POTD #73 PLO in the PPC

This week's free post features a hand between Bryn Kenney and Ben Lamb at the Final Table

The $50,000 Poker Players Championship is as prestigious a tournament as there is. It’s one of the few mixed-game super high rollers and has by far the slowest structure of any SHR. In order to do well in the tournament, you need to be proficient at nine different variants of poker, of which I am proficient at three (NLHE, LHE and PLO) and could probably fake my way through another (No Limit 2-7). I was going to do some commentary of the final table, but I lost my voice, which prevented me from embarrassing myself for roughly 2/3rds of the broadcast. Jared Bleznick was quite critical of the play he witnessed from the booth, and I am sure if he did a commentary track on my hypothetical colour commentary he would be equally critical, because again, I wouldn’t know what is going on more than half the time.

Even in the games I barely know the rules of, I like watching the stream and reading the updates of this tournament, knowing it’s a tournament I will never play. I was not actively looking to find material for POTD and I certainly wasn’t going to be searching for big-bet punts from great mixed games players. I did not want to write 1000 words about John Hennigan fucking up a NLHE hand, when if we played mixed Stud/NLHE HU4ROLLZ he would leave me penniless. However, I witnessed a couple of hands misplayed by primarily big-bet players that I felt I could criticize. For today’s hand, we will look at a PLO hand from the final table between big-bet specialist Bryn Kenney and someone who would probably say PLO is his best game, Ben Lamb.

In an attempt to be more productive, I have tried to take the time I privately complain about other people’s bad play and write about it for you fine folks. If I am going to spend half an hour snarkily DMing friends, I might as well write my complaints out coherently and get paid (subscribe now!) for my thoughts. In today’s hand, I knew I had a winner when I messaged a friend-- something that I often do when I see a big punt-- “is there a chance that the card readers are off or he misread his hand?” In my history playing on and observing live streams, RFID errors are rare. Occam’s Razor usually prevails; someone playing a poker hand poorly is more likely than a barcode being misread. If I am wrong, and the cards are wrong, or if Bryn misread his hand. I apologize to all involved, but I’m willing to gamble that this was just a punt.

It folds to Bryn Kenney (5.2M) in the SB who raise to 240k in the SB with K♥️K♣️Q♣️2♦️, Ben Lamb (1.13M) defends A♦️K♦️8♦️7♠️ in the BB.

Flop (560k) A♠️K♠️8♠️: Bryn bets 110k, Ben calls

Turn (780k) J♣️: Bryn checks, Ben shoves for 780k, Bryn folds

What Bryn Was Thinking

He covers Ben, who is by far the shortest stack at the FT and starts the hand with 15bbs; potting mediocre KK seems appropriate. Monotone boards are scary, but AKx boards are still quite good for the preflop raiser, and c-betting middle set for a small size for value/protection and knowing you have enough equity to stack off if you’re raised seems reasonable. QT fills on the turn, and Ben has pot to play; Bryn’s concerned about sets and flushes, so he checks, and when Ben shoves for exactly pot, he was so concerned that Ben has a straight or flush that he decided he could only call if he was getting a good enough price to boat up. He isn’t, so he folds.

What Sam Thinks (No Cheating)

Preflop and flop seem fine to me. The turn fold seems insane to me, and Bryn’s almost instant fold is what made me think there was a card reader error. If Ben has a flush, he will have no trouble getting all-in; why would he pick such a large size? He should block the turn and shove the river. Yes, it’s bad if the river pairs the board and he loses to a full house, but that is the risk you sometimes need to take when playing poker. Ben is an experienced high-stakes player; I don’t think he would be so scared of busting the tournament that he’d close his eyes and shove with a flush here.

I’d have guessed Ben’s most likely hands to shove the turn would be hands that are likely the best after this action but need a lot of protection. That to me looks like a set of eights and bare QT. This is especially true because Bryn’s RFI range is pretty linear, so he should have lots of hands with ace- and king-high suits, which cannot be flushes on this board. Since Ben has more flushes than Bryn, it makes sense for Bryn to check the turn. However, if Ben’s shoving range consists of more vulnerable hands that want to end the hand, KKQ with no board-pair blockers is much too strong to fold. Maybe if you had KK87, where you don’t have a gutshot, have a fullhouse blocker, and block bottom set, you could maybe think of folding. But Bryn has all his boat outs live, and his gutshot could be good for half the pot if he is behind right now as well as giving him a little more equity when he’s ahead of a hand like 88JT. Folding here does not make sense and not even thinking about it makes less sense.

What Sam Thinks (The Other Side)

Unlike the previous PLO POTD, this is a hand that I could solve, but I haven’t had the time to do so yet. So instead of posting what the solver says, I’ll give my thoughts on the other side of this hand. I think Ben’s turn shove is pretty crazy. I get the logic of it: You have 6 outs vs. a flush or straight, you have pot to play, and you want to end the hand. But to me, this violates a fundamental theory of poker: You never get called by worse. …Maybe you get called by some sort of like AQJ8 hand, but that seems like a stretch, and I really don’t think you should ever get better to fold. Maybe bare AK folds, but getting bare QT to fold seems unlikely, and getting a set to fold seems insane. However, he actually got Bryn to fold not just a set, but a set with a gutshot. So if Ben was going for a semi bluff/protection play, kudos to him. It worked.

Grade

I have vacillated between whether I should assign a letter grade to the plays of others in this blog; at times it can feel a little cruel. However, given my initial read on this hand was there was an RFID error, I think you can suspect that I would not give Bryn a good grade. But I’m going to channel this anger into a bit of romance for a second. The PPC is one of the most important tournaments of the year. Bryn has battled for four days and made it to the final table, the trophy and another accolade to his resumé are within his grasp… and he doesn’t even think for five seconds about what to do with a set here? Someone like Mikita would think for longer with 3333, just in case Ben might be bluffing with 2222. On such a big stage, BK snap folded as if he were folding 72o UTG in a $1k (if Bryn played live 1ks). If he were right, the snap fold would look cool and I’d be forced to applaud his sick read. However, to me this is his Nick Young moment. He had such an easy decision and quickly and confidently made the wrong decision and was wrong. What a disaster all around. I won’t give Bryn an F, but I’ll give him something even worse than an F, a withering barb: He played this hand the way I’d play a razz hand.