Is This The Best Play Of 2024? ($53,890 All-In Analysis)
The hand featured in today’s article took the poker world by storm, and you’re about to find out why!
It took place on a $50/$100/$200 ($100 ante) stream at Lodge Card Club between Yoochan and Chris with an effective stack of $57,000 (300 straddles deep).
Without any further ado, let’s dive into the recap and analysis!
Preflop Action
Chris limps from the Lojack with 5s 4s. T-1000 calls from the Cutoff with 7s 6h. Yoochan raises to $1,000 with Ah [Ad] on the Button. Chris calls. T-1000 calls.
Preflop Analysis
Chris should be raising with 54-suited instead of limping. Limping is a weak play that should be avoided in almost every situation.
T-1000’s call with 76-offsuit is too loose. He should be folding this weak hand. Perhaps he was trying to play hands against Chris or one of the players in the blinds.
Yoochan makes the standard raise with Pocket Aces. He wants to build the pot as fast as possible versus what are likely two weak hands.
As played, Chris makes the correct call. His hand has enough equity and playability to call.
T-1000 should fold facing the raise. His hand is just too weak.
Flop Action
The flop comes As 8c 2d. The pot is $3,350.
Chris checks. T-1000 checks. Yoochan bets $600. Chris calls. T-1000 folds.
Simple Flop Analysis
A dry flop gives Yoochan top set, Chris a gutshot straight draw, and T-1000 nothing.
Chris and T-1000 correctly start with checks. They should be checking everything here to the preflop aggressor.
Yoochan can either bet small or check behind given his grip on the board with his top set. His hand is so strong and there are so few draws and made hands that can call.
Given the small bet size, Chris can either call or raise with his 54-suited. Both options are reasonable.
T-1000 makes the easy fold with nothing. Not much to say there.
Advanced Flop Analysis
Chris and T-1000 make the easy checks, which they should be doing with their entire ranges. They are playing out-of-position with no range advantage and a high stack-to-pot ratio (SPR).
Yoochan has an interesting decision to make with his top set. On one hand, his hand is extremely strong and wants to build as big of a pot as possible. But on the other hand, he’s blocking almost the entire calling range (with only the Ac remaining for potential top pairs). His hand is also almost completely invulnerable as anything but 54-suited and 43-suited are drawing dead to one out or runner-runner.
I wouldn’t mind him checking back to give his opponents some rope, but his decision to bet small is fine as well. His betting range should include strong top pairs, some straight draws, and some backdoor draws. I like his sizing of around 20% of the pot, especially with top set. This incentivizes Chris and T-1000 to continue with a wider range of hands that are drawing dead (or close to it).
Chris has an easy decision at this point: He should always continue with gutshot straight draw. In theory, he should probably look to mix between check-calling and check-raising. But it’s hard to say without knowing what his limp-calling strategy looks like.
T-1000 has an easy fold having completely whiffed the flop. Nothing else to say there.
Turn Action
The turn comes the 7h, making the board As 8c 2d 7h. The pot is $4,550.
Chris checks. Yoochan bets $1,500. Chris calls.
Simple Turn Analysis
Chris makes the correct check. While the 7h improves his hand to a double gutshot straight draw, that’s not a good reason to lead into a player who has shown so much strength.
Yoochan still has the nuts and needs to bet to get as much money as possible in the pot. I would have preferred to see him use an overbet sizing to build a bigger pot for the river.
Chris is getting great odds with his double gutter and should call. He has great implied odds to win a huge pot when he hits a straight.
Advanced Turn Analysis
The turn 7h is a neutral card, meaning that none of the players’ ranges improve disproportionately to one another.
Chris should thus check with his entire range. He is severely disadvantaged in terms of nutted hands.
Yoochan has a massive nut advantage and should implement an overbetting strategy. This strategy is optimal because his value hands want to win Chris’ entire stack. Plus, it allows him to add more bluffs to his barreling range without becoming exploitable.
For these reasons, I believe that Yoochan made a mistake here. It is an understandable mistake because betting small like this has its merits. It ensures that Chris continues with his medium-strength hands that are drawing dead. But there are still plenty of Ax type hands that Yoochan should be looking to extract the maximum from.
I want to end this part of the analysis by saying that due to his extreme blockers (blocking 75% of all Ax hands), betting small like this is less of a mistake than if he did that with Pocket Eights.
Chris’ call is good. He is getting great pot odds, needing about 20% equity to call profitably (and he has about a 16% chance to hit his straight). When factoring in the implied odds, his hand is definitely strong enough to call.
The last thing I want to add with regards to Yoochan’s turn bet size is that by betting this small size, he is inviting hands such as 54-suited and 43-suited to call. This would never happen if he would overbet, and it has great implications for the optimal river strategy.
River Action
The river comes the 3h, making the final board As 8c 2d 7h 3h. The pot is $7,550.
Chris checks. Yoochan bets $4,800. Chris check-raises all-in for a total of $53,890.
Simple River Analysis
The river gives Chris the stone-cold nuts and Yoochan has the second nuts with top set. Wow!
Chris makes a good decision to check. He should be planning to put in a healthy raise if his opponent bets.
Yoochan should overbet here to extract maximum value from Chris’ top pairs and better. His sizing here is once again too small.
Chris should check-raise to a smaller size than he chose, something like $30,000-$35,000. By going all-in for 5x pot, he is saying that he only has the straight or a bluff. By using a smaller size, he could include other hands like sets and two pairs that would allow him to get called (and sometimes maybe raised) more.
This would be an absolutely incredible fold from Yoochan. The story told by Chris’ line may just allow him to make a world-class fold.
Advanced River Analysis
The river 3h is close to a brick (in theory, not in terms of this hand). The only draw that improves to beat Yoochan is 54-suited. In theory, Chris should never have this hand in his range based on the preflop limp. But we are so far removed from the theory that it becomes a real possibility at this point.
Still, Yoochan should have enough of a nut advantage to overbet here. Especially after the small size he used on the turn. Chris’ range is made by almost exclusively one-pair type hands, while Yoochan can still have all of the very strong hands.
Regardless, the way to win the most amount of money on average with top set is to overbet for a very large size. This ensures maximum value extraction for his strong hands and maximum fold equity for his bluffs. Using this 60-66% pot size bet is leaving a lot of money on the table — although it might just work out for him here.
Chris’ shove is close to correct from a theoretical standpoint. He has the nuts and is looking to get maximum value. The only problem is that his nutted hand is not unique to his range; Yoochan can have it too. This means that he should not leverage a 5.5x pot overbet jam. A raise of something like $34,000 is much better here. This is true from both a theoretical and practical perspective.
Let’s look at this from a practical perspective. When he shoves, he is saying that he has the straight and nothing else. The decision then sits on Yoochan to estimate if he is over or under-bluffing. Then he can decide whether or not to bluff-catch with his sets and two pairs (which have no removal against Chris’ value range).
If he makes it something like $34,000, he is saying that he could have something like a slow-played set or two pair. This would make Yoochan much more incentivized to call with a hand like Ace-Eight suited because he has blockers against that range. He would very likely always call with Pocket Aces and Pocket Eights as those hands beat some of Chris’ perceived value range.
Results & Video
Yoochan tanks and folds.
If you’d like to watch the full hand back, here it is:
Final Thoughts
What a great hand! We saw a lot of small tweaks that both Yoochan and Chris can make in the future to maximize their profit at the table.
That’s all for this article! I hope you enjoyed it and that you learned something new from it! As usual, if you have any questions or feedback feel free to leave a comment in the section down below.
Till’ next time, good luck, grinders!
