Jonathan Jaffe: This was the most entertaining hand that I have ever been in the commentator's booth for.
I got seventh in this tournament and then saw that there was going to be a great heads-up match. I thought, let me get in there, I want to commentate this.
Let me show you this hand between Wiktor Malinowski and Adrian Mateos.
Malinowski:
Mateos:
- Preflop is limped, with Wiktor in the Big Blind.
Flop:
- Mateos bets 250,000, and Wiktor calls.
Turn:
- Mateos bets 1,900,000, and Wiktor calls.
River:
- Mateos thinks for a while and goes all-in for 6,875,000, covering Wiktor (6,700,000).
- Mr Limitless counts his chips, thinks it over, and folds.
(You can watch the full hand on the Triton YouTube channel. The link takes you directly to the correct moment.)
Jonathan Jaffe: Very interesting hand and a great hand from a pure entertainment standpoint. I thought about this hand to talk to you about it.
Kayhan Mokri: I’m assuming they both had assumptions about each other. For me, the hand looks very weird.
Pre-flop seems fine
The flop is probably fine, too.
But on the turn, I would assume from Adrian's standpoint that he is assuming Wiktor will over-fold. with the seems like a very good candidate to three-barrel this runout. He did actually over-fold his hand. I’m not going to be too results-oriented, but he might have had a point. If Wiktor is folding with the when Adrian bluffs, he is practically printing money. If you can make him fold that hand, he is hardly calling anything. He's only calling straights and flushes like , and probably has a mixture of folding the turn. Maybe 50/50 or something.
So if he folds this hand, he is literally only calling and flushes. I think still beats some value and it unblocks all the bluffs. I don't see any world where you can actually fold this, but I am assuming Wiktor had an assumption that Adrian would rarely bluff this spot. It seems they both made various assumptions about each other. Adrian thinks Wiktor is over-folding (which he did), and Wiktor is assuming Adrian won't bluff much here, allowing him to make a very tight fold.
You can see that Wiktor is not afraid of looking stupid. He has a lot of background from live and online poker.
You can't really fault him, but I would never fold in this scenario.
Jonathan Jaffe: I feel like my most out-of-bounds hands from the past few years have all worked. I do not think that means they were all brilliant; it means I really do not know. However, I am left with a feeling that they were pretty sharp and that I was onto something.
In poker, especially when you are going way out of bounds, you have a very small sample of hands, particularly as a live player. It can send you in either direction. If you go zero for four, you might say it is time to get back to being technical and stop this nonsense. If they all work, you can start to think you have the secret sauce. In this case, Adrian made Wiktor fold that .
I do not know how to synthesize that if I am Adrian afterward. There is a counterargument: do we think he over-folds rivers specifically, or does he also over-fold turns? If he is over-folding turns and trapping a lot on the flop, then he gets to the river with a crazy strong range where a reasonable portion is a flush or of hearts. It gets very complicated.
The real conversation I am curious about is how results-oriented you should be in poker?
How do you find what is good data and what is just leading you into a bad place?
Kayhan Mokri: In this type of scenario, it is hard not to be results-oriented. If I were in Adrian’s shoes and I had an assumption that the opponent would fold a lot on rivers, and he actually did fold this hand, I would say he has a pretty strong read that he is right. I do not think his assumption is going to change. You are also right that when he over-bets the turn, he is going to get there with a very strong range if the opponent over-folds.
I do not think Adrian really knows this for certain. It is something he is assuming, perhaps from background info or information from friends. We will probably never know.
However, I do see this type of adjusting in Adrian’s game in general. He has a very good feel for the game and tons of experience. I have seen him do these somewhat weird plays before. I assume he knows this is not a standard hand.
For what it is worth, if that was his assumption, he was right in this scenario. Then again, we are being results-oriented. You have to decide which data is more important, but I would feel comfortable in Adrian’s shoes. If I assumed he was over-folding and he folded this hand, I would feel I was right.
Jonathan Jaffe: One of the things I am forever skeptical about is this idea of painting the bullseye around the arrow. You have a result, and now you build a rationale all around it. Quickly, it coalesces into a story about why I am who I am and how I see things.
For example, we both try a lot of different things. Playing heads-up involves trying many strategies. That creativity and freestyling opens doors and lets you see a lot of spots. Having seen those spots makes you more open and emotionally intelligent to certain types of competition. If you stay completely in bounds all the time, you do not get that. It is a story I believe about myself, but if I am being truthful, it mostly comes from the fact that I get bored very easily. I could never have been a purely theoretical player because it is too boring to me. I happen to have run into the benefits of being a freestyler simply because it was my preference in the first place.
How much has this hit you?
Kayhan Mokri: I have a general belief that if you do not enjoy yourself in the process, it is very hard to perform your best. A lot of players who love the game and try their best in all scenarios will be the top performers.
For me, the first names that come up are Bryn Kenney and Adrian Mateos. These are two guys who have a pure-hearted love for the game. It makes it easier to motivate yourself to play more, to work on your game, and to find it interesting. It is easier to learn something when you are entertained by it, just like in school. Some people thought math was fun and they got better at math.
There are definitely exceptions, but I think that having that love for the game really elevates your performance. As you said, if you were forced to play like the solver and work with the solver all the time, you would probably not be able to perform as well as you are doing now.
That's my general belief.
Kayhan has been extremely active on CoinPoker in recent months, playing at the highest stakes against any and all challengers. At the time of writing, he's up multiple millions on the site, and no doubt enjoyed the 100% rakeback promotion in March.
Wiktor Malinowski still won the tournament.
Both players limped preflop, and Mateos spiked top pair with while Wiktor nailed top and bottom with .
Wiktor bet small on the flop, and when the came on the turn, he bet a little under 30% of Mateos' stack. Adrian shoved, and Wiktor of course called.
The river was a , and Wiktor won the tournament. He collected $4,789,000 for the victory.
