POTD #22 Thin Valuebet vs Jans Arends in the SCOOP Main Event

Aka Graftekkel

I was looking through my big file of online punts and saw a hand from a three-bet pot in a GGPoker 1k where I made a very thin value bet and my opponent folded. I’ve played and forgotten so many hands in online 1ks, but I had blundered this hand so badly that years later I still remembered it. While thinking about this hand, I remembered another similar punt in the SCOOP Main Event. I debated between which of these similar hands I should write about, and while deliberating, I looked at the Google Doc where I track all the hands I have written and plan to write about and saw a lot of Ds, so I decided to be nice to myself and pick the hand I could give a better grade to. Next Tuesday I will post the other hand and you can judge which one is worse for yourself.

NB: Substack seems to really hate formatting my PokerStars screenname. My apologies, if it’s poorly formatted below. Going forward I think I might need to replace it with Sam Greenwood or maybe just go with Str8CashHomey, which exceeded the PokerStars character limit.

HH: Pokerstars Replayer

SCOOP 2022 Main Event
Level 7: 1.5k/3k/375 (SB/BB/ANTE) 250k Starting Stack.
I have 80.5k, Graftekkel (Jans Arends) had 314k

PokerStars Hand #236442847336: Tournament #3398914660, $10000+$300 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level VII (1500/3000) - 2022/05/29 16:02:55 ET

Dealt to Str8$$$Homey [As Jc]
Graftekkel: raises 3600 to 6600
LuckPROF: folds
hello_totti: folds
AceSpades11: folds
Str8$$$Homey: raises 9000 to 15600
1_conor_b_1: folds
PabloPool12: folds
flerrehuve: folds
Graftekkel: calls 9000
*** FLOP *** [9♦️2♥️Q♠️]
Graftekkel: checks
Str8$$$Homey: bets 7500
Graftekkel: calls 7500

∗∗∗TURN∗∗∗[9♦️2♥️Q♠️][J♠️]
Graftekkel: checks
Str8$Homey: bets 19500
Graftekkel: calls 19500

*** RIVER *** [9♦️2♥️Q♠️] [J♠️] [7♦️]
Graftekkel: checks
Str8$Homey: bets 37611 and is all−in
Graftekkel: calls 37611

∗∗∗SHOWDOWN
∗∗∗Str8$Homey: shows [A♠️ J♣️] (a pair of Jacks)
Graftekkel: shows [9♠️ 9♥️] (three of a kind, Nines)