The Upper Hand #19

Hello my fellow nerds.

It’s almost 11pm on a Friday night and I’m studying Poker.

The truth is, I’m not sure how much this will interest you guys.

I love writing this email every day but it’s somewhat hard to judge if people actually enjoy it?

It’s not like social media.

There’s no immediate feedback.

It does feel like I’m talking to myself most days but I’m ok with that.

So how do I know you’ll like what I’ve put together today?

I don’t.

Fuck it.

This is how I go about studying final table play.

PokerStars replays the majority of it’s major events in the client and occasionally streams Final Tables cards up.

The hands I’m about to show you are from the New Year Series $5,000 Main Event Final table featuring my boy Sammy Grafton.

It’s insane to me that people who want to get better at Poker, DON’T watch the best players in the world, cards up, at the most important part of tournament play.

IDIOTS!

I watch the Final Table on 2x speed and think deeply (as much as you can in a few seconds) about what decision I would make before each top player does.

Then, if they do something wildly different to what I would do, I try to understand it, run a sim in the background and then check if my logic was in anyway correct.

I’ll also mark hands I just find interesting and want to see an answer to.

So if you want to get better at Poker, play along with me.

I’ll post the hand I’m running, think about what you would do and then I’ll spit out the answers from the bot.

I'm not going to dive too deep because again, I’ve NO IDEA if anyone wants that.

Hand 1 -

The guys in the booth wanted to just shove if I remember correctly.

What would you do?

For me, it’d be a disaster to just shove AA here - I DON’T CARE HOW STRONG IT LOOKS.

We want to bluff here sometimes, shoving all-in is far too expensive as a bluff, therefore we re-reraise, therefore WE DON’T SHOVE ACES!

Also reraising with KK and JJ!

Both players folded vs the reraise, with 88 and 99!! Which will show you just how powerful it is the bluff in this spot!

Hand 2 -

This KJ felt a little bit spicy to me. I don’t hate it but it felt NAUGHTY!

I also wanted to check how often we’d get to flat the this spot, not with KJ but in general.

KJ is a bit spicy but it does make it in there - you can see the bot prefers the larger of the sizes and it’s very possible it would go even bigger if I put a third sizing in there.

Worth noting how often the Kx suited hands K3-K7 are bluffing here - lots of people hit that with the Ax hands but probably not the K high hands!

This is how Succeed responds -

Very very polar and putting lots of value on the Ax blocker - we are basically PURE all-in with A5s-A2s.

Now listen - if you’re playing lowstakes - you will light money on fire attempting to use this strategy, but it shows why you see these guys going to war with this handclass.

If somebody is coming after you too often, and their value range is JJ/AK+ - FUCK ‘EM - put ‘em in the blender!

Hand 3 -

I wasn’t shocked to see AQo flat here - but I wanted to know what the value threshold would be and how would we bluff?

12bb is the preferred size over 6bb - which makes a lot of sense.

BUT WE ARE NOT EVEN PURE GOING FOR IT WITH KINGS!

I thought Kings was a bloody good hand no?

If we allowed an even larger re-raise - it’s possible Kings would become pure.

Fuck ICM - I’ll be putting in chips with my Kings!

Hand 4 and the Final Hand -

A tough spot for Sammy.

What’s the worst hand we shove here?

What’s the worst hand we can re-raise and call it off - look at the 13bb stack about to go through the blinds!

Can we ever call in the small-blind here?

How do we bluff?

These are the questions I ask myself.

Final Tables are very tricky and so sensitive to stack fluctuations at any moment.

QQ/AKs+ for re-raise and call.

A small amount of flat calling going on.

And Sammy found a very nice pure bluff with the AJo.

I might have occasionally shoved this hand it’s not the play we want to be making!

That is a small insight into how I study final tables and attempt to learn from the best players who play the game.

Generally I would dive much deep and really examine the sims because they take so bloody long to run!

I know at least a few nerds enjoyed that.

Bye for now, you BEAUTIFUL Fucks!

<3