Welcome to the second in a regular series of articles using Octopi Poker to examine key hands from the world's biggest tournaments to celebrate great players making incredible plays. This time, we examine three key hands from Joao Vieira's win in the $150K Triton Poker Super High Roller Series in Jeju, starting with this one against Dan Smith.
Joao Vieira triumphed in the $150K No-Limit Hold'em signature event at Triton Jeju in March, earning his first Triton title and a career-best score of $4,610,000. He navigated a record-breaking field of 128 entrants to enter the final table, stacked with poker’s biggest names, as the chip leader and ultimately claim victory.
This win highlights Vieira's increasing success in high-stakes live tournaments. A three-part analysis will delve into three crucial final table hands, demonstrating Vieira's impressive skills, particularly his ability to make smart and bold decisions on the river.
These hands, along with related preflop and postflop simulations, can be found in the Octopi Vault (professional subscription required).
Part 1: Dan Smith vs. Joao Vieira
Payouts & ICM implications
The payout structure at any final table significantly affects decision-making due to ICM considerations. This final table featured linear pay jumps of 33% from 8th to 3rd place, with steeper 50% jumps to 2nd and 1st.
In this hand, short-stacked Alex Foxen (12bb) faces minimal ICM pressure, while chip leader Joao Vieira at 62.5bb, roughly twice as much as the middle stacks, can exert maximum pressure.
The middle stacks, including Dan Smith who is 6/8 with 26.5bb at the start of the hand, have to play cautiously against the chip leader. Yet Smith is mindful that doubling up through Vieira will make him the chip leader and a prime contender for the top prizes. These dynamics create complex river decisions.
Preflop action
The hand begins with blinds of 50K/100K/100K. Dan (U7), holding 26.6bbs, raises to 2.3bbs with 
, while Joao (BB), the clear chip leader with 63.5bbs, calls with 
. We can analyze their strategies using the custom sim from Octopi Vault to determine if they played correctly and to glean insights into their ranges for post-flop analysis.
Preflop range analysis
Dan, as Under-the-Gun-7, plays a tight opening strategy, raising only 14% of his range, and uses a large raise size of 2.3bb to discourage Joao’s defense. His open range consists of:
- All suited aces (A2s+)
- All suited broadways
- Best offsuit hands, ATo+ / KQo
- Mid-to-high pocket pairs, 88+
As the chip leader in the Big Blind, Joao employs a broad defensive strategy, calling all the suited combos except 72s and selectively using a small 3-bet to 6.8bb with a polarized range.
ICM and stack-depth considerations are shaping the ranges, with no shoves or excessive aggression preflop from either player.
The flop
Joao, BB: Check
Dan, U7: Bet 2.5BB, 42% of pot
Joao: Call
The 
flop is low and semi-connected, featuring a flush draw. It’s a good flop for the Big Blind, however U7 maintains a significant range-on-range advantage due to overpairs and various high cards.
ICM considerations demand that both players follow a broad principle of 'collaborative passivity,' using frequent checks and small bets, and occasional giant bets, deliberately minimizing the risks of busting inherent in getting tangled up in big pots.
Under the 'chip EV' GTO model used for early stages of the tournaments, Big Blind would purely check this flop, and U7 would bet about 70% of the time, mixing 25% and 66% pot size bets. However, under the ICM model, the strategies look very different!
Using Octopi’s Side-by-Side Range Explorer, we can see the flop strategies for both players:
Joao, as a CL, is allowed to lead 8% of the time, and his specific hand, , leads almost 12% of the time.
In return, Dan plays passively as well, checking 79% of his range. If there is any betting going on, it’s either a small bet for 25% of the pot, or a giant 4x jam that seeks to end the hand here and now.
TT/JJ/A9 and AJo/ATo/KJo with a diamond benefit from this strategy the most. While 
mostly jams. Dan’s exact hand, , mostly checks or bets small to deny equity.
As played, Dan decides to go with a bigger bet of 42%. In response, is a pure call, as played.
The turn
Joao, BB: Check
Dan, U7: Check
The 
turn greatly benefits the BB and makes even Dan’s strong hands, which are mostly pairs, feel pretty uncomfortable. Joao should lead frequently (79%) to leverage his range advantage, apply pressure to overpairs and high cards, and deny equity to marginal hands.
Joao’s exact hand, , is so strong that it can bet or check, protecting the checking range. Joao opts to check. Dan now has to slow down and...
- Check about 70% of the time
- Mix checks/small bets/jams with top pairs and overpairs
- Check or jam low pairs and flush draws
- Extract value with sets via small bet
With , Dan correctly checks behind. Here comes the river.
The river
River: 
Joao, BB: Bet ALL-IN, 198% of pot
Dan, U7: Fold
If the turn favored Joao, then the river restored some fairness favoring Dan’s range, protected by the turn’s check back. The smacks Dan’s range full of broadways, improving to the top pair 19% of the time.
After burning a time bank in deliberation, Joao goes all-in for 198% pot, forcing Dan to weigh the risk of going home in 8th place with $595K if he is wrong with the reward of becoming a chip leader chasing $4.1M for 1st if he is right. Dan also burns a time bank before sending his top pair/effective top kicker to the muck.
With millions on the line, how did the strategies of these veterans of high stakes fare in the GTO realm?
Joao's decision to open jam the river
Joao’s hand has virtually no showdown value since Dan has 9x+ 36% of the time and Ax an additional 31%. At the same time, that entire range is capped to one pair, while Joao’s range has 16% 2P+. also has a nice property of blocking some of Dan’s best calling hands: /
/
.
Joao correctly adopts a polar strategy:
- 78% checks
- 6% overbets
- 15% jams
- 1% blocks.
His hand classes can be broken into three distinct categories:
- Effective nuts (straights/sets/2p/AJ): Mix jams and overbets with checks to induce.
- High equity hands (pairs 9 and under/AQ): Check, hoping to take the pot without risking any more chips
- Low/no equity hands (A-high/K-high/nothing): Shove or overbet to fold all medium-strength hands in Dan’s range, and max annoy the best of them!
KQs clearly falls in the 3rd category, with suits determining the nuances of the shove vs. overbet decisions, with preferring to overbet. All in all, well done, Joao!
Dan’s decision to fold
Facing a jam, along with a tournament life decision, Dan’s top pairs are mixing calls and folds in order of equity:
- AJ is always calling
- QJ is (nearly) always folding
- KJ is calling all combos except blocking the bluffs
- makes the most money by calling, around $38K, which is a nice amount but still rather small relative to the payouts
If IP starts folding its best KJ, OOP’s shoves start overperforming even better!
Beyond pure GTO, Dan might have had many reasons to overfold, taking into account a host of assumptions, from live reads to past history. We will never know for sure.
Whatever the reason, Dan’s fold was ultimately incorrect and left him with just under 22bb, and he eventually took 4th for $1.7M, while Joao’s chip lead extended, culminating later in him taking down the event for $4.6M.
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