This is from a $5k PLO MTT early in the tournament.

The line is pretty slick: check-raise pot on the turn, then downbet river to target exactly the kind of hands that can still call.



For those who don’t know him, ImbaJimba (Martin Dam) is a high-stakes PLO crusher. He gave me permission to review this hand, and since we just launched PLO in GTO Wizard, I thought it would be a great spot to run through the new solver.

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PREFLOP

(Note that antes are slightly different in my sim, but close enough for a useful analysis.)

Preflop is standard. CO should always play JT99. BB should always defend 7543 single-suited.

Overall, BB defends about 2/3 of hands because of the ante.



Here I’ve filtered for 7543 single-suited hands. It’s not a monster, but you can’t be picky here. Folding would be a 12bb/100 punt.



FLOP

Martin flops a huge draw, but this isn’t a great board for his range.

A nice way to visualize this is with an equity distribution graph. CO has a broad range advantage. When you see this, the OOP preflop caller should usually check in flow.



Flop (correctly) checks through.

TURN

Turn is where it gets interesting.

CO turns middle set + nutshot. JT99 should always bet - it's just a question of sizing. CO opts for half-pot though solver prefers full pot.



7543 is a pure check-raise here, and it’s not close. Wrap + FD needs to pull the trigger.



RIVER

Imba hits his flush draw and now has a decision. He’s obviously not folding, but how does he maximize value without overplaying his baby flush?

I think a lot of players just pot river here out of momentum. The issue is that potting mostly gets called by better flushes while folding out worse.

Imba finds the precise thin 1/3 pot size on the river, which is exactly what the solver suggests with his hand. Most low flushes prefer this size.



33% is hard to defend against. Remember, this is high-stakes poker. Players will find bluffs here, so CO needs to find a lot of defends.

We can see this in the categories section: CO is calling straights, sets, and half of his two-pair. This is what makes the small size really nice.



If instead he'd potted the river, CO folds most of those worse hands, and Imba’s baby flush ends up behind when called.



JT99 calls, Imba scoops.

TAKEAWAY

A useful heuristic here is to consider what you’re getting paid by before committing to your sizing. Imba's not only repping nuts here, he's got plenty of thin value that benefit from a smaller river size.

Two questions about balancing in this spot:
1. With what hands would you go big on the river - if ever.
2. What hands do you balance the small flushes with for a small sizing? I guess you need some strong hands and some bluffs in there. Otherwise a reraise could get you in trouble many times.

Thanks for the analysis. Very good read.

Fwiw villain won the 10K PLO at the recent WSOPE

In theory well played.

In practice these spots seem questionable considering villain can just 3b jam turn here at SPR with both thick value and heavy equity bluffs that have our hand crushed like set FD, 2p flush draw etc and we have very small distribution of the nuts which is KK.

I guess it depends if villain protects their flop check range but he can have considerable slow plays on this flop such as KK + FD

1. For value, pure nut flush and 2nd nut flush are good candidates for a pot size river bet (dark red).


2. There are some nut flushes that go into the smaller size. The big differentiator seems to be that they contain 3-4 clubs. With a hand like AcJc9c7c for example, it's hard to get paid by worse flushes, so they have a natural incentive to size down to try and get called by worse.

Yeah that's a real threat. The sim 3bets 11% of the time with exactly the kinds of hands you've described. Sets raise 90% of the time. Two pair with FD raises 30% of the time.



Imba's hand calls the turn raise though. Looking at the range vs range dynamics, it seems BB's calling range is playing for draw-completing rivers, while CO's range is playing for bricks or paired cards where the sets dominate. So there are many spots where BB should call the turn raise then donk-jam river.

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing. Seems like nutflush with K blocker and straight blocker wants to check. Trisuited nutflush with some sort of pair, straight blocker wants to go small and the others want to go big.
Makes a lot of sense.

Cheers