Polarized Opinions: Nick Petrangelo Debates Brian Kim

Welcome to Polarized Opinions, the show where two elite poker players go head-to-head in a battle of wits and persuasion. Each episode features three lightning rounds of debate, two provocative poker topics, and one controversial hand analysis.

Our contestants are randomly assigned which position they'll argue, testing their ability to craft persuasive cases regardless of personal opinion.

When the dust settles, it's up to you, the viewers, to decide who made the most compelling case.

Question 1: Becoming Top 100 in MTT vs Cash Games

Starting from scratch in 2025, which journey would be more difficult:

1. Becoming a top 100 cash player in the world?

2. Becoming a top 100 tournament player in the world?

Brian Kim

MTTs. Yeah, definitely harder.

In tournaments, it's very simple. Everyone knows this—there's just so many more spots. And not only are there more spots, they're just more complex, —especially with unequal stacks.

I think by the time a beginner learns 30 percent of preflop spots, the top 100 guys who have already internalized preflop ranges years ago, now they're spending this time refining some niche formats like heads-up play and ICM, which are both completely different worlds.

Yeah. In cash, you're just solving the same problems over and over. You could learn preflop in three hours, especially the open ranges. Super simple. And then on top of learning all these fundamentals in tournaments, you also have to cultivate an insane amount of mental toughness because the swings are kind of ridiculous. It's just much more mentally taxing format.

And imagine this. In cash, you just run standard bluffs here and there. You get stacked for 100 big blinds, who cares, rebuy. But in tournaments, sometimes you're playing for days at a time and all of a sudden you're on the bubble and the stakes are much higher, and you might need to run a gigantic bluff, where you don't really face this type of emotional hardship in cash.

Brian Kim's career best results in MTTs

Nick Petrangelo

I would say my opening for cash being a lot harder is that yes, it starts as a static game, which everyone's easy argument is that, oh, you only have to learn one spot. For me, I think that cash is so much more about understanding the nuances of how everyone plays within that ecosystem.

Whereas tournaments, all the best players play a very similar way due to the confines of what the meat of the tournament is, between 30 to 60 big blinds, and there's not a lot of room for creativity, open exploits versus different opponents, and stuff like that.

Whereas the cash ecosystem is all about, yes, we have a baseline at 100 big blinds, but really the differentiator is, how do we all exploit each other? And then we go home after the session and study all that data and all those stats. It's much more hands-on, opponent-specific study.

Whereas you can do pretty well at tournaments by just sort of, yeah, I've done my ten hours a week on GTO Wizard for a year or so, I'm getting quite reasonable at all the spots. Whereas a guy like that, his leaks are going to be exploited and exposed immediately in the cash ecosystem.

In tournaments, you can fly under the radar being kind of a weak player and still do fine. In cash, you're just going to get eaten up, especially if you get 100, 200, 300, 400 BBs in a session. You're really just going to be wide open in the spots where you never bluff, or where you're getting overbluffed and you undercall.

Those guys are really good at targeting people that have those specific weaknesses. Whereas in tournaments, I think that we all have them, and a lot of regs do, and they just don't get punished for it.

Petrangelo's main wins

Rebuttal from Brian Kim

Yeah, Nick Petrangelo has a good point with having a lot of reps deep stacked with the same opponents. But in tournaments, you're constantly facing all sorts of players nonstop, and it's hard to build a dynamic. And so, with such little history with players, being able to find exploits, I just think the amount of emotional intelligence you need in tournaments is much higher.

And if you look at all the top tournament guys, they're all very funny people for a reason. They're all just socially very aware.

Rebuttal from Nick Petrangelo

All right, I'll go from start to finish. Okay, I already addressed why it being a static spot doesn't matter, because really it's just about, as you get deeper, how each player's style builds.

In terms of how emotionally taxing tournaments are with the swings and stuff like that, I mean, in cash, especially if you're playing deep stack, you could be stuck like ten buy-ins in a bad session. You have to sit there, especially if you're a heads-up cash player. You have to sit there and buy in for a thousand bucks and look at this guy with ten thousand across the table and somehow keep battling.

Even though maybe you're not even at that point on your A-game, you have to keep battling if you think it's a good spot. It happens in live cash, too. You have a great spot, you need to keep playing. If you're infinitely stuck, to play well when you're that stuck, that’s real cash, and not just tournament buy-ins, that's much harder.

Also, there are a lot of swings in cash, right? I mean, and especially the part in terms of where you're saying, like deep in a tournament running a big bluff. I mean, some of the biggest cash spots I've ever had, the reason why it's such a good spot is because it's way too high stakes for me. That I'm either playing too high stakes, or with someone else's money, and I need to run a bluff then. That's harder.

Question 2: Value of a Poker Study Group

All right, question two is a long-winded one. Bear with me, guys.

The biggest difference maker for players looking to get from mid-stakes to high-stakes is their social circle and who they discuss poker with.

Nick Petrangelo

All right. Even though I love you guys and everybody I've worked on poker with in 2025, I could even watch you guys talk about poker without knowing you. So, I don't think my network matters at all. I think, you know, even starting out, there's so much information available now between podcasts, GTO Lab, GTO Wizard, solvers, PioSolver. If you're a hard worker, you're going to get almost all the way there.

And then by the time you're there, maybe you can find that little extra with some coaching, or maybe making a best friend that you might not even like, but you just want some poker advice from. You can get 98% of the way there with just public tools, work ethic, and you don't even probably have to be that good at the game these days.

Brian Kim

Yeah, I think it's just so important to have a team. There's a reason why all Fortune 500 companies are built and scaled by teams. Let's look at the best tennis players. They all build a team around themselves, and that's how they rise to the top.

You end up getting different perspectives from guys in your group. You share exploits that you weren't able to think about yourself, population tendencies, and there's kind of a camaraderie that comes with this too. Poker is such a cruel game, and to go through these swings by yourself is sometimes incredibly heartbreaking. So, to have guys that you're able to build emotional bonds with, and having some people around you that will lift you back up, I think that's just so important.

And studying is a skill. You'll learn how to study in a more efficient way through guys you talk to as well.

Rebuttal from Nick Petrangelo

All right. If there was a PioSolver to become the CEO of Morgan Stanley or anywhere else, I think it'd be a lot different. I think it's easier to use poker tools to get really far in the career than it is to use, you know, there's not really a script for me to become Federer. It's just not in the cards for me. I don't have that gun to my head.

I think I could make anyone with public tools a pretty great poker player. And I think that doesn't necessarily mean me as a coach. If somebody has the guidance of what to do, which is part of the hard part of the conversation, then I think they can get almost all the way there with what's out there, without a tight-knit crew.

I do think it is a tough game, and you might need a therapist or a psychologist in lieu of friends to deal with some of those swings you said. So, I agree. I don't have a good rebuttal for that. That part, you need somebody, and maybe a therapist counts as part of your crew. So you're going to have to have somebody deal with the swings for you. But the skills, I think you can do on your own.

Rebuttal from Brian Kim

Yeah. Have you just nowadays looked at some of these crews who show up to Triton? They're very large groups, and you can tell there's just so much sharing of information, and that's what really helps them improve so quickly.

And I know for a fact a lot of these guys are from mid-stakes. And I agree with Nick, there are so many spots in poker, you could solve them all yourself. But when you have a crew who you get to study together with, and you kind of assign each other homework, and you all collaborate and come up with these ideas, just having multiple brains is so much better than just being a lone wolf.

I'm going to piggyback on that and say a lot of people have a crew, and it's a bad crew, and it holds them back. And until you ditch the toxic anchors, it's very tough to move forward in poker.

Question 3: Support or Make a Fool of Yourself?

All right, moving on to our third issue of the night, the fan favorite. We've got a fantastic Jonathan Jaffe hand, which one of you will have the great privilege of supporting, while the other will just make a fool of yourself having to talk poorly of.

Montenegro, Triton, the start of the $25k tournament. Andrew Chen opens from the cutoff to 3,500. The pot is about 180bb deep. I raise to 17,000 in the small blind. Andrew calls.

Flop (36,000):

I bet 7,500. Andrew calls.

Turn:

Call again.

River (77,000):

The effective stack is 206,000. I bet 15,000. Andrew raises to 150,000. I call and win.

So Brian, you have to dishonor yourself by attacking this masterpiece. Go ahead.

Brian Kim

Yeah. So I think right away from the flop, you were probably range betting, which I guess if you want to simplify your game, that's fine. But I'm assuming because you have a lot of pseudo connectors and pocket pairs on the base, you probably don't want to bet every time. But sure, you mix in the bet this time and he calls. Everything looks fine so far.

But now I have a problem with how you play this turn. I just feel like you are playing this hand now in a way where you're just very face up. It's just the way I feel about it at least. But also from a fundamental standpoint, all of a sudden you bet all your bluffs on the flop, but he had a call. Sure, he floats some, but he's kind of condensed around strong hands now.

So you should probably use a bigger size or check a lot. And a lot of your hands want to check here.

So when you want to bluff, I want to use a bigger size here and I want to start folding out some small pairs. But with this size, you're never folding anything out.

Then on the river, I believe, as played, this feels really thin for value.

But it looks like you go for value, which I think is thin. I mean, he's at this depth, 160 big blinds effective, preflop cutoff versus small blind. He's still going to have and . But you go for the small bet, and then now he puts in a giant raise.

We just have a pretty bad bluff catcher at this point. I feel like he could literally show you pocket Jacks with a heart as a bluff and you're just going to lose. I have a feeling that you thought because your hand is so face up, you have to defend against his raise sometimes, and you thought the is good or whatever, so you called. But I think you were range calling. And I think if you talk to anyone, Andrew Chen is a very solid player who's just going to be very balanced in the spot, and you're unlucky. He just didn't show you with the .

Nick Petrangelo

I think fundamentally, yeah, it looks good to me. Obviously, preflop and flop, I think you can just play a tiny size and bet all your pocket pairs between the and the .

And then the flip side of that is that Andrew is not going to be able to fold a lot of his range.

I don't even think he has weak enough backdoors preflop to fold, except for maybe , type hands, diamonds, whatever. But the point is you're in a wide versus wide spot on the turn, which means that you're trying to hammer his pocket pairs again and then maybe even clear out some stuff like that missed Broadway, which is just a win for you.

Unless you wanted to check and then start making him bluff.

But I would say generally the way these turn spots work at a lot of different depths here is if you have all these pocket pairs and he has all these pocket pairs, the differentiator of your range is that you have the big Ace and the big pocket pairs. You have top set here, you have , you have . You obviously have those big hands more often, even if he does mix in some flats with them.

So that being said, you get to use the top half of your pocket pairs and your big and punish the bottom half of his and his pocket pairs. And you can't just do that by going polar. So you're going linear.

And if I'm going to do that, I think you went just under, just over 25% on the turn. That looks good. It's enough to bluff and fold out his high cards. It's enough to make him call again with , , , if he doesn't want to get run over.

That's part of the hand. He's probably paranoid he's getting run over by old Ivey because he's an old school player. He knows you. So he's probably going to be more sticky versus you than versus me or versus anyone else.

And you know that you put out the small bet. Now you get to this river where you have the most difficult decision in my opinion. And you've decided that if you check, he's just going to show down a bunch of hands that you have beat. And if you bet, you're going to decide.

I don't think you have a plan, and you bet super tiny, which if you did this with , I would think it looks quite normal. I do think is thin. But at this point now, the whole question for me is if he has something like on the turn and doesn't fold, you're printing.

Rebuttal from Brian Kim

Yeah, if we want to get into some live exploit type talk here, I think we're playing against someone, once again, who's very solid and very aware himself. He's been playing live poker forever. He's going to get to the river with probably too many strong hands, understanding what's going to happen on rivers.

So when we just calculate the ratio of value he's going to have once he raises, I just think we're unblocking so many value hands despite the Ten of hearts. And yeah, sure, he would probably block sometimes on the turn with something like Jack Ten of hearts, King Ten of hearts.

So by the river, once he raises and he lacks bluffs, I just feel like this call is losing infinitely. It's probably losing over sixty big blinds in EV estimate.

Now that I see this hand, I'm going to start raising the hell out of you on the turn and taking you to the river. And you're still probably going to range call me, so I'm just going to have it.

Rebuttal from Nick Petrangelo

All right, I'll start my rebuttal with minus. The only time I think you've ever made a minus sixty big blind play is like one of those dreams where your card changes, and it's hard to do that even. Maybe if you turned over your hand and you had the Four of spades somehow, maybe then we'd be in the negative sixty big blind territory.

But I would say this in terms of the fundamentals of the hand. Just because the solver is telling us we need to bet bigger or check doesn't mean that you can't eke out the same amount of EV by having a bunch of small betting and just betting more often.

And actually, versus a person, when you put that burden of defense on Andrew, it's probably making his life a lot more difficult. Do I want to do that with ? Probably not, because the hand just doesn't fit naturally into it.

But do I need to play my whole range check or big bet just so that I can simplify and play a polarized strategy? Obviously, it's way easier for Andrew to play against. Because guess what, when I put in a bunch of money on the turn in a three-bet pot, you just have to fold your bad hands and call your good hands.

Jon decided to take the middle of his range, which he could also do with something like . Even Aces is a fine hand to go small and try to get raised by a bluff or a worse set and then have him play for stacks.

And the Ace was not a flush card. So you could just have and be like, yeah, it doesn't make too much sense to just bomb this sick hand. So instead of checking it, I could just bet small like Jon did, put some hands in that bucket, and be more confusing and more difficult to play against.

And yeah, Andrew has been playing for a really long time. He might be very good at that spot. He might not be good when a guy plays the whole table like he's playing a heads-up match versus you twice. You get messed up. That's what happens.

The voting results at publish time of this article:

• Nick – 48
• Brian – 13

Funnily enough, this almost exactly corresponds to the millions of dollars in prize money these players have earned during their careers.