One of the sickest hands played at Nosebleeds in April/2024 will teach you how you can potentially get owned by better players than you – and how to avoid it
The hand we’re about to analyze was played between Barak Wisbrod and Ignacio Moron, two of the best players in the world when it comes to online cash games.
It was played at $200/$400 on GG Poker, on April 12th of 2024.
Action starts off with Ignacio opening the BTN with AKo for 2.5bb. Barak from the SB 3bets to 10bbs holding KQo, and Ignacio calls the 3bet.
The only thing worth noting about preflop is that they’re playing $116,000 effective, which is 290 big blinds – that’s pretty deep. At this stack depth, AKo should be played as mostly a call facing 3bet, instead of a 4bet like we do a lot at 100bbs:
The flop comes down AJTtt and Barak cbets for a 10% size with the nuts.
This betsizing is very good on a triple broadway texture. Barak’s range is very strong on this board, pushing almost 60% equity against Ignacio’s 40%. This is due to the fact that Ignacio has a lot of low pocket pairs and suited connectors that completely missed this board, while Barak’s range is very broadway heavy:
The reason why the 10% bet is so effective is that it puts pressure precisely to that huge region of low pocket pairs, generating indifference on them while allowing the OOP player to bet his entire range (which is what I think Barak is doing here):
This is exactly how I recommend you think about your bet sizings in game: “what region of my opponent’s range do I want to put in a tough spot?”. It’s the answer to this question that determines what is the most appropriate bet sizing for a given texture. If you think of a bet sizing that doesn’t really make the life of any hands very difficult, then it’s very likely you can come up with a better option.
This technique is called Targetting, and it’s a very accurate way of perceiving how solver constructs it’s ranges. Maximizing your EV is the same thing as minimizing your opponent’s EV. By making a portion of your opponent’s range indifferent, you are effectively minimizing the EV of that region, and if that region is a significant region of your opponent’s range, then its likely that making that specific region indifferent is the strategy that produces the highest EV for you. It’s always possible to target a different region, but only one region will produce the highest EV for you when made indifferent. Your job is to figure out which one, and then pick the sizing that does the job.
Against this tiny betsizing, the IP player is forced to develop a 21% raising range, constructed around Ax+ for value and then a bunch of bluffs such as straight draws like Q9s and 98s, some pair + blocker hands like QQ, KJs and QJs and also a lot of low pocket pairs from 22-66.
This is another great theoretical heuristic you can take with you. If you want to raise people’s cbets in 3bet pots IP as caller on A high boards, go ahead and use these very low pocket pairs. They are great candidates because they completely unblock your opponent’s bet/folding range (which doesn’t contain low cards) and they have some nice implied odds when hitting their outs since this will happen on very blank runouts where they can stack the OOPs top pair+ combos. Take a look at an example for a different board – AJ7r:
In the hand, Ignacio doesn’t have a pocket pair, but he likes the idea of raising.
Ignacio raises his AK combo using a 40% raise size. This is in fact the solver’s preferred raise size when given smaller and bigger options. His suits in particular show up as a pure call in GTO Wizard facing a bet, just like all the other AcKx combos, and also AxKd combos. For raising to be a thing, you can’t hold the Ac and you can’t hold the Kd:
This is very granular, and sometimes it’s not possible to figure out exactly why certain suits are preferred with specific actions. However, consider that even if you don’t understand the reasoning, getting the suit selection heuristics properly can make a difference when you are battling other regs at a high level. My intuition for this particular scenario is that the Ac blocks more potential calling hands against raise than other suits (as some non AX of clubs hands already fold flop, but never AX of clubs), and this makes the EV of raising this suit the worst amongst the AxKx combinations. The Kd on the other hand just makes the EV of calling very high due to the backdoor flushdraw, and reopening the betting by raising can be detrimental to the equity realization of this hand when a reraise from OOP comes in.
Keep in mind all of the above is nothing more than my personal and human qualitative rationalizations for a purely mathematical solver output. Our brains need reasons so we come up with these things. I’m sure other people could come up with other reasons though, so take them with a grain of salt.
Faced with the raise, Ignacio makes the call. This is not a spot where OOP should fastplay much, with only 7% 3bet against IP raise. OOP has a huge amount of bluffcatchers in the form of pair + some equity, so capping the calling range by always fast playing the top of the range can be problematic. Always think of this when deciding whether or not you should slowplay your nutted hands – the more bluffcatchers you have in your range, the more you should do it, simply because a big presence of bluffcatchers in your range can lead to expanded aggression from your opponent’s range if you become capped, which adds EV to the slowplay line.
The turn comes the 9c and the action goes check-check. The only thing worth noting here is how aggressive the barreling strategy for the IP player can be. Hands like QQ and 88 are pure betting, mostly with a 1.5x overbet sizing. Many other marginal hands keep firing, such as 22 and T8s:
Another minor thing is the fact that IP is supposed to slowplay a little bit with TT and JJ on this double flushdraw board. Perhaps something not many people would do in game.
The river comes the 9h. Barak checks with his straight, and Ignacio value bets his TPTK for 75% sizing.
This is where Barak shows why he is one of the best players in the world. He decides to slowplay with the straight, in a spot where most people would likely just fastplay it all the time. He knows he gets to that spot with many bluffcatchers, and he understands that when he has many bluffcatchers that should check, he should also slowplay some of his strongest hands to be properly balanced. In this particular runout, trips or better should slowplay the river and check about 39% of the time:
Faced with a check, Ignacio decides to reopen the betting with his TPTK. Against a properly balanced opponent, he really shouldn’t do that often at all. In fact, AKo only reopens 8% of the time. The first hand that reopens all the time for value is ATs. It’s very possible however that Ignacio was looking to exploit a range that he perceived as overly capped. That’s in general a good assumption to make – like I discussed in the previous post of this newsletter, when people check to you when they could have bet, their checking range is usually a bit more capped than it should be, which can incentivize the IP player to reopen thinner for value.
Against the 3/4 bet size, Barak decides to go all in for a gigantic 267 bbs shove, which translates to a 2x pot overshove size. This is a good example of how nosebleed players are willing to go for max value when they have a strong hand. They put everything in, no matter how big the bet is, when they think they are far ahead. I believe this to be one of the major differences between players at this level and lower stakes players. Nosebleed players can be quite greedy when they hold the nuts.
In theory, however, this play is a punt. While calling nets almost 46bbs, shoving against a balanced player makes only 41.5:
The reason for this is that IP still has fullhouses in the range; and also the bet sizing is huge.
A9s is supposed to get there relatively often, alongside some JJ, TT and T9s combos. Then, since IP is not supposed to reopen thin for value, those fullhouses make up 25% of the betting range. Considering that his shove was a 2x pot raise, IP only needs to call this raise 27% of the time. This means that the IP player can pick up bluffs in this line almost by just calling off full houses. If he only needs to calldown with fullhouses, there is not much additional value to be had with KQo relative to calling.
All of that, however, goes out of the window if your opponent is going to:
- Reopen thinner than he should;
- Massively overcall against check-raise.
And that’s exactly what Ignacio did here (apparently). He reopened with a hand that is almost a pure check behind in theory, and then he proceeded to call off the 2x pot shove with a hand that is a pure fold against this action. This dramatically increases the equity KQ can retain against the calling range.
When we nodelock BTN to behave like that – reopening all the AKo combos on the river, and then always calling those combos against shove, the EV of check-raise all for KQo skyrockets to an incredible 115.75 bbs/hand:
We obviously cannot know if Barak was thinking about all of this during the hand. And we also can’t know whether Ignacio is reopening all AK combos and calling them off vs shove, or if he just randomized these plays in that instance. That being said, the evidence is so far from equilibrium that it’s very likely one or both of these players were trying to exploit each other. Unfortunately for Ignacio, Barak showed why he is the better player, and if all the deviations from theory were intentional (which I believe to be the case), he simply completely owned one of the best players in the world by being able to anticipate how he would play his range.
CONCLUSION
In my opinion this hand is beautiful because it highlights the importance of understanding equilibrium, while at the same time demonstrating the potential for exploitative strategies even at the highest levels against the most competent opponents.
Ignacio (likely) made a very substantial deviation from solver, and he got severely punished from doing so. This highlights something I keep telling my students about: if you don’t think you can stay one step ahead of someone, your best bet is to just try and approximate theory. There is no shame in playing defensively against someone better than you.
Exploitative poker is essentially a competition where the winner is whoever can stay one step ahead. Whoever can adapt faster and more accurately. In this hand, Ignacio tought that he could exploit Barak by reopening thinner than solver for value, and then overcalling vs all in shoves against a potentially overbluffed range. Unfortunately for him, he was shown a hand that should never play that way in theory (KQ), but that should always play that way when he plays his range the way he did. He thought he was the one doing the exploit, but instead he potentially got owned by the actual player who was one step ahead, for several dozens of big blinds.
Hands like this demonstrate how poker is an endless game, and how no matter how good you are or how high you play, there can always be someone better and smarter than you. At every hand there is an opportunity to learn, and when you think you are already good enough, another reg can make you feel stupid and throw you back into the lab. These better players fuel our motivation to do better, so that we can catch them up eventually and give them a taste of their own medicine.
Next time you’re facing another regular, ask yourself: can I really outplay this guy? If you think you can, go for it with maximum strength. If the answer is anything other than a clear yes, then by deviating too much from theory you run the risk of getting severely exploited. A few instances of getting owned by the top 2% of regs can have a significant impact on your profitability. Don’t let them take your money – reduce your risk by playing lines you are comfortable executing, and think many times before making substantial deviations from a reasonably balanced strategy. You may deeply regret it.
| If you enjoyed this breakdown, check out this video from my channel where I reviewed the Top 3 Sickest Nosebleed hands from February 2024.
Thanks for reading. See you next week.
Until then – keep it simple.
Saulo