We are going to watch this 14-year-old in this trendy bucket hat absolutely shred Mike Addamo.
Performance? Unreal! He is shredding everybody, maximizing value everywhere.
I had been playing with Michael Addamo forever; I was there through his entire upswing when he just started crushing everything from GG $25ks to every high roller we played. I even got second to him a few times in some big stuff live, where he wouldn’t chop with me heads-up. The guy was a total savage—one of the greatest players of all time for sure, a genius poker player—but he met his maker at this final table here at WSOP Paradise, Bahamas.
I had just gotten 47th in this tournament out of like 2,000 people. It was absolutely massive—$6 million for first in the prize pool. It was kind of flat, not that top-heavy. It could have been like $10 million for first or something; there was $50 million in the prize pool down there. But in any case, it was a massive final table and this is just a series of unreal hands that I was really excited to review.
At the time, I had busted and gone to the bar, crushing Kyli Golds with my Lithuanian buddies from Panakov's stable. Some of those guys even said I’m their favorite player, so I better talk to Panakov about that! I don’t know about that, Dominicus, but yeah, Lithuania—I love my Lithuanian boys. I’ve got a lot of fans there apparently, so hopefully you guys are watching this too.
But yeah, crazy spot, crazy tournament. I was a little hungover watching this, and I’m just going to kind of go through my thoughts. I was just eating Chex Mix in the room, having a couple of brews at the end of a long trip, and as I was watching, I’m just going to tell you what I was thinking when I was watching this hand because this hand's absolutely insane and it starts a bit of a tailspin for Mikey. We know he can handle it because he won all the money anyway, but it was tough to watch because he didn’t necessarily do anything wrong—he just ran into some plays that were completely unexpected, in my opinion.
But I’m just going to talk you through my thoughts and what I expected while watching and what I would be thinking in-game.
Addamo vs Yinan: Hand Analysis
So here we got Yinan, who turns out to be an absolute maniac, but this is the first hand I even watched or very close to it. We’re seven-handed; like I said, there are flat payouts—there’s not a lot of incentive to gamble.
I can tell you one thing about this final table and what the bucket hat does: they did not care one bit about the payout structure or gambling. You can see Bonomo’s hanging around on 13 big blinds. Liv had about 22.5 at this time; she folded a couple of times. There were 40 big blind and 50 big blind stacks, so Liv and Bonomo are short. Yinan is also one of the shorter stacks here; I think he’s in second to last here.
In terms of outlasting, Bonomo—he doesn’t care one bit—he's just going for it. He wanted that $6 million and ended up getting it. It was sick! Liv at this final table was not someone you wanted to be in a folding contest with. Maybe he knew that, but she just open-folded like A7 suited in the cutoff and stuff like that—not saying that to criticize her, just as a strategic point. She was going to outlast you by all means unless she got cooler; she was kind of hanging around there. Shout out to Carrie Katz—she is the last person I want to get into a folding contest with at a final table!
So this happened to be a mystery hand too, which was insane because I was just watching, and I’m like, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but this kid probably just has something sick somehow.” But he opened from under the gun, so I’m not going to say too much technical stuff because we’ll look at it, but obviously, under the gun into Mike's chip lead in the big blind, it’s going to be a super tight range, right? It’s going to be less than 15%.
Again, I’m not sure this kid was actually that tight, but he’s supposed to be. You know, it's supposed to be something like Ace-10 offsuit plus, maybe even King-Jack offsuit, not opening all the time—just so many people behind, short stacks, shallow pay jumps, all that good stuff.
Like, he wants to kind of be on lockdown, and especially for a young guy that’s at his first final table, I would have expected him to play a bit tighter in Mike's big blind. He even said in his interview afterwards that he watched Bonomo and Addamo growing up—these guys are definitely legends of the game, and he knows they’re super capable of putting everyone in a spot at any moment.
I would have thought he would be at least adhering to what he should pre-flop, which would be, like I said, a high-card-heavy range. He’s probably not smashing pocket fours here—potentially not even sevens, depending on if he opens that hand or not. So mostly overpairs and high cards, along with some suited Aces.
So when he gets a board like this, the first thing I’m thinking is, is Mikey going to bust out any leads here? Probably not, just because it’s too tight of a range that he’s up against. Does he want to lead his hand? Probably not, because it’s a decent hand for generating some c-bets from King-Queen or Queen-Jack type hands or whatever the case may be.
I’m thinking, okay, you should probably check-check a lot. This is not a very fun board for Yinan; it has a lot of connectivity to a wide chip leader defend. Mike’s actually going to be even wider, so if Mike’s not supposed to have something like Jack-Eight offsuit here or whatever, he might.
In any case, he’ll still have those low suited connectors and stuff. So I think this board has a lot of connectivity for a chip leader range, and I’m pretty scared to c-bet it. I’m definitely scared to c-bet it for a small size because that’s going to get me floated a lot by a bunch of different types of straight draws, gut shots, and backdoor spades, you know? Jack of clubs, Queen—whatever the case may be—all those things have some equity where I really want, as this under-the-gun-7 player, to get a fold or just check and try to realize my equity.
It’s kind of scary to play a big pot on a board that can start changing quickly for us, where we can’t really bluff-catch or value bet the way we can in a chipEV scenario. When I keep saying shallow pay jumps, it’s not like a normal tournament like the WSOP Main Event, where you’ve got $10 million up top. There’s a huge pay jump between second and first, and there’s a big one between third and second. Once you get there, go for the win!
Here, it really wasn’t the case, even though $6 million is a huge number compared to the incremental payouts. No one was really incentivized to gamble, but some guys have their own ideas going on. At this point, I’m 47th, cashed for $140,000, and I’m kind of butt-hurt about the week. I’m just eating Chex Mix right now, watching this go down.
I’m thinking, is Addamo in the tank about leading? But he’s not one of the slowest players of all time; he does everything after 28 seconds, which doesn’t really mean much. Now we have a teenager in a bucket hat just tanking, and I’m scared! If I’m right, he looks like he’s already up to something.
By no means am I picking on this guy; this is performance—unreal! He’s shredding everybody, max value everywhere. But when I see this bet, I’m just like, “Yeah, I hate this bet.” Being a nerd, I’m kind of like, “Oh, you should probably just check or bet big. You don’t want to let him realize.” But does it matter?
It depends. It doesn’t matter versus people who aren’t going to put you in tough spots. Does it matter versus Mike? Yeah, probably, because he’s probably going to do some nasty stuff and float you with backdoor draws or check-raise you more often against this bet.
Maybe exploitatively, I’d do this if I flopped top set or had a big nut flush draw that was kind of a sweet hand where I wouldn’t mind getting floated. Or if Mike starts to mess with me, I just have really easy continues. I don’t really want to do this stuff with the middle of my range—maybe some of my one-club air hands, I’d be happy with, but I would have been really heavy on the check here.
I’m not even sure maybe this solver is going to do—I looked a little bit into this stuff, where it’s like we might see some big bets, we might see some goofy all-ins, which to me are really difficult to navigate—just jamming for SPR 3.5 or whatever it is.
So I don't really advise anyone to do that stuff, including myself. The only time I did it really in a few spots, like last year, I did one in Jeju—the big jam—just completely wrong. I looked like a dumbass.
He’s looking back. He has a lot of equity that he certainly doesn’t want to get blown off of a lot of turns. He can barrel, and he shoves! Oh! He just goes for the jam! That’s an interesting play and Josh is going to snap, and this is really bad news for Nick. That was unique; that was interesting. Yeah, sucked out.
I haven’t done it since, so here we go. The mystery hand is still… I mean, maybe some of you guys already saw this. I'm not going to tell you what he’s got. I’m also not going to sit through all of Mike’s tanks here, so Mike calls.
When I’m sitting there, I’m like, “Easy check-raise, chip leader! Just start getting it in versus a small bet!”
Now, when we get to the turn , I think it’s interesting. As I said, it's in position, very tight, but what are his offsuit hands that he has? He definitely has some King-Jack and some King-Queen, which pick up equity here.
If I'm Mike, I probably want to let this check through a bunch. I definitely do have some 9-10 off; I don’t have 9-7 off. I don’t think I’m supposed to have any sort of real connection with this card because of how I’m supposed to play my offsuit connectors. But Mike probably has a different idea of how he plays his own range, so if Mike thinks he has Jack-Eight off and 6-8 off pre-flop, and 9-4 suited and stuff like that, sure. Do I think it makes sense to lead on a card that actually connects with in-position's equity holdings? Like, this guy could have just picked up a double gutter with King-Jack, a nut gutter with King-Queen, or an open-ender with Queen-Jack.
He certainly could have had nines in that small c-bet—that’s pretty… I would check it back, but it's a pretty natural hand, maybe for someone a little bit less experienced in these post-flop ICM scenarios, or somebody that just doesn’t want to check it here as strongly as I’m suggesting, to just maybe throw out that C-bet.
In any case, Mike does lead bet 8.5 million. Now, this is where I’m just Chex-Mix brewed, kind of watching, interested.
Okay, small C-bet lead. This is where I’m kind of like, “Alright, this is probably a difficult spot with some value hands. You might need to make an uncomfortable jam, because if Mike is doing this, he can have so many different open-enders, gutters, whatever the case may be—flush draws—that you want to deny."
Now we get hit with, like, basically a min-raise, and now I’m like, “Did he just turn pocket nines?”
If I had pocket nines, I’d still be kind of scared of letting rivers roll off at this SPR; it’s not that comfortable. Now I’m like, “Well, what makes sense here?" Pocket tens, pocket nines, Jacks, Queens, Kings, Aces—definitely not right. We don't want to let him peel all these different hands he could have, like a pair, straight draw, a flush draw, a straight draw, pair plus flush draw, or just a bare sort of Queen-Jack hand. It’s not very fun to let him peel any of those.
So I don’t put him on—I’m thinking this is stone-nutted to either top set or he has turned middle set, which we also don’t think he’s going to… I said he might c-bet that, but it's you know, I would just think that most players check back nines, needing zero protection, not getting much value, and playing really badly against the check raise.
Now from Mike's perspective, he might have thought a primary bluff could have been King-Jack. Although, when I think about using King-Jack as a bluff, I feel like that’s just too much equity on the turn to put in 20 with 53 back. That’s so uncomfortable unless you’re positive that Mike isn’t going to play jams, which why would you ever give that read on Mike? He’s just the number one guy that you don’t really know what he’s going to do.
We have the luxury of sitting there watching and just looking at the screen, being like, "What’s going on here?" But if I think about everything put together, my hand as Mike gets really good really fast because I’m kind of just like, “This guy’s value hand is top set here.” The Queen is irrelevant, right? He didn’t have pocket Queens; he didn’t raise a bluff with a Queen and then value jam the river. It’s not Queen-Nine suited, it’s not Queen-Ten, it’s not Ace-Queen of clubs—it’s just a set or a bluff in my opinion.
There’s no straight he can have; I don’t think many players are willing to take that double gutter with a hand that also includes King-Jack. Versus Mike’s bluffs, King-Jack is still good with high cards, and its six outs might actually win versus a pair, right? Mike can definitely take this small bet line with some 10x hands, like he did, and then your Kings and Jacks are good.
So to me, it wouldn’t make too much sense to have King-Jack. It’s really difficult to think about these things in-game. All the things I said about Mike getting shredded by this kid are pretty much a joke because this is a really impossible spot. I’m sitting there after busting the tournament, I’m just looking at it and thinking, “I don’t know how, but it seems like this kid probably has it because he’s playing for giant money against one of the greatest players of all time, and he’s running a bluff that looks like it makes complete sense.”
He’s a stone-cold killer. He’s looking the same since the hand started, and I’m just thinking like, “He’s got to have it somehow.” But how? He c-bet nines, and then he turned a set, and then he basically min-raised or pocket tens, or here we go? Mike stares him down like he’s not giving anything up.
Mike pitches it—he’s just got the red Ace-Jack! Baby, let’s go!
It’s a straight blocker kind of, but I mean, unbelievable! I would say he probably just made the read: “Man, this guy’s probably not bluffing me in this spot right now because it’s a gigantic spot, and I’m Mike Addamo.” But you know what, man? These young guys don’t care anymore; they just don’t care. They’re coming after us.
So it’s good to know. Thanks for watching, and we’ll be back with part two!
