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.
Something I’ve alluded to in many posts, but haven’t directly written about, is randomizing. It’s something all poker players do intuitively, and many top players, myself included, do systematically.
The idea is that in no-limit hold’em, you will often have a hand that wants to play a mixed strategy. To make sure your game isn’t too predictable or exploitable, you have a mechanism that gives you a random number that dictates your play.
For many players, a low number indicates a passive play and a high number indicates an aggressive play. Some players randomize using a system that includes every number from 0-100, but my system uses intervals of 5 from 0-100.
I won’t tell you what my exact system is because I am always paranoid of someone discovering it. I don’t want someone seeing I rolled a 100 and then calling me light. But it’s not all that complicated, and I have a variety of different systems that can change depending on the tournament or my mood.
Some reading this might ask, ‘why would I need to randomize when I’m playing Billy from Poughkeepsie?’ (To steal a line from Will Jaffe.)
There are actually many spots versus weaker players where you do not need to systematically randomize. If a guy who has three-bet once all day looks really excited and three-bets you, you do not need to randomize four-bet bluffs with A-5 suited.
However, you also want to keep your overall game plan reasonable. If a weaker player raises the lojack, are you going to three-bet every suited ace 100% of the time from the hijack? If so, you need to recognize that the lojack and every player behind you might pick up on what is happening and play back at you.
Once you decide something like, “well sometimes I’ll three-bet A-10 suited and sometimes I’ll call it,” using a randomizer as a tiebreaker for that individual decision has some merit. If you are playing versus expert players who are actively trying to exploit your tendencies, then randomizing becomes even more important. One’s natural poker gravity will usually lead them towards certain plays. When playing against top pros, you need to self-correct to prevent picking the same sorts of plays too often or too rarely.
For example, if you pull the trigger on every 5% bluff combo on the river, each bluff technically is breaking even according to the solver, but your overall strategy is so out of whack that any observant player will start calling every bluff-catcher and your bluffs will start losing a ton of EV.
I would not recommend every reader of this blog randomize in every hand, just as I would not recommend every reader of this column consider hero call the river against every single opponent they ever play with. But randomizing is a powerful tool that can help you in tricky situations versus top competition, and learning to implement it in your game will have benefits.
Event: 2024 WSOP Paradise Triton Million $500,000 No-Limit Hold’em
The Hand
It is level 1 of the tournament with blinds of 2,000-3,000 with a 3,000 big blind ante. I have 974,000, just below the starting stack.
Mario Mosböck, who started the hand with 1,004,000, raises to 8,000 from the lojack. I defend from the big blind with K♠8♠.
Flop: 9♠7♠6♣ (pot: 21,000)
I check, and Mario bets 14,000. I call.
Turn: K♥ (pot: 49,000)
I check. Mario bets 55,000, and I call.
River: 3♥ (pot: 159,000)
I check, and Mario bets 225,000. I decide to fold. The hand was played off stream, so I don’t know what he had.
What Was I Thinking?
In my notes for this hand I also recorded my rolls. I rolled a 40 on the flop, a 5 on the turn, and a 20 on the river.
I did not write down my preflop roll, because I thought I had a pure call, but it turns out there are some low-frequency three-bets.
This tournament was an invitational that began with split field of pro and VIPs. The pros played the pros, and the VIPs played the VIPs. At the end of day 1 the fields combined, so my overall gameplan involved playing less aggressively to make it more likely I made it to day 2. That being said, a pure call preflop seems fine.
I know that on the flop I thought I mixed raises, but I rolled a 40 and thought a 40 was right on the cusp of being a raise. I decided that since I was playing more passively in the invitational format that I should call. I also did not think Mario was supposed to play big bet on the flop very often with range, and I thought he was marginally more likely to be greedy with a top of range hand than setting up a huge bluff.
On the turn, I thought I had a hand that would occasionally raise and could get better one pair hands to fold, but I couldn’t raise it on such a low roll. I was also concerned that Mario’s turn bet was not solver-approved and considered he might be being greedy. (It’s a normal bias for people to find outlier sizes more often with the nuts than with bluffs.)
I felt I had an adequate bluff catcher on the river, but my low roll, combined with the situation discouraging aggressive play and my reads on the flop and the turn, pushed me into a fold.
What Did I Get Wrong?
I was wrong about Mario’s flop bet size. He doesn’t always continuation bet this flop, but when he does, two-thirds pot is an appropriate size with range.
Given I rolled a 40, I should have raised the flop. The only 8-X with a flush draw that would not raise on that roll are special combos like A-8 with the nut flush draw, a flopped straight with 10-8, and 8-6, which is an open-ender with bottom pair. However, calling the flop was fine if I want to decrease my aggression a little because it’s an invitational, or because I think Mario is a little overweighted to value.
I was right about Mario’s turn bet size, however. b120 is never used with range, and his most common size should be around two-thirds pot again. When he bets two-thirds pot again, K♠8♠ is a pure raise, which gets K-Q and K-J to fold, while also generating some A-K folds and occasionally getting called by hands I dominate like 8-8.
If I only give Mario one turn size, b112, he still bets the turn frequently, almost half the time with range. I can raise 80% pot and now I get A-K and A-A to mostly fold, or I can pick a giant raise size like 150% pot and get sets and two pair to start mixing folds. In practice, I don’t think I am ever getting kings up to fold, but I think if the smaller raise size would get stronger one-pair hands to fold while also getting called by draws I have dominated, and I think that is what I should have done.
A problem with randomizing is you often lose the forest for the trees. It’s possible if someone asked me what the best play on the turn is, I could have said raising as a merge, but once I rolled a low number I needed to be very confident to override my low roll.
On the river, I didn’t consider leading with my hand or range, but it’s frequently used, as I have a lot of strong top pair and some draws that are total air with no showdown. I can bet a hand like mine on the river and hope to get called by something like 10-9 while slowing down Mario’s bluffs.
Given that I felt his sizing on the flop and turn had polarized him quite a bit, I don’t think leading would make sense with my reads, because he probably has fewer combos of hands like 10-9 or 10-10 than he’s supposed to.
Once I check, the smallest river size he uses is 140%, and he can bet as large as 565% all-in. All the K-8 hands are breaking even or losing a very small amount to call on the river. Having the K♠ is slightly bad because it does not block two pair, and that lowers the EV of calling by 1.5 big blinds, which sounds like a lot, but is not that much when your opponent is betting 75 big blinds into a 53 big blind pot.
Given my general reads about his flop and turn betting strategy and that my hand is a pure fold on the river in the sim I ran, I am happy with my fold.
Types Of Errors I Made
- Failure To Merge
Grade
In today’s punt I considered merging, but ultimately chickened out. Was this a reasonable pivot because Mario’s range was too strong?
Given how he played the rest of the day, I don’t think so. I still think this was a reasonable deviation in an invitational, even if it was a single re-entry tournament. And while Mario ran some big low-frequency bluffs throughout the day, this turn check-raise really only works if he’s consistently playing top pair like this.
If he’s overplaying two pair and sets on the turn, just calling is probably the right deviation. I don’t think I made a clear mistake in this hand, but I feel I let randomizing cloud my thought process throughout, so I will give myself a B-.
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.
- Photo by Triton