Poker Hand Matchup: Jason Koon Forces Trips To Fold

Outcome

Preflop: With registration still open, a full table of eight players, and blinds of 6,000-12,000 with a big blind ante of 12,000, Ben Heath raised to 25,000 from UTG+1 with Q♦10♦. Jason Koon three-bet to 80,000 from the cutoff holding 5♦4♦. Heath called.

Flop: 10♠10♣5♠

Heath checked, and Koon bet 76,000. Heath called.

Turn: 8♠

Heath checked. Koon bet 160,000, and Heath called.

River: A♣

Heath checked, and Koon bet 1,463,000. Heath folded.

Analysis

The most expensive event on the World Series of Poker schedule brought out all of the stars in the 56-entry field, with Jason Koon and Ben Heath among them. Both players were a little bit above the starting stack with around 150 blinds when this hand went down fairly early in day 1, during level 5. 

At these deep stacks, three-betting suited connectors becomes a much more attractive play, and that’s what Koon did. Heath had a hand that was just good enough to see the flop. 

You might be inclined to check-raise after flopping trips, but calling is the dominant solver play in this situation due to the difficulty of playing bloated pots out of position with deep stacks. At shorter stacks, trips are good enough to stack off on most runouts, but things change a lot with cash-game style depths. 

The turn brought in a possible flush, but Koon’s decision to keep bluffing was still an aggressive one. His hand now had some characteristics that weren’t great, blocking some weak flop continues like 6-5 and A-5. Koon’s best bluffs were hands with a large spade in them. 

Nonetheless, he decided to go for it, and Heath had a clear check-call. He was crushing bluffs, but losing to most of Koon’s value hands, some of which he could still improve to beat. 

The river was pretty good for Koon to continue telling the story that he had a huge hand. He jammed in most of his chips for a bet of more than double the size of the pot, representing good flushes and full houses. 

Heath was in a tough spot with a hand with which the solver mixes calls and folds. The best calling hands besides the obvious full houses were actually ace-high flushes, since they interfere with all of the value hands. With just trips, Heath opted to muck and find a better spot. Unfortunately, he would be eliminated short of the money.

This was actually the second time in recent memory that Koon bluffed Heath in a $250,000 buy-in event, having pushed him off pocket kings at EPT Monte Carlo. Koon rode the early boost in this event to a fifth-place finish worth $972,375, giving him $77.4 million in career earnings. 

The eventual winner was Adrian Mateos, who picked up his sixth career bracelet and $4.3 million. With $69.6 million in earnings, the Spanish pro now sits in fifth place on the all-time money list, just two spots behind Koon.

• Photos by WSOP – Lennart Hennig, Miguel Cortes