pair or be straights. That means it is likely a great exploit for someone with Maria’s image to blast off with pocket twos here a lot against a top pro.
In this hand, she had a much better hand than pocket twos, and while the river check loses a lot of EV vs. the solver, it loses less against Dimitar who will usually fold one pair.
The impulse to not bluff and to not value bet thinly often come from the same place: playing scared poker. Maria was intimidated by Dimitar and more curious about what he had than trying to win the most money. She was in the wrong headspace and made an indefensible play, but one that ultimately doesn’t lose all that much EV all things considered. I give this play a D+.
Editor’s Note: Konnikova would go on to win the last chance €1,000 event at the EPT Monte Carlo series.
- Photos by PokerStars
Sam Greenwood is one of the winningest tournament poker players ever and is third on Canada’s all-time money list, having cashed for $42 million and counting in high roller events all over the world. The former stock trader-turned-champion has played millions of poker hands and is breaking them down street by street on his Punt Of The Day Substack. You can reach out to the Run It Once coach on Twitter/X for private coaching @SamGreenwoodRIO.