If You Don't Wanna Get Destroyed, Don't Do This

We're going to review a hand played between Andrew Robl and Michael "Texas Mike" Moncek, played in the TV show High Stakes Poker. Spoiler: it was ultra high stakes - and it was awesome.

The game they were playing was a 2k/4k NLHE game with a big BB ante. The table was 6-handed at the time, so the pot starts with 26k in the middle - 6 x 4k + 2k. Action folds to the SB (Robl) who limps with K ♠️ K ♥️

This limp is correct from a theoretical perspective. There is 26k in the middle already, and the SB only has to complete 2k to potentially see a flop. Even in a 0.75bb ante scenario, the GTO solution already shows a 100% VPIP strategy for the SB, with 94% limps:

Texas Mike looks down at his cards and decides to raise it up to 29k. We're going to keep his cards undisclosed so that you really focus on the analysis here.

Faced with a limp in this situation, the BB knows that the SB can have any 2 cards, therefore raising is mandatory with a wide variety of hands. A GTO solution raises 47% of the time to a 5.5x size. The composition of this raising range must be polarized: pocket pairs, suited connectors and high cards for the 'value' portion; and then garbage hands like 84o, J3o and 73s for the 'bluff' portion:

Not many players are aware of how much you need to raise with trash facing these SB limps. If you play in games with a BB ante, it's very likely your opponents are not raising enough vs limps, which allows you to exploitatively overfold vs raises, and also shift your strong hands towards open-raising instead of limping.

Robl, facing this raise, does the only thing he's allowed to do here with KK: he 3-bets to 175k (!). Texas Mike makes the call.

We haven't even seen a flop yet, and the pot already has 370k in it.

Robl 3-bets to a fairly large 6x size out of position. This is understandable, considering they are super deep: they started the hand with 2M effective, which equates to 500 big blinds.

Consider making this adjustment when you're playing deep. GTO Wizard sims show a nearly 10x size 3-bet OOP from the BB when deep in ante games. The more money in the middle and the more money behind, the bigger you need to raise to deny your opponent their equity. Sizing smaller just allows IP to exercise their positional advantage, which decreases your EV.

Flop comes down J ♠️ 9 ♦️ 7 ♥️.

Not the most amazing board when you're deep out of position holding KK. IP player here will have all combinations of 77, 99, JJ, T8s, J9s and maybe even 97s.

That being said, it's not the worst either. You still have an overpair and IP has plenty of worse pairs and draws to call you.

A strategy that you can consider on these types of dynamic boards is the check-raise strategy. These types of connected boards are board textures where the IP player is likely to bet a lot facing a check. Your hand is not amazing because the SPR is high and it's hard to prevent your opponent from catching their outs when they have a drawing hand. But if you can somehow get rid of the draws and still get called by one pair hands, then you can increase your hand's equity realization. Check-raising may accomplish exactly that.

Robl instead bets about 40% of the pot, and Mike calls.

Turn is the 6 ♠️, bringing a spade flush draw to the board. Robl holds the K ♠️.

The 6 is one of the blankest cards you can hope for in the deck. Nothing completed (as T8s was already a straight on the flop, and IP can't realistically have 85s), no 2 pairs emerged except for 2 combos of 76s. This is as clean as it gets for a turn runout, which should make us wonder why Robl decided to check.

Betting KK here after betting the flop seems like the most intuitive and standard way to play this hand. In fact, that's how GTO would play it. Nothing really changed, and the board did become a bit more draw heavy when the flush draw opened. On top of that, we can mention that KK has strong blockers to IP's turn betting range: hands like KQ, KT and KJ will probably bet in IP's shoes, so we're decreasing the chances we'll face a bet when holding KK - and that's no good for our EV. We don't want to give free cards here.

That being said, Robl probably checked here for the same reasons we mentioned on the flop. Texas Mike is an aggressive player, and when OOP checks this turn, it's easy to perceive it as a weak range. Therefore, Robl's likely expectation was to see a super high frequency stab from Texas Mike, which obviously increases the value of checking for him.

Apart from high frequency stabs from the IP player, slowplaying OOP has a major benefit when playing against flawed human strategies: exposing your opponent's hand strength.

It is extremely hard to develop balanced checking ranges when in position. Playing balanced IP requires sometimes checking back a super strong hand, or a very natural-to-bet draw type of hand. Not checking these hands IP makes your strategy exploitable, because on blank rivers you'll never have the nuts (as you did bet all of them on the turn), and on draw completing rivers you'll also never have the nuts, because you bet all of your draws on the turn.

Slowplaying out of position gives your opponent the opportunity to make these mistakes. And when they make those mistakes, you can essentially play perfectly against their range, as you'll know which runouts they hit and which they don't hit.

On this 6 ♠️ turn, GTO checks back 80% of its top pairs, 20% of its overpairs and even 50% of its 2 pairs. Flush draws or combo draws should check on average 58% of the time.

Robl took 30s to check.

Texas Mike looks down at his cards, and within about 18s, checks behind.

The river is where shit gets wild.

The river is the 2 ♦️. What a lucky runout for Robl here.

A super blank comes on the river, and you're still holding KK. You got an overpair on a J high board where no draws completed, and your opponent checked back a coordinated board on the turn. It surely looks like you have the best hand.

For that reason, Robl fires 500k on the river. That's a 75% pot bet.

Kinda standard for most people. I believe 9 out of 10 players would pick a similar sizing in this spot, with this hand.

But that's a mistake, in my opinion.

As I showed above, a balanced IP strategy requires checking back the turn with a huge amount of strong hands. Realistically, humans don't slowplay this much with value. People won't get to the turn with 76s there and decide to check back. That goes against what every single player has learned about this game: fastplay your value, don't give people free cards, charge the draws, and so on. Vast majority of human players don't protect their check-back range enough.

Knowing this, a solver that maximizes EV would shove all in for 2.5x pot with KK on a blank river, and even AJ is strong enough to do it:

Exploiting capped ranges and going for max value is a huge opportunity to generate edge in NLHE. Equilibrium is extremely sensitive, and it doesn't take much for a range to be unprotected. Once that happens, you can start putting massive overbets onto your opponent, and there won't be much they can do. If they pay you off too much, your value prints like crazy. If they get scared and fold, you can bluff them relentlessly.

That's not what happened, though. What happened was even more intense:

Texas Mike jams for 1.2M more.

What would you do in this situation?

Remember that the hand started 500bbs effective. This river jam alone is worth more than 400 big blinds. If you call, it's the biggest pot ever in television history.

It's safe to say that Texas Mike's range for doing this here is very polarized. It's gotta be 2 pair or better for value, or a bluff.

But what 2pairs will realistically play this way for Mike? We established on the turn how slowplaying in position, especially on a coordinated board like this, is not really a thing for humans in NLHE. Sure, a solver can do it, but humans? Nah, not really. And surely not Texas Mike.

WHO IS TEXAS MIKE?

Texas Mike is a low 30s, Chicago-area millionaire recreational player, who started showing up on televised/streamed poker games in 2023. Since then he has made several appearances in Hustler Casino Live, Poker at The Lodge, Poker Night In America, and High Stakes Poker. He was the co-owner of his family's industrial packaging wholesaler business Box Partners. Following the tragic sudden death of his father in 2019, the business was sold in 2021, allowing Michael to dedicate himself to poker.

His profile exploded on the internet after a streamed session in April 2024 where he played with a staggering 89% VPIP stat. He broke that record in September of the same year, with a crazy 99% VPIP session at HCL.

His style is extremely aggressive, having featured in many insanely big and crazy pots over all of these shows. His tracked livestream results amount to -$4,350,590.00.

This information made me even more perplexed than I would have naturally been otherwise, when I saw Robl doing this:

Robl folds to the shove after agonizing for a few minutes. He says "whatever, take it", and throws KK in the muck.

With a desire to inflict even more pain on the poor man's heart, Texas Mike shows 9 ♥️ 8 ♥️ for the bluff. Robl salutes him - "you're the best, Mike", right before slapping the table felt, in a clear sign of frustration.

Now, my question to you here is: how could Andrew find this fold?

Andrew has probably played millions of hands of poker in his life, and has probably had great results doing so, considering how long he's been active in the high stakes scene.

How can a veteran high stakes player fold an overpair like this to a 90% VPIP millionaire whale in a spot where it's almost impossible to show up with a 2pair or set hand?

Honestly, I put myself in a very awkward position for what I'm about to say. I've definitely played (and made) a lot less than Robl at high stakes. Surely he knows more than I do about these games. But you wanna hear my hypothesis?

I would bet a huge % of my net worth that Robl would not fold this if the stakes were 10x smaller.

THE MONEY ATTACHMENT EFFECT

Have you ever played a hand of poker where, if the stakes were much smaller, you would have played it differently?

I have, and I'll never forget it.

It was in 2022, when I was taking shots at high stakes. Things were going great for me in those shots, and I had made over 100k in a few weeks playing 1K-10K online. On a random afternoon, a 40KNL table on GG formed around a recreational player. The seat directly to his right (the worst seat at the table) was open.

I sent a message to my partners at Metagame to ask if they wanted to buy some action. I wanted to hop into that game. It looked fun, exciting, and my confidence was at an all-time high.

My partners bought 40% of my action. I jumped in.

Within a few orbits, I found myself in a 4-bet pot with AQs, CO vs UTG, against one of the best and most aggressive players in the world, Taisto Janter. I flopped a flush draw on a K high board. He bet half pot (which felt odd to me) and I called. Turn was another King; he jammed for 2/3 pot size, and I agonized for the entirety of my timebank before folding my nut flushdraw.

I knew that hand was a call in theory. I knew my opponent was aggressive and capable. I had all the reasons to make the call and realize my equity. But I didn't.

I didn't because it was a fucking near 75k pot. I had never, ever played something even close to that figure. My biggest lifetime pot had been a 35k pot I had played just a few weeks before this 40KNL shot, at the 10KNL tables on PokerStars.

Had this hand happened at 1KNL, I would have called and moved on with my life. But the size of the pot got to me, and it affected my play.

I don't know how much money Andrew Robl has, or even if he sells action when he is playing in those nosebleed games (I imagine he is, but who knows). But the only explanation I can find for a fold like this, on a blank like this, against a whale like this, getting 30% pot odds, is that the pot size got the best of him. It would be the biggest pot of Television history, after all. No one wants to be on the losing side of that.

The stakes you're playing affect your play. Never underestimate that.

If you have been a disciplined reader of this newsletter, you'll remember when I said that you'll be a completely different player when you get to the point of playing this game without any attachment whatsoever to the monetary outcomes of your actions. The fact that you're currently not there yet is the explanation for a lot of your struggles as a poker player.

A lot of people struggle with moving up in stakes in poker, even though the actual difference between one stake and the next is very, very small. What's the difference between 25NL and 50NL? Or 100NL and 200NL? Or 2NL and 5NL? Or even 5KNL and 10KNL?

Virtually none. Pool composition is very similar, as a lot of players play both of these limits simultaneously. One could even say the next stake is slightly easier because the rake is lower (or should be, at least). Sure, you could say some regulars are better, but how much better can they even be in such a short distance? Not much.

A huge cause of struggle comes from playing the next stake money scared. The monetary outcomes are now twice as large. A winning day feels twice as exciting; a losing day feels 3 times as disappointing.

The attachment to the monetary outcome affects your play. You start seeing monsters under the bed. You play more passively, more face-up. You pass on profitable, exploitative opportunities because you don't want to increase variance. You fold profitable bluffcatchers, check profitable bluffs. You go for the safe check-call with the draw instead of going for the check-raise, which would be your usual play in that spot.

Consciously or unconsciously, your game gets affected, and for the worse. In this day and age, *winrates** depend** on those small edges that you're now passing on all the time. Nothing significant should have changed, but because you're attached to the monetary outcomes of your actions, you play the next limit a lot worse than you play your usual games, and this makes you perceive* the next limit as more difficult, when in reality it's just you who got worse.

If you don't want to get destroyed when playing in higher games than you're used to, then you have 2 options:

1. Don't play them

2. Table select super well

I'm obviously pretty sure that Robl was still super profitable in this game he was playing, even though he might have made a few conservative laydowns here and there. It doesn't take much to make money off of a game where a 90% VPIP whale is playing.

But if that happened to a veteran, established high stakes player, what do you think happens on a daily basis to you? If you know that you're going to play worse when shot taking, you must compensate that by selecting games harder than you would for your normal stakes. It doesn't make sense to just straight up jump into the higher games hoping for the best. Since the quality of your game will be worse, if you don't want to destroy your bankroll and your confidence in the process, you need to be disciplined and diligent with the line-ups that you play.

And even if you're not shot taking, but just playing your normal games: be aware of how the monetary outcomes affect your play. Develop self-awareness and pay attention to yourself and how you behave in tough decisions in big pots. As I've said multiple times, edges in poker live in the small details in the modern era - especially small details in big pots. If you're always scared money when the pot gets big, it will be really hard to develop big edges over the player pool. You must train your mind to be able to execute the best plays, regardless of how uncomfortable they are, and how much money they're risking. If it's logically the best play, you must do it. At all costs.

Thank you for reading, my friend! I'll see you next week.

Saulo