First let me say, I met Tony Miles while celebrating my comparatively tiny score. He couldn't have been nicer and more gracious when a few of my party congratulated him.

I don't like the way he played the final hand. First, 3 betting with a medium strength hand like Q8o feels wrong. I'd much rather 3 bet hands like 64s and the like for the weaker part of my range. I guess you do need some medium strength cards in your 3 betting range for board coverage, and this might be the 'worst' of those.

The flop bet after 3 betting seems fine. Playing in flow, etc.

I don't understand the turn jam. Is it for value? I don't see 5x or 66-77 calling. Is it a bluff? You picked up real showdown value against Ax hands that might bluff the turn. Is it for protection? Yes, a second flush draw has appeared, and 67 is now open ended but Cynn might have bluff raised his own flush draw on the flop, so we are protecting against a very narrow portion of his calling hands by jamming.

Cynn did have an 'easy' call, if there ever is such a thing with $3.8MM on the line and a hand that your opponent is repping a stronger hand.

Thoughts?

I'm OK with everything in the hand except the turn jam. Didn't understand it, either. Let Cynn make a big bet for value or as a bluff and make the decision yourself. Why let him play perfect?

In any case, DGAF brought up a good point in another thread here: these guys were mentally and physically exhausted. I can't imagine there's a single person in the entire world who wouldn't feel exactly the same way by that point. No amount of exercise, yoga/meditation, eating habits or anything else could ever prepare you for the brutality of that marathon, particularly just that final session itself.

I had a deep run once in the main event and also experienced mental exhaustion. Most Days are 10 hours of play + 2 hours of breaks. It's a 12 hour day. They didn't even have a day off for the final table. It is very easy to sit back and now that we are sitting in front of our computer screens with all the information available and well rested for us we can make the correct decision. But in the moment after playing for many hours, it's easy to make a mistake.

Agreed. I also think there's a difference between cash and tournament exhaustion.

I can play a tournament for 10 hours and be completely wrecked sometimes and have a hard time falling asleep that night. In the meantime, I could have played a 14 hour session of cash and feel great afterwards. I'm sure there's others who feel the same as I do.

For sure there was fatigue, and it was a major factor. I can't imagine even thinking about poker after such a long stretch, and here they are with the world watching, and $3.8MM plus all of the benefits at stake.

I was asking more from a theoretical POV, than a 'boy this guy sucks' POV.

Hats off to both players. Phenomenal poker and decisions under extremely difficult conditions.

I missed the final 70 or so hands because I failed to extend my DVR on that last 1 hr sports center... So I don't know how Myles's chips were reduced heading into the final hand.

But the last few times that Myles had dropped to below 1/3 total chips he made plays that surprised me. His now famous shove was IMO born of frustration and desperation. Similarly when Cynn failed to call on the other mid-pair hand that was for a large pot. Myles was fortunate both times that Cynn did not have a big hand that wouldn't fold.

Which ideally set up Myles for the big hand Cynn did wrongly call (which I think put Myles even or up a little after about 100 hands).

And I think the past success with bluffing on boards that Cynn was unlikely to have hit hard and needing a big hand, led to the implosion.

I do agree with the Q8o analysis. But I think in the end the sizing of Myles 3-bets was typically so large that I was thinking he was bound to run into a big hand and the pot would be out of proportion large and put Myles in a delicate situation. And because Cynn was so effective post flop Myles could never get a big enough chip lead to put Cynn away.

Having said all of this I was still astonished at how both players put themselves out there time and again, bluffing each other mercilessly. I had thought Cynn would win in a cake walk but I was surprised at how well Myles held up and fought.

I did not watch anything except Q8o but it looked kind of ******ed overall.
Not a good hand to 3b pre, flop cbet was like half pot on KK5, and turn jam was kind of weird for reasons many of you already mentioned. A somewhat defensible play on a double fd board with SPR of .7, though.
Def not even close to the worst/dumbest/spewiest hand that's gone done at a FT, that's for sure.

The 3b pre is really just god awful. Shows a lack of experience in hu
this hand fits really square into a call vs open range.
Post flop is a weird value/merge hand where don’t think he knew if he was bluffing or value jamming

Defo a bad 3b hand pre. Lets skip that

After watching and rewatching, looks like Miles felt like he just hit the "gin card" on that turned 8. It sincerly feels like he was happy to go with it. On the other hand tho, felt also like, Oh I *HOPE* this is my gin card and that Cynn doesnt have it.

All in all, imho, i think that there is no room for such a guessing game at that stage of the biggest donkament of the year.

I mean, because he still had the "luxury" to play a lower-variance strat at this point of the HU and because he did not, no one can argue that this was a well thought play and that Miles knew what he was doing.

IMHO, at this point, being exhausted and burned out by those hours, the pressure got the best of Miles.

He was basically clicking buttons, hoping that he was in good shape...

3bet - bad
sizing of flop cbet - bad
turn jam while considering flop cbet size - bad

so overall miles played aweful hand

miles sized a lot of his bets/raises as i he was playing a $2/5 cash game. lots of these 2/3 psb. 4x raises pre flop.

im sure people had nice encounters with miles, but miles (at least to me and obviously this is just from tv) came off as a fake nice to me. obviously im just 100% judging from a tv screen. john cynn came off as more genuinely nice.

Miles' 3-bet pre was sub-optimal, but not complete spew heads-up as Q8 isn't a hand that plays super great post (you'll do a lot of check folding to c-bets) and you should get some Kx and Ax hands that would normally passively play blank runouts to fold. I do agree you have better (worse) hands to 3-bet bluff with and you should mostly flat Q8 there.

If you're 3-betting pre here you need to generally continue flop, you can go smaller on paired board though.

On the turn, though, I detest the shove by Miles. I get that if you check and Cynn decides to rip that you're in a tough bluff-catch spot where you may have to call it off. But when you shove, you let Cynn play perfectly and will rarely call off with worse.

I remember seeing Miles on the stream on Day 4 talking to Esfandiari. It was excruciating to watch. Seemed terribly forced like he was trying to get 2.5 seconds of fame on the stream. At that exact moment I got the same impression of him of just being really fake. I don't know that he's less "nice" than Cynn, I just think he's probably more socially awkward and it feels forced or it comes across as being less genuine. Some people just come across that way no matter how hard they try.

I watched all the final table hands on DVR. The 200+ heads up hands included a LOT of three-bets with marginal holdings and a LOT of continuation bets that took down hands for the pre-flop 3-bettor. At his chip stack size on that final hand after the chips he had already put in, and considering that he had made a few successful shoves to steal pots already, I did not think the shove was crazy (except that we all knew he was running into trouble). If Cynn doesn't have a King, will he call there? It's possible but Miles certainly expected to have a bunch of fold equity. If he checks the turn and misses the river, can he bet the river and reasonably rep anything that Cynn will fold to? It was long and brutal but it was also some great heads up poker, so I can't kill Miles for picking the wrong spot. He was 11th in chips with 12 players left and was all-in with 88 and doubled up and then ran good all the way to heads-up. Great run, and epic heads up play. No shame.

Here's what Miles said about the hand on the PokerNews podcast.

"It was really unfortunate, the last hand, I thought I saw the ten of hearts flash in his hand...if I didn't think I saw that card, maybe if I wasn't so mentally fatigued, I wouldn't have gone for that bluff."

So when two hearts flop and Cynn calls, in Miles' (hallucinating) view, Cynn's hand options are pocket tens, KT, and the decent heart flush draws. Miles hit his (worst) turn card, maybe didn't want to give a free card for Cynn's flush draw, and had built the pot way too large before and on the flop. (And multiply all that by exhaustion.)

He does still call it a bluff, though, which is interesting.