CoinPoker Interviews JNandez: How Yodogoki Won the PLO Heads Up CGWC

JNandez: Excited to look into these hands. Thanks for having me.

JNandez: On this texture, checking back makes sense.

There are already a lot of made hands available, and when you’re deep stacked in heads-up Pot Limit Omaha, players are going to protect their checking range quite a bit.

JNandez: The board texture is important to read here. There’s no flush draw on the board, so basically all the bluffs revolve around the straight draws.

GucciNike is saying, “I improved on the turn in some sort of way.” It could have been with bottom set and an open-ender, but for the most part, when you’re this deep, a lot of wraps open up that Yodogoki is unblocking completely.

That being said, you’re not going to get in 170 big blinds in a single-raised pot on the turn.

So on the turn, you’re still very happy calling the raise, reevaluating on the river, and probably putting your opponent, for the most part, on some sort of turn straight draw.

JNandez: In Yodogoki’s shoes, this doesn’t feel great. Honestly, I think you’re going to run into 7-8 a lot.

Yodogoki has a ton of bluff catchers as well. He’s going to have a ton of two pairs, and a lot of the two pairs also have straight draw blockers.

It seems hard to fold on paper because he unblocks the 4-6-7 kind of combos, but then would those hands realistically bluff on the river?

These are the best players in the world. They might have it, but in my book, I think I would just fold the river against the bet here.

JNandez: Conceptually on the flop, as you said, you have a good draw, but no pair, and you don’t mind the free card on the turn.

Maybe it’s an exploit, and he thinks Yodogoki is probing the turn a ton and folding versus raises. Certainly not a raise that I think most people would make.

And then on the river, one of the purposes of raising the turn is to get the credit on the river, but actually, he didn’t in this case because Yodogoki obviously calls without having a queen or a king.

It is a creative play by GucciNike. But if you reach the river somehow with this hand, you’ve got to bluff.

JNandez: This is a pretty standard heads-up.

You have an ace, connected side cards, suitedness, and a hand that realizes equity fairly well post-flop.

JNandez: This board heavily interacts with both ranges, but having the nut flush draw is very important here. Even when called, GucciNike is going to continue with a lot of strong equity on future runouts.

The sizing also makes sense. You don’t necessarily need to go huge on these textures because both players connect very frequently.

JNandez: On the turn, you’ve got to be more careful.

This hand, for example, if you’re unimproved by the river, would be a terrible hand to triple barrel because you’re basically blocking the hearts. You’re also blocking hands like ace-nine or ace-eight, two-pair hands that could maybe fold on the river.

I would say we probably want to take a free card here and have weaker hands that are bluffing on the turn, especially ones that are more willing to barrel on a brick river.

JNandez: He’s representing a straight flush. Obviously, there’s no other hand that he’s saying he has for value.

I don’t think GucciNike will ever fold this hand, but you’re probably going to look into a straight flush here.

I would be very surprised and impressed if Yodogoki goes for the bluff jam with some sort of straight flush blocker.