POTD #36 Monte Carlo Monday vs Paul Phua

Making a big fold vs the big boss

Poker is a game of incomplete information. You never know your opponent’s cards, but you have a lot of other information: The pot size, the board, the previous actions, and the payouts are all known. The main skill of hand reading is using the complete information you have to deduce the incomplete information-- namely, your opponent’s hand. You don’t know what their cards are, but through experience, you can make educated guesses and, in rare cases, correctly identify their exact hand.

Hand reading is a valuable skill that becomes even more valuable when you can marry it to a technical understanding of poker. It’s not an either/or proposition; the answer to the question of whether hand-reading or fundamentals are more important is, as usual, both. Today’s hand, another hand where I played a draw poorly in Triton Monte Carlo 2024, is a hand where I had a read and I went with it. The problem is that, even if my read was spot-on, I could not generate a reasonable calculation that made my fold good. A read is only useful if you apply it well, and in today’s hand, I did not.

HH: Triton Poker App

Triton Monte Carlo 2024 Event #2 30k NLHE
Level 5 2k/4k/4k (SB/BB/BBA). 200k Starting Stack

It folds to Samuel Mullur in the LJ who raises to 8k off 120k, I call Q♠️J♠️ on the button covering both, Paul Phua calls in the SB with 112k total, Lun Loon folds in the BB.

Flop (32k) T♠️6♠️5♥️: Paul checks, Samuel Mullur bets 16k, I call, Paul shoves 104k total, Samuel folds, I fold.