Bencb's video is the second analysis he's done on his GG Millions win (the first part can be found here).
All right guys, it's time. We're going through the $10,000 final table, and I started as the chip leader with 2.66 million. First hand, pocket fives from under the gun. It's going to be a very interesting final table. It's extremely aggressive. We have a lot of players that I would profile as rather aggressive. I think all of them are too aggressive in certain preflop spots.
You either fight fire with fire, or you lean back. We're going to be looking into some of my decisions and how I approached this final table.
So, first hand, pocket fives. We want to be flatting really wide on the button. I would even flat 9–7 suited. We force him to be checking a lot of boards. He decides and goes for a bet here, which I don't really like. I think on this board, you have very little fold equity. Even hands like queen–jack of hearts, jack–ten of hearts — it's really just club–club combos that fold. I can even imagine that with the backdoor straight draws, we might actually be calling this hand.
I considered his bet to be rather strong because, again, we have fours, we have sevens. We should even be flatting king–seven suited. Under ICM, when he lacks all these nutted hands, it's not good to be betting here. He's going to have sevens as well, but not fours. Yes, he has kings, and we don't have kings, but we are going to have ace–king as well. Again, we have king–seven suited. We might even have king–four suited here. So whenever you're the chip leader, you're supposed to be flatting really wide.
I was surprised to see that c-bet. It worked this time, but most of the time it’s not going to work. I'm not a big fan of it.
I'll be focusing on my hands, but I can't ignore a major mistake:
This guy is going to be opening really tight, so I like this fold with tens. Something I don't like — Duco leads here. I think it's a very bad lead. You're not going to have 10–6 offsuit, 6–4 offsuit. It's a better lead if the board is like 10–6–5 or 10–6, where you're going to have the 6–5 combos, 6–5 offsuit as well. That would be a lot better. But yeah, you're not going to defend 6–4 offsuit here.
He covers the cutoff, so you definitely want to be defending a hand like 6–5 offsuit. But other than that, you're probably disconnected from this board.
But what I really don't like — and I think it's even worse — is this raise. It's way too big. If you want to do it, then raise to 1.25x. It makes no sense to me, especially with a heart, against a player like Duco. Sometimes I'm wondering if those players are not preparing and looking into some GGMillion$ replays. This is, in my opinion, a big mistake. I think that if you're flatting and he lets something like jack–eight of clubs or king–five offsuit with the king of hearts hit a king or something like that — and you block all those continues from a ten — I also don't think Duco is going to lead a lot of flush draws, because you don't want to get it in with a naked flush draw. So, not a big fan.
If I want to 3-bet something here, it's probably like ace–three, ace–two suited. He's going to raise–fold pocket eights. He's going to raise–fold ace–eight suited. So these are the main combos.
I really don't want to have a nine, eight, or seven in my hand. Therefore, to me, it's just an easy fold. Even though I'm the chip leader, we still want to be considerate about our blockers. I think especially when you play these earlier positions, blockers are a lot more important because ranges are tighter.
Now Duco with an interesting 3-bet — I also don't like that 3-bet. I like this 3-bet when it's from middle position or hijack, so you want to knock out equity behind.
And Mr. Golden Seagull with the 4-bet. I think this is obviously very standard.
For my taste, a little bit too big. I think we want to go more like 510-ish, because there is a world where he clicks it back to like 700-something thousand. I think now this does not give any room for a 5-bet bluff anymore. Now it's basically push or fold, and I think Duco makes a really good decision.
I would not hate him shoving here. It's super easy to overbluff these spots, and there's so much dead money in the middle. Now again, I would just flat pre and take them to the streets on the button.
Three-deuce offsuit, I limp. I want to play pretty much every single hand. I would definitely fold against some opponents, but yeah. Since we whiff the board entirely and our range is really wide, you don't want to be betting everything — especially since this is a pretty good board for the big blind. He can have a lot of strong hands. He's going to be checking back queen–jack, queen–five, jack–five, pocket fives. Again, no reason for us to bet.
The opponent checks next, and the turn comes .
Here's a very easy rule of thumb. A lot of players don't understand how to play those delayed nodes. Typically, if you have complete trash out of position, you just give it up. Obviously, there are exceptions to the rule, but here, this is a very good orientation. Now, we don't have anything, so we just give up. If you have something like 9–8 or king–six of diamonds, you want to start betting and continue bluffing on some turns. That's fine. You can hit a king, you can hit diamonds. You have immediate equity. It's a lot better.
Now here, 3–2 — we just give up. Even on the turn, even though it's a good card for our range, that doesn't mean we're never going to be bluffing the river. We still have a lot of ace highs, we still have some king–tens in our range, king–five, some traps that we want to check–raise with. But ultimately, 3–2 — now we can start betting something like 9–4 of hearts if we decided to give up the flop. Even 9–4 of hearts is not necessarily a good flop bet. It's probably fine to bet sometimes, but we're still going to have a lot of delayed bluffs.
Now what happens when we get such a runout is that you take your complete flop give-ups — something like 8–3 suited, 7–2 suited, 3–2 offsuit — because we have so many ace highs. We have the full range of ace highs.
So I decided to bet. I mean, he honestly just has an easy call. He decided to fold. I don't know why.
So now we have the first really interesting hand, and I did something you probably don't expect me to do. I decided to flat. I'm going to show you if this is even GTO-approved and why I deviated — and why I think it's a really good strategy.
As you can see, I decided to flat, which some of you might question. We can see here — and we import these spots into the solver as well. So we have an under-the-gun +1 raise and a hijack call, right?Button squeezing versus under-the-gun one and hijack.
The reason I flatted here, even though we’re facing very aggressive opponents, is that I felt I have a pretty good understanding of how the players play. I could say I have an edge. And I’m saying this intentionally now — I would always say I have an edge, but not just because I believe it. It's because I have reads on my opponent. I personally felt I had a good understanding of how they play. Obviously, I think I have an edge, but I might still be wrong.
I gathered a lot of reads. I prepare. I go through hours of footage from the recent weeks and months of GGMillion$ and the guys that have been playing it. I try to find certain leaks and counter-adjustments I can make in their game. Then I have a worksheet, and I write down notes. I prepare with ICMizer, and I go into the final table.
Again, I'm in a position where I'm close to Pedro. We can both play very loose ranges with open raising and flatting, which is really good. I cover the big stacks to my right. All of that is really good for my EV. That’s why I just decided to flat.
We see that hands like ace–queen suited are being flatted. Pocket queens too. You see there are some ICM implications for hands that you might think are always squeezes. But no — even queens want to call, jacks want to call. I had an intuition that we’re supposed to be flatting a lot of hands that a lot of players would think are no-brainer 3-bets.
I also encourage you to think outside the box whenever you’re on a final table. Don’t fall in love with your hand. Think about the situation you’re in and how certain outcomes can impact your future game.
Ace–king with the king of spades — I don’t hate betting, but again, we’re going to have lots of give-ups from hands like ace–five of hearts. I want to cooler, though. That’s why I think with our strongest ace–king, we just check it back. It’s so easy to play. We give up on 6–9–10. Pretty easy. I think it just makes life easier.
If we have something like ace–five of clubs that we flatted, or ace–ten of clubs, I would always bet. I want to fold out some hands like ace–jack and ace–queen offsuit. But we dominate all these ace–jacks and ace–queens, and we can cooler some of them in the check–check node.
Now asimir bets his jacks, and I think we just have an easy fold.
Aces against ace–four suited. Dodged the bullet here against Casimir. Definitely. I think I had a similar spot against Adrian Mateos a couple weeks ago on the 10K Million$ final table as well. And from reviewing it, I learned already — yeah, from time to time, we have to 5-bet jam these suited aces.
But then again, I don’t think Casimir is going to be too out of line with betting here, so I decided just to fold it. If you want to understand how to play this spot, just click this YouTube video here. At the very beginning, I was also breaking it down, showing you the preflop ranges — how Casimir should play this spot, in this case it was against Adrian Mateos, and how I should react to it.
I think everything here is very standard.
What do we do with tens here? We just call, right? I mean, we called queens earlier — it’s a very similar situation, even in the same position as earlier. So yeah, pretty no-brainer call. Even jacks — pretty no-brainer call.
I really like my bet here — just getting ace–king to fold, getting overcards to fold. That’s really good, and our hand has a lot of potential to remain very aggressive. I mean, if this guy has ace–jack suited and the turn is a queen or a king, or if the turn is an eight or a queen, we're never really going to have any good bluffs, right?
So I think to prepare a potential bluff here is really good. We're going to be betting jacks, betting nines, betting ace–jack. I don't really want to face a check–raise. Even if I happen to have queen–ten suited — which I probably would fold — but if we have king–queen suited, I would start betting some of these pocket tens combos here. I think both options are fine. I just find it a very attractive option to start betting there with pocket tens.
Both opponents fold.
King–jack offsuit — all right, that was quite an interesting hand. Defense — we cover this guy, so we can apply pressure. I would bet this board almost 100% of the time. You can even go smaller, just 70K.
Then on the turn, we bet again. Sizing-wise, I think it’s a little bit too much. I think we can go 350K, because now if he has a queen, he’s always calling. But if he has something like sevens, eights, or nines, and you go 320K, you save yourself a big blind or two — which is important. I think an error in this line where you lose a big blind or two can be quite detrimental to your win rate.
On the river, we just have to give up, right? We want him to have king-high. Let’s say if we have jack–nine of spades, we want him to have king–ten of spades, king–jack of spades, or king–five of spades. But now, he can’t have those hands. So in this spot, I really want him to have an ace-high or king-high flush draw.
I would be bluffing ace–two of hearts, ace–four of diamonds, jack–nine, jack–eight, maybe ace–jack. But ace–jack we can just check back. It’s also not like I’m value-jamming king–queen anymore, because we split against king–queen. I’m probably value-jamming ace–queen and better — or let’s say betting 700K with those kinds of hands.
I would have two sizings. I’d bet my very strong hands — sets and two pairs. If I have queens, I’d bet the smaller sizing. If I have aces, I’d bet the smaller sizing because we block ace–queen. If I have kings, I’d bet bigger because we unblock ace–queen, and so on and so forth.
Would he have folded king–queen there? I don’t know.
So, king–jack offsuit — I think it's too small. I think if he goes 250K, we do pretty well against his range with 6–5 suited. We're out of position, and it's very close, but I think he should be going 250K and not that small. Because if — let's say — we have a million, the sizing is fine, because now investing those chips costs us more. But when we're on a bigger stack, you don't want to go that small. Again, we're basically chip-leading everyone behind except the small blind. So we're still going to be opening relatively wide.
I think this is a better call than, let's say, jack–ten suited. Because even the bluffs like king–jack offsuit, ace–jack offsuit, ace–ten offsuit — they all have us dominated. But 6–5 suited — unless he has a six or a five suited — we should never be dominated.
Obviously got lucky here on the turn. And yeah, facing another bet — I think jamming is pretty bad. Because even if he's on aces and the river is the ten of hearts, he's always going to be value-jamming with less than half-pot left.
So here, we really want — if he has king–queen offsuit, king–jack offsuit, and he's running a bluff, and the heart gets there — obviously we never fold. There's not a single river where we fold. Because that's exactly what I put him on — he has this offsuit crab that is going to have a good blocker for bluffing. The suited hands mostly call, so there's no point in protection shoving. Absolutely none.
If he has ace–ten of hearts, he's rejamming or flatting. If he has king–queen of hearts, he's rejamming or flatting. So he's only really repping ace–king and ace–queen as flush draws. But then he's also very often just checking back the turn. There are still going to be some hands I'm shoving on the turn, so for him to realize his equity, that's why you want to check back some turn flush draws.
Remember — he tanks and checks back. I mean, it's unfortunate he has those two cards in his range, but I think if he has king of spades and jack of diamonds, he's sending it in. But I'm not going to complain after hitting trips on the turn. Got a bit lucky there.
Sevens. Okay, that was quite interesting. I don't hate 3-betting here, it's fine. Calling is obviously standard.
He goes for the c-bet. I think when you know your opponent, and he's going to have ace–two, ace–three, ace–five, ace–six, ace–seven — he's going to be betting. King–eight might bluff you off the hand.
You just raise to like 180K here. You invest 180 for 341 — it's always printing. You have the backup of the gutshot. You might even see folds from something like ace–four. Calling is also fine, but the problem with calling is that he's going to know you have a lot of jack–five suited, 10–9, 9–8, king–nine — hands that you don't raise. So if he's on ace–two, ace–five, or a random ace–seven, he might just go for the second barrel.
That's why you want to be raising a decent amount of the time. You can raise your king–queen, jack–four, pocket fours, queen–jack, ace–queen — if you didn’t rejam preflop.
It goes check–check, and obviously here with our weakest king–nine, we just want to bet. He decided to bluff-catch, which I think is really good. You can fold pocket eights, nines, tens — because you block all our bluffs.
I think here calling something like ace–four or pocket sixes, pocket sevens, is probably fine. It doesn’t matter if you have pocket tens or pocket sevens — we're basically block-betting a queen and better.
Do you think this is a good 3-bet? I already said that I really like 3-betting KJo and KQo, people underestimate them a lot. According to the solver, 3-betting KJo should be weighted and very rare. However, it seems to me that people will not execute the solver strategy and will push A5s-A2s much less often, and will almost always fold AJo. And our 3-bet with KJo will be much more profitable. Do not underestimate fold equity!
I also chose an exploitative sizing – 2.5x instead of 3x. They react to them essentially the same. Well, there will be a little more calls, but I don't mind. My hand plays fine against calls.
In general, this hand shows that you don't need to follow GTO fanatically. Reason, and if reasoning leads you to other conclusions, trust logic.
Casimir made the call and checked the flop. . Sure, his range is pretty strong, with a lot of overpairs all the way up to queens. Should we c-bet all of our hands? Or check after? Think about it.
The solver actually checks quite a lot for me. With KJo, the choice between c-betting and checking is made by suits. With my hand, there should be more checks.
I decide to bet a third of the pot, though. Luckily, I get lucky – my opponent has a weak hand and folds. Here's another example of the luck it takes to win final tables.
Here’s another mystery hand. Okay, that was super interesting. I mean, the check is fine. Duco checks back.
Turn checks to Pedro again, which — I think at this point, we have two streets of value. But he decides to play it slow.
I'm surprised thWhat I find weird is his thought process on the turn — not betting, and not raising. Because on the river, very often, we cannot go for a check–raise or check–jam. So now he goes for the check–raise, which, after you check-call the turn and don’t bet, I don’t understand.
Obviously, if you put your opponent on queen–jack, jack–ten, king–jack, maybe jack–nine suited if the button is a little bit looser — then just bet the turn and bet the river. Because if the jack doesn’t get there — let’s say it’s a deuce, a three, an eight, a nine, whatever — he’s very likely just going to check back a very weak top pair, right? And you miss a street of value.
So ignoring the jack on the river — making trips for both of them, in case one has ace–jack and the button has king–jack — you're only going to get one street of value.
So he's pot controlling, right? Obviously. It makes no sense to slow-play his jack. There are going to be too many action killers — king–queen, even a nine, a ten, a six, an eight, a three. The diamond is bad. Everything is bad. So he’s pot-controlling because he knows maybe there’s a chance that Duco was trapping with sevens, fours, or fives.
So with this logic, if you pot control on the river, he's still going to have those full houses. And especially if he bets pot, I don’t think he’s going to do it with queen–jack or jack–ten. Because this is the sizing you use when you're greedy.
Duco can still have queen–jack, king–jack, ace–jack — and we have ICM in play.
So I find this from Duco very well played. I wouldn’t say it’s bad — I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand the logic behind it. I don’t find it consistent.
You think you have the best hand — because now he rips it in, right? He thinks he has the best hand, which yeah, I would think so too. But that would mean I would fast-play my hand on the turn. Like, he checks back the flop. Now we make a jack — vamos — we go for thin value. Actually, it’s not even thin value — it’s clear value.
So this is very strange, that now he rips it in, when I don’t think Duco — like, no — I don’t think any of the good regs would ever bet pot size with queen–jack or jack–ten. I don’t think you get enough value there. It’s just way too much. It’s a very, very bad river sizing.
So it’s going to be the slow-played set. And if he has sevens, he’s also going to have fives and fours. I know it’s rare, but it’s just happening too often — especially in those spots where ranges get narrow and combos get very specific.
And you might think, “Oh Ben, it’s so easy for you.” But I’ve done these folds. I folded in a similar spot — bottom full house — where I put my opponent on just one of a few specific combos, and I folded it. So I’m doing it myself. And I want to show you guys that I think here, there is a bit of inconsistency in the turn and river strategy.
To be continued!
