Munez is challenging absolutely anyone right now at 40K, including Linus, Sealama, Pr0digy, and Barak. He's playing fearlessly and he's playing really well. Let's get into it.
1. Trap for Linus
So we'll start here. Munez is on the left and Linus on the right.
Quickly, Linus goes for the three-bet to 4,200 with and Munez does go for the four-bet here to 10,000, 2.5x.
Linus is just going to call. So , a pretty good board for Munez here. Linus starts off with a check.
Then a on the turn. Still a really good board for Munez.
On the flop he has like a two-to-one EV edge, and that still holds pretty strong here. So you're going to see a lot of checking from Linus's range, and king-queen is certainly going to fit into that bucket.
Despite the advantages, Munez does go for another check here. Of course, we don't know what he has.
So Linus has a decision if he wants to try to get value. It's pretty low-end if he does, which he does do on the here.
He goes for the 25% pot bet on the river. He's really just trying to extract from like the ten-nine, ten-jack type region, maybe like a pocket nine.
And then he's facing a shove.
What a funky line by Munez, in the sense that he four-bets pre-flop, gets a board that's pretty good for him, checks back. King on the turn, still pretty good for him, and he checks back again.
And in terms of blockers, Linus is blocking pocket kings, which may be the most common value combo here.
Queen-jack could be relevant, but Munez doesn't four-bet queen-jack that often pre-flop.
So the bluffs have to be unnatural, right? That same region that Linus was trying to get value from, the ten-nine, pocket nines, that kind of random type of hand, and seven-eight type stuff, is probably the region that Munez is turning into bluffs. So Linus is generally unblocking that region. In theory, king-x hands are pretty low in his range for value, so they're pretty much just folded.
He does call, and Munez has ace-seven. He had a trap the whole time.
It's a pretty funky spot, because he checks all the way to the river, and the flop is a range bet if he wanted it to be.
He's obviously not playing it that way, as I said, because he four-bets a lot of ten-x offsuit type stuff. It's just a really good board for him and he could easily range bet, but he chose to play a polarized strategy. He carried forward some of his nut hands all the way to the river, had the discipline to do it, and then kind of surprised Linus with the shove. And it really paid off, because Linus called with pretty much the pure fold part of his range.
It's just a cool hand to show that if you want to change gears instead of range betting, you can sometimes surprise your opponents on other lines.
2. Linus Gets Out of Line?
Linus opens, Munez calls from the big blind. Linus starts off with a smaller bet here and Munez just calls with .
Linus starts off with a smaller bet here and Munez just calls.
An interesting thing to point out here is that it's very common to call with the high-low two pair. High-low meaning king-six, versus king-queen which is high-high, and queen-six which is low-low. The high-low two pair very commonly calls more of the time.
So Linus goes polar here.
Pretty standard spot. He goes B150, and the turn is pretty much a blank, though not totally blank. It brings in some two pairs for Munez, including queen-five, king-five, five-six, and pocket fives as a set.
But nonetheless, Linus has the lion's share of the nut region, and on this river he does as well, in terms of king-queen, pocket kings, and pocket queens. Eight-nine is something that Linus will have that Munez can't really have at this point.
So he goes accordingly, going very large here, 2.5x, so 32K on the seven river.
I'm actually a little surprised he doesn't go a little bit more. They're playing deeper, and as I mentioned, he has the lion's share of the nuts here, like sets and eight-nine, and the majority of the king-queens.
So in his polar sizing, I'm surprised he wouldn't go larger, unless he's playing two or three sizings, which could make more sense. But generally I would have expected an even larger overbet.
So in terms of Munez's spot, it's really tough to fold. You're bluff-catching. You could be chopping with king-six, but that's pretty much going to start to get to the low end of this 2.5x bet. Generally this is going to be a pure call.
But Munez is a player who likes to think through his decisions and all possible lines at all times. So he does think through this one a little bit, and he makes the call, and Linus has ace-eight. So he triple-barreled.
It's another interesting hand to see, because on the turn it's one of your worst ace-x combos to bluff, compared to ace-ten or ace-jack which had the straight draw, or like ace-four or ace-three which are unblocking more of the folds.
The river, though, actually makes a lot of sense, because bluffing the eight-x, nine-x region is really a nice one to pair with that overbet sizing, because Linus has those eight-nine combos. They become pretty cool blockers for Munez.
If he has king-eight, for example, he's going to want to call because of those blockers. So the river makes a lot of sense for Linus, but he's probably getting a little out of line on the turn.
The turn is not that hard of a defense for Munez. A well-seasoned player like this should be able to defend against the B150 fairly theoretically. So I'd expect Munez to behave somewhat within the bounds of theory on the turn. Linus is probably just getting a little out of line there.
Munez gave an interview last year, and talked about GGPoker's privatization of high-stakes games, his results, and what it took to rise up to higher stakes. Read that interview here if you want insights from a successful reg.
He currently plays on CoinPoker, GGPoker, and ACR.
3. Time to Deal With Barack
Barak has and goes for the three-bet. Notice they're playing a bit deep here, like 250 big blinds. And then Munez goes for the four-bet.
Notice his four-bet is fairly large, 3x. When you get a little deeper, you do want to up the sizings, because there's a lot more equity realization for your opponent. If you keep the same sizing, they can just call much wider.
So Barak starts off with a donk-bet into the four-bet pot.
Five-six-seven really hits him in terms of concentration of sets and two pairs more than Munez will have, and he has a little bit of an equity edge.
So all of this makes a lot of sense to just go for the lead here.
He has the extra equity with the straight draw, and the on the turn is another good turn.
It's just a good board for Barak here. And it's fair game to keep leading. If you wonder what he could be getting value from, it's mostly obviously high cards, ace-king, ace-queen type hands, but also because Munez is very polar, he's going to have eight-x and nine-x in range.
Of course he has pocket nines so he's blocking that, but he'll have eight-x in range, so there are definitely hands to get value from here.
On the river, Munez doesn't have much of a time bank, and I think that was like four seconds, and he goes for the shove.
It's a tough spot for Barak, because most of Munez's bluffs, if he has a king and a queen, he's just going to want to check back and show down most of the time.
So Barak does get bluffed here. I don't mind his fold. I'm surprised he didn't think a little longer, but it's fine.
4. Munez With a Bluffcatcher
All right. Next hand here, we've got .
At 100 big blinds effective, ace-queen is more commonly a shove, but obviously playing this deep it prefers a call a little bit more, which makes a ton of sense.
And Barak goes for a small bet on ace-nine-four two-tone.
Again, if we were playing with 100BB stacks, check-raising would be acceptable. But with deep stacks, a more passive line looks better.
The comes in, bringing in the flush on the turn, and then the on the river.
His hand has really good properties, right? He's blocking straights and blocking flushes. And he's not really blocking bluffs, which should be more natural stuff, some unnatural stuff, but also because Barak's four-bet range is very polar.
He should have random queen-six and king-five type hands in range, but only the suited variety. So queen-five of diamonds would obviously be a flush, and he's not blocking any of that bluff region. So his hand is a theory pure call, and for those reasons it's just a pretty natural check-call here.
Is Munez thinking of doing something else though? Like I said, he always thinks through his decisions to the end.
Wrong:
So he folds, and Barak has king-queen. He has a straight. That's like a haymaker type fold, right?
I think Munez is just making a read that Barak is not going to have enough bluffs in this line, in this deep-stack four-bet, c-bet, check, bet line. So you know, that kind of thing can happen sometimes. They gather enough data and see it in the betting, or maybe they just anecdotally see it a couple of times and think that's how their opponent is going to play the spot.
It would be interesting to hear his thoughts on that one. That was a pretty good adjustment there.
5. The Torture of Barak
Munez is on the button with and faces a three-bet. We're not playing deep anymore, and it could be an easy call.
Barak starts with a nice polarized three-quarters bet on the flop, and calling or raising are both very natural options.
The on the turn gives Munez a flush draw and a pair.
Barak goes for the half-pot bet. Very geometric type bet here. Munez really only has two options, and he does shove with the four-five.
That's a little interesting, because you mostly shove more of the combos like five-six or five-seven suited that are just kind of air and can fold out better. You can definitely fold some of these. It's a very low frequency type thing.
Barak shoves or folds pretty quickly with king-queen. So he had a bluff, but it's kind of interesting.
He could consider calling there, and in pure theory it's already kind of a fractional decision where you can make the call.
What makes it interesting as a potential call, if I go back here, when Munez shoves, what would make king-queen interesting as a call is if Munez is getting a little out of line with his combos like five-six, five-seven, or queen-jack and stuff like this.
You obviously have showdown value against that. And you can easily blossom into a call if he's doing a little bit more of those.
I really enjoyed going over them. Hopefully you did as well.
