Was David Coleman’s EPT Barcelona Main Event Hero Call GTO Wizard Approved?

The 2024 European Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event wrapped up a fantastic summer of poker, featuring one of the year’s most exciting final tables.

Rania Nasreddine became the ninth player in history to make back-to-back EPT Main Event final tables, while eventual champion Stephen Song enjoyed a run of luck to take home the title. However, a standout moment from the final table was David Coleman’s bust-out hand, where the American hero-called for his tournament life with just five players left.

Coleman, whose 2024 consists of six tournament wins and has $4,026,694 in MTT earnings, is known for his sharp poker mind. But was his hero call in this hand GTO-approved? We reached out to GTO Wizard for their latest GTO Wizard Hand Analysis to find out.

GTO Wizard: How to Play Pocket Jacks

The Hand

According to the PokerNews reporting, Andrew Hulme raised to 1,100,000 in the small blind, and David Coleman called from the big blind.

Coleman called a bet of 750,000 on the J♠3♠3♣ flop, which brought in the 2♦ turn. Hulme sized up to 1,450,000, good for a third of Coleman’s 4,450,000 stack. The American called to bring the pot to 7,000,000.

The A♠ completed the board, and Hulme jammed as the bigger stack. Coleman called for his tournament life, and the cards were tabled.

Hulme tabled Q♠Q♥ for queens and threes, and it was good for knockout as Coleman had J♣9♠.

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GTO Wizard Analysis

Coleman made a huge hero call for his tournament life at the EPT Barcelona, but was it GTO? Here’s what GTO Wizard had to say about how the hand played out.

Here, we can see that jack-nine offsuit is almost always folded in GTO-land, while the rest of our Jx call more often, even with a weaker kicker.

No matter if we solve the spot in ICM (independent chip model) or cEV (chip expected value), Coleman’s combo is far from ideal. Since other second pairs call more often, it indicates that our hand has poor blockers to bluff-catch. When bluff-catching, we want to block as little bluffs of our opponent’s range as possible.

Notice how the 9♣ is preferred by the solver in this spot. Let’s rewind the hand and look at how Hulme should bluff the turn to understand what bluffs he gets to the river with. That way, we will discover why the 9♣ is better to call in this spot.

It should be clear by now that clubs are the least occurring bluff on the turn, but why is that? Once Hulme bets the flop and gets called, he needs to check the turn more often with clubs because these hands block Coleman’s (in position’s) missed backdoor flush draws that fold to a bet on the turn.

J♦9♣ and J♥9♣ are favored as calls on the river in both cEV and ICM solutions, because Hulme gets there with fewer clubs after the turn double barrel.

Having that information, we can deduce that holding a club as the big blind on the river makes it mathematically more likely that the small blind is bluffing since most of his bluffs use other suits which aren’t blocked by the 9♣.

Conclusion

Coleman’s hero call was slightly loose, considering his blockers. In poker theory, he shouldn’t be blocking bluffs when bluff-catching. Most likely, it was just an oversight or exploitative adjustment, but nonetheless, it was a tough spot to play correctly.

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Calum has been a part of the PokerNews team since September 2021 after working in the UK energy sector. He played his first hand of poker in 2017 and immediately fell in love with the game. Calum has written for various poker outlets but found his home at PokerNews, where he has contributed to various articles and live updates, providing insights and reporting on major poker events, including the World Series of Poker (WSOP).

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