“Fisher vs Fishhooks” – A GTO Cooler Breakdown from PSO Campione

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Apr 24, 2025 5 min read

Day 4 of March's PokerStars Open Campione Main Event saw 118 players chasing a slice of the nearly €2 million still up for grabs. The field had been whittled down from 2,423 hopefuls, as each remaining player eyed up the title.

Amid the chaos, one wild hand stood out. A postflop five-bet jam that left some onlookers scratching their heads. Was it a punt, or was it GTO-approved brilliance?

Let’s dive into the hand, break it down with GTO Wizard, and see whether Marc Fischer's line was justified or just a brutal cooler.

Was this an overplay? Or just a brutal setup? Let’s break it down.

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Preflop

With ICM pressure moderate and no immediate pay jumps, players were incentivised to play for a deep run rather than fold their way up the ladder.

Bubble factors:

• BB (Sanchioni): 1.12
• HJ (Fischer): 1.17

A bubble factor of 1.17 means busting costs 17% more ICM value than the gain from doubling up. Still, with both players above average in chips, there’s room for calculated aggression.

Fischer opens the hijack with K♥9♥, a standard and GTO-approved open.

Sanchioni, the chip leader, flat-calls with J♥J♣, which is a fine, balanced decision. Both preflop lines are solid and solver-approved.

Flop

Sanchioni flops a full house on J♠9♠9♣ while Fischer hits trips. Fisher vs Fishhooks, and the inevitable cooler ensues.

Play by Play Breakdown

Here’s the GTO Wizard AI solution if you want to follow along.

Sanchioni checks: GTO Approved ✓

Although there are some flops where the chip leader can lead out, this is a board where they should mostly check to the preflop aggressor.

Fischer continuation bets 25,000 (2.08bb): GTO Approved ✓

This is a fine spot to bet. It should be noted that the solver is playing this spot a bit passively due to Fischer’s larger c-bet size (a min-bet would be better), and because he’s covered. Although he can slow-play, a high-frequency c-bet is preferable with most trips.

As a heuristic for picking slow-plays, aim for hands that don’t gain much from generating folds, and are less vulnerable on future streets. An example of a good slow play here would be AxAx with a spade.

Sanchioni check-raises to 65,000 (5.42bb): GTO Approved ✓

The big blind should mount an aggressive defence here. Paired boards especially demand aggressive check-raising defences. As the chip leader, Sanchioni can be even more aggressive. Here, we see the solver check-raising over 20% of its range, and JxJx is no exception.

Fischer fires back with a three-bet to 160,000 (13.33bb): GTO Approved ✓

This is the first move that is even slightly questionable. So far, everything has been played perfectly.

Here we see Fischer fire back with a three-bet. This is a somewhat surprising strategy, since most players don’t three-bet much of anything here. You can see the GTO solution three-bets only 2.6% of the time in total, and about 7% of the time with this particular hand.

Perhaps Fischer thought that Sanchoni was check-raising too aggressively in this spot. However, it’s hard to be even more aggressive than the above solution. As the covered player, especially in position, you should typically flat instead of reopening the action. However, GTO does three-bet sometimes, and this hand is one of the chosen few.

Sanchioni escalates with a four-bet to 260,000 (21.66bb): GTO Approved ✓

Once Fischer reopens the action, most of Sanchioni’s strong hands are happy to keep building the pot.

It should be noted that, in theory, the out-of-position player generally prefers shorter stacks as it decreases their positional disadvantage. Although in the case of JxJx, this hand just wants to get paid.

Fischer five-bet jams: GTO Approved ✓

At this point, K♥9♥ no longer feels comfortable. A good player will realise here that there’s a good chance they are behind. In fact, GTO Wizard puts king-nine at about 64% equity facing this four-bet.

And it’s not the comfortable, 'oh, I need to fade some outs' kind of 65%. It’s the uncomfortable, you’re either up against a boat, draw, or another trips kind of 64%. It’s not a fun spot for king-nine. Whether or not Fischer felt that remains to be seen.

Regardless, once Fischer has three-bet, he's pretty much committed to this hand. It is almost impossible to justify folding trips at this stack-to-pot ratio (SPR). Even though the solver recommends calling more than jamming, calling typically ends up getting stacks in later.

So yes, this jam is GTO-approved. It’s too late to back out now; he’s gotta commit, damn the consequences.

Sanchioni snap-calls: GTO Approved ✓

This is an absolute dream spot for Sanchioni. He went in with a massive stack, flopped the nuts, and his big stacked opponent immediately committed all of their chips. What a lovely spot for the big blind, and an absolute nightmare for hijack. We can see here that Sanchioni’s $EV with jacks is +€16k (relative to folding).

Could Fischer Have Gotten Away?

Technically, yes. A more passive flop line (just calling the check-raise) could delay the action and open up the possibility of folding later. But that’s hindsight talking.

The more important truth? This hand is likely going broke in most lines. Fischer’s aggressive line might even be optimal in an exploitative sense.

Verdict

This is the definition of a cooler. Both players played GTO-approved lines. Fischer's jam commits him, and Sanchioni capitalises perfectly. Sometimes, you just hit the second-best hand on the wrong board.

Written by Tombos21 for GTO Wizard.

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