Owen Messere, aka Prodigy on CoinPoker, is officially the cash game world champion. He finished first in CoinPoker's leaderboard, which literally featured all the best cash game players in the world, battling over multiple weeks.
Owen managed to win $681,000 in 43,000 hands with stakes being mostly $50/100 and some $100/200. That is a win rate of likely more than 10 big blinds per 100, which would be incredible at any stake, let alone against the best players in the world.
So, today, we're looking at a genius play that he made and how you can recreate it in your games. But to fully understand it, we have to look at the concept behind it first. It's something that beginners get wrong all the time, and advanced players don't make use of often enough. If you apply it more often, it'll prevent you from losing big pots as often and win more money in big pots.
Let's check it out and see what it is. Owen opens $7,500 on the button and gets called by the big blind, who is Barak Wisbrod, one of the biggest cash game winners in recent years.
The flop is , two spades, and as for most 9-high two-spade flops, a big bet is preferred as a c-bet size. The solver favors a 75% pot bet here, but if you're consistent with your whole range, a bigger size will do as well, which is what Owen chooses. This overbet would be used with around 40% of your range, so a bit less often than if you use the 75% pot bet.
The big blind, of course, has to play differently against the 75% bet than against an overbet. The main difference is that they have to call significantly less often when facing an overbet.
So, for you as the button, one factor for deciding on your c-bet sizing is how you perceive the big blind to react against it. If you think your opponent would overfold against the 75% bet, for example, because they wouldn't find these King and Queen high calls, you might want to go for that sizing. If you think they would make bigger mistakes against an overbet, like calling too often with these low pairs or if you think they would not check-raise often enough, you might want to go for an overbet as your size.
Barak calls, and we see a on the turn with a seven-high flush draw, but also checking would be fine here.
Owen goes for a 2/3 pot bet when the solver clearly prefers a 1/3 sizing. This is a spot where the big blind has a lot of flushes because he would just call most flush draws against the overbet on the flop. The button has more sets, overpairs, and two pairs, so a small bet size benefits these hands more and prevents putting in too much money against the flush-heavy range.
If the big blind deviated from GTO by check-raising more flush draws on the flop, however, they would end up with less flushes on the turn, and then the big blind could bet bigger. Whether that was Owen's read of the spot or he simply thought Barak would have more trouble playing against the 2/3 pot bet, or he simply misevaluated the spot, we don't know. In any case, against the 66% bet, Barack would want to check-raise some flushers but also some sets in the form of pocket nines, as well as bluffs. These bluffs would come from offsuit Aces of Spades and six-fives with a spade, so a quite polarized range.
Of course, we never fold a flush here, but raising is also out of the question because Barak's polarized range includes almost only hands that have either much less or much more equity than our hand, which means raising only gets rid of the low equity part while keeping in the high equity, which in this case is almost only better hands—not good.
Now on the river, Barack checks. So, when facing a check, is your first thought about which bet size to use? Do we jam the river to get max value, a medium size like 50% or 75% pot, or just a 1/3 pot bet to get some weaker hands to call? Well, that is also an option.
In fact, it is a really good option because let's think back to what we just went through about raising the turn against the polarized range and from the turn to the river—how has Barack's range changed? Not much, right? Actually, not at all. His low equity hands have even less equity now, and his high equity hands are still almost only flushers better than ours.
So, when his range consists of many flushes, some few sets, and missed bluffs, we need to ask ourselves what are we getting called by if we bet?
Are we getting called by missed draws? No. Are we getting called by flushes? Well, yes, but since six-two suited is not in the big blind's range in the simulation, there are literally only better flushes possible than our 7-5 suited, which leaves the only hands that are worse than ours and might call to be sets. And in this sim, only pocket nines would sometimes raise the turn and only a fraction of them would call the river, which would be even enough to make a 7-5 bet sometimes in theory.
But when you're playing against a real opponent who isn't a high-stakes player, think about how often you really expect them to check-raise a set on the turn after check-calling an overbet on the flop.
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If the answer is never, then that should also be the answer to how often you want to bet the river at the same time. A lower-stakes player might not slow-play a flush that often on the river, or even never, and that would make betting your flush more profitable because you'd lose the pot less often when you bet. But still, there would need to be some hands worse that call you. Whatever is the case for you, it's important to make sure that you're not playing your hand for its hand class value but to think about how strong it really is against your opponent's calling range.
While this is a rather beginner concept to pay attention to, looking at it from the other side of the coin shows what even advanced players can improve on.
Owen opens the small blind with and gets caught by AbsoluteTopUp on the flop. He c-bets 25% pot, which could be done with his entire range since he has all the high cards in his spot, and the big blind doesn't. He has a huge range advantage on the flop, and because of that fact, the big blind would almost never raise here in theory.
So, AbsoluteTopUp calls, and the turn is a . Now, the range advantage shifted; the small blind's range still includes 100% of hands, while the worst of the big blind's hands were filtered out on the flop, which forces the small blind to mostly check.
Still. the nut advantage is on the small blind's side; hands like Aces, Kings, Queens, and Ace-King will never be in the big blind's range, and King-Queen and Jack-10 are counted as they sometimes three-bet pre-flop.
Now, the small blind can bet sometimes either for an overbet to really push the nut advantage or for another small bet to go for thinner value, facing another small bet. Because of the shifted range advantage, TopUp can now raise more often than on the flop; however, the exact amount heavily depends on how Owen plays his turn range. If he only uses the small size for every hand that he bets, he still has a big part of his nut hands in that range. If he goes for a range split, as in this sim, so using one part of this range to bet small and another part to overbet, the range that bets small naturally includes less nut hands, and in that case, TopUp could raise more often than in the other scenario. He does just call, and the river is a .
And Owen goes for a small bet once again here. Any bet size would be fine in theory; AX hands would prefer betting small, and trips and better would mix big and small bets. At this point, after having faced three small 25% pot bets, every King-X and better in TopUp's range would want to raise for value 100% of the time, and even some AX hands would do so. They are joined by some bluffs, many being missed Jack-A and 10-X straight draws, but also some low pairs and even Queen-X would bluff raises to get some AX hands in the small blind's range to fold.
So, with King-8, we are pretty much in no man's land; we don't have to decide whether we must fold, but similar to the hand before, we don't want to reopen this time by raising because that would only get us caught by better hands. Or would it?
Well, this is where elite players separate themselves from good players because this is different.
As we've already established, the big blind doesn't have many nut hands on this board in the first place because Queens, Kings, Aces, and Ace-King would always three-bet, and King-Queen and Jack-10 would sometimes, which means the amount of better hands is limited.
Besides King-Queen and Jack-10, there are, of course, some higher King-X hands possible—King-Jack, King-10, and King-9—but what's really cool here is that King-Jack and King-10 would actually be bad hands to call the jam with in TopUp's shoes because which hands would be our most frequent bluffs when we jam? Exactly, Jack-X and 10-X hands. So, when King-Jack and King-10 block bluffs, they are actually worse hands to call a jam with than lower King-X like King-9 to King-3. If you don't expect your opponent to jam medium King-X hands, which means jamming King-8 might actually get better hands to fold and worse hands to call at the same time—a genius play that is part of the solver's strategy but is extremely hard to find for a human.
For the solver, calling is still the preferred option, but the fact that the value of jamming isn't much lower than calling means that if anything in the big blind's range slightly changes, jamming can quickly become the best play. That would be if TopUp calls King-X slightly more often against the jam or if he has less nut hands in his river range because he'd raised them more often on an earlier street or a bigger bet against the river block.
So, what we can learn from Owen's plays is that we want to think twice about how good our hand really is before we make the standard play. Think about how many better or worse hands you will get caught by if you bet or raise. How many of each does your opponent have, and how many would they fold or call against your bet or raise? Against the polarized range, betting or raising for thin value isn't the best idea, whereas against the condensed range that includes many medium hands, you can squeeze out much more by betting and raising thinner. You increase the risk, but also the return.
Just make sure, no matter how genius your play is, that you're not only preparing for the return but also for the risk, of course.
