$1.50 NLHE STT Turbo: All in on river with TPTK deep-stacked

Winning Poker Network (Yatahay) - 10/20 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 110.35 BB (VPIP: 66.67, PFR: 33.33, 3Bet Preflop: 50.00, hands: 6)
SB: 77.65 BB (VPIP: 16.67, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 6)
BB: 85.5 BB (VPIP: 16.67, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 6)
Hero (UTG): 62 BB
MP: 69.5 BB (VPIP: 25.98, PFR: 15.57, 3Bet Preflop: 7.89, Hands: 128)
CO: 45 BB (VPIP: 60.00, PFR: 40.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 6)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has A♠Q♠

Hero raises to 2.9 BB, fold, fold, BTN calls 2.9 BB, fold, BB calls 1.9 BB

Flop: (9.2 BB, 3 players) 7♥2♠8♠
BB bets 4.6 BB, Hero calls 4.6 BB, fold

Turn: (18.4 BB, 2 players) Q♦
BB bets 9.2 BB, Hero calls 9.2 BB

River: (36.8 BB, 2 players) 3♦
BB bets 9.2 BB, Hero raises to 45.3 BB and is all-in

6-max SNG on ACR, top two players win prizes.

What do we think about hero's line here? Raise the flop or turn? Call, or raise smaller, on river? What is villain's range on river?

villains range should be 8x or some random pocket pair I guess. Not the fan of raise on the river, villain won't call with anything worse than your hand. Just call.

liuouhgkres said:

villain won't call with anything worse than your hand. Just call.

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I expected to see that argument, and you might be correct, but I'm not so sure.

Villain is getting good pot odds, which is an argument for him to call with a weaker hand.

My raise is significant compared to the size of the villain's remaining stack, early in the tournament, which is an argument for him to consider folding two pair.

That 1/4 stack bet by the villain on the river, when I have been calling all the way, does not show confidence.
That, plus the villain's donk bets, makes me think that this is an inexperienced player, and that putting him to the test here has a good chance of inducing a mistake - either of calling when he shouldn't, or folding when he shouldn't.

@AlexTheOwl,
you shouldn't want him to make two opposite types of mistakes. Here you either are bluffing or making value bet, not both at the same time. Considering action, AQ might be thin value bet, but I don't think it worth risk.

think your initial raise is fine, pretty standard. I would have raised BB's bet on the flop tho. better to keep control of the betting. easy to put villain on same hand as you but also, kq, qj, pocket pair, since his stats show him to be a bit passive. your river raise does seem to be quite high for a value bet, villain might see it as a bluff, which is a good thing if he has a weaker hand. not so good if he has two pair. think I would have raised to pot only. but I am a pretty cautious player. so, how did it turn out?

AlexTheOwl said:

What do we think about hero's line here? Raise the flop or turn? Call, or raise smaller, on river? What is villain's range on river?

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I think its pretty aweful. What hands do you get value from here?

To answer that: what range of hands of hands does BB donk lead/tripple barrel with? Which of those hands call a jam? I can think of about 5 hands he does this with. You can beat 2 of those hands and and 1 of those hands that you beat are calling you. So out of the 4 hands that he calls with, hes crushing you with 3 out of the 4. This is of course simplified not accpunting for combinatorics but combonatorics isnt necessary here.

When you bet, you have to ask yourself what worse hands call and what percent of his range does he have me beat with. No sense in betting if you are never getting better hands to fold or worse hands to call.

Froggee, bb doesnt donk flop with kq pr qj

liuouhgkres said:

@AlexTheOwl,
you shouldn't want him to make two opposite types of mistakes.

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Why not?

This hand isn't a perfect example of a range merge, since a range merge is usually best executed against a player who is more readable and more sophisticated than this one seems to be, and on a wetter board. But the same basic logic applies.

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/19774-explain-poker-like-i-m-five-range-merging

mbrenneman0 said:

what range of hands of hands does BB donk lead/tripple barrel with?

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That is truly a mystery, especially because of that weird river bet. I can't name a single hand that I would consider well played by the villain here.

mbrenneman0 said:

Which of those hands call a jam? I can think of about 5 hands he does this with. You can beat 2 of those hands and and 1 of those hands that you beat are calling you. So out of the 4 hands that he calls with, hes crushing you with 3 out of the 4. This is of course simplified not accpunting for combinatorics but combonatorics isnt necessary here.

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What are the 4 or 5 hands?

My best guess is that he's being stubborn with 99-JJ or AK.
AQ, A7, A2, A8, 78s, Q8, or a busted flush draw are all also possibilities.
For any of those individual possibilities I can make a good argument about why he probably does not have those cards.But he's got to have something. The only thing I'm confident of is that he was dealt two cards pre-flop.

mbrenneman0 said:

When you bet, you have to ask yourself what worse hands call and what percent of his range does he have me beat with. No sense in betting if you are never getting better hands to fold or worse hands to call.

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See post #3

froggeedogs said:

think your initial raise is fine, pretty standard. I would have raised BB's bet on the flop tho.
. . .
so, how did it turn out?

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Sometimes I would raise that hand on the flop, sometimes call.

I'd be more likely to semi-bluff raise against a c-bet then against a donk bet, since c-bets are often made with air, but donk bets usually indicate a real hand.

Also, this early in the tournament, I am hoping my high implied odds with the flush and overcards will help me win a large pot on the turn or river. I don't want villain to fold here, I want to make a good hand and take more of his chips.

Villain folded and did not show.

so i thought of a few more hands besides the 5 i initially thought of.

but like you said, donk bets usually indicate a real hand... they could also indicate flush draws or total garbage... so right of the bat, he's fully polarized his range. by the time we get to the river, he either has total garbage. a few (like really, not a lot compared to the rest of his range) 8x hands that might call, although he might also fold those hands to a shove when the queen comes and the rest are monsters, sets, overpairs, 2 pairs. so when you shove, youre getting called by better most of the time and called by worse rarely.

on the river, all of his flush draws fold to your bet, a lot of his weaker 8x folds to your bet, (we also dont want to include all of his 8x because it somewhat simulates the amount of times he folds 8x)

id pretty much limit his calling range to J8-A8, 87, JJ+, 88, 77, and 22, of these hands, youre only beating J8, K8 A8, and JJ the rest are way ahead.

Something good for you to read about is the WAWB concept. it stands for way ahead or way behind and basically means its bad to bet when youre either way ahead or way behind because it eliminates all or most of the hands youre ahead of from your opponents range

check out this link, great explaination: http://www.thepokerbank.com/strategy/concepts/way-ahead-way-behind/

even if youre already familiar with the WAWB concept, i would suggest reading up on that link anyway because its a great refresher

mbrenneman0 said:

id pretty much limit his calling range to J8-A8, 87, JJ+, 88, 77, and 22, of these hands, youre only beating J8, K8 A8, and JJ the rest are way ahead.

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Let's give him the calling range that you suggest. My equity is 41%. It doesn't sound like a good bet.

Now let's think about how to weigh the hands in that range.

If he's way ahead, what is he thinking when he makes that tiny river bet? I've put chips in the pot at every opportunity.

Since I can't really make any sense out of his line, I can't entirely rule out the idea that he is way ahead. But I'm very skeptical of the idea that he feels he is way ahead, but has suddenly, for no apparent reason, grown shy about asking me for chips.

This is the lowest buy-in STT offered on this network, I've never seen this player before, and he is acting erratically. He's making some kind of mistake, but which kind?

As noted earlier, I think he is overvaluing a pair, most likely a pocket pair, or AK. Players at this level often have trouble letting these hands go.
A significantly less likely scenario is that he's got two pair or AA or KK, and is not feeling comfortable, and therefore might mistakenly fold.
The least likely scenario is that he is both way ahead and feeling confident, yet chooses to make a very small river bet.

So although I am behind in equity against his calling range, I think I have good reason to weigh that range toward hands that I beat, and I may have some fold equity against hands that beat me. I believe that makes the bet marginally profitable.

I think youre over thinking it at this point. if you cant make sense of his line, then how can you possibly expect to weight his range with any sort of sense?

also, your equity calculation of 40% equity is only preflop, when you plug in the board to the equity calculator, you get 53% but the point is that youre not getting value, and all youre doing is multiplying your degree of variance without adding anything to your EV. and of course, by virtue of this being based on incomplete information, the range that we've assigned isnt perfect, and it doesnt take much adjusting to swing that equity one way or the other. What if, for example, we've made a mistake in assuming his range, and he doesnt call with any one pair 8x hands? in that case, we've gone from 53% equity, to 15% equity against his calling range, and now our bet has just cost us the tournament...

mbrenneman0 said:

I think youre over thinking it at this point. if you cant make sense of his line, then how can you possibly expect to weight his range with any sort of sense?

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There is no contradiction.

The villain's line is not well played for any hand that I can think of. He is making some kind of mistake. In this way, the villain's play does not "make sense".

It is the hero's job to figure out what mistake is probably being made, and how to profit from it, if possible. Essentially, to construct a range and weigh it properly. Doing so is far from impossible.

mbrenneman0 said:

also, your equity calculation of 40% equity is only preflop, when you plug in the board to the equity calculator, you get 53%

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You are right, thanks for the correction. Dumb mistake.

mbrenneman0 said:

but the point is that youre not getting value, and all youre doing is multiplying your degree of variance without adding anything to your EV. and of course, by virtue of this being based on incomplete information, the range that we've assigned isnt perfect, and it doesnt take much adjusting to swing that equity one way or the other. What if, for example, we've made a mistake in assuming his range, and he doesnt call with any one pair 8x hands? in that case, we've gone from 53% equity, to 15% equity against his calling range, and now our bet has just cost us the tournament...

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I think we are beginning to go around in circles here, although your point about the value of survival in a tournament is new to this discussion and legitimate.

As in many hand analysis, it is possible to construct one range that is within the realm of possibility that makes a bet profitable, and another plausible one which does not. Figuring out which range is most likely, and weighing hands within it correctly, i.e. hand reading, is a crucial skill in poker.
We can't just say "various things are possible" and leave it at that, if we take the game seriously.
Although we can allow our degree of confidence in a read to influence our decisions.

My best read, based on the player's actions and the context of the game, is that he mostly has pocket pairs or AK, is behind, and may be overvaluing his starting hand enough / may be enough of a calling station to call a pot-sized raise.
I think it's unlikely that he is ahead, and there is some chance, small but not insignificant, that he will fold some hands where he is ahead.

I've given my reasons for that read, and they continue to seem reasonable to me.
I could be wrong.
But you haven't pointed out any way in which they are unreasonable, although you are clearly a thinking player who holds a different opinion.

AlexTheOwl said:

We can't just say "various things are possible" and leave it at that, if we take the game seriously.

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I feel like theres a quantum physics joke in here somewhere 🤔

But... we can say that, especially when we only have 6 hands on the player.

You want to make better reads? What information did you get from villains fold? Lets pretend you called, do you know what happens when you call? The last person to bet in a showdown shows their cards first. Now, we know what villain had and we can put a note on him in our HUD and next time he does it we actually can make that read that youre trying to make and base it on actual information.

If your argument is that there is no way to be sufficiently confident about my read in this spot to risk 36BB on it, I respectfully disagree. Your argument is reasonable, but I think that would be excessively cautious.

If you are suggesting that I should value information more highly than chips in a turbo STT against a random player, whom I may nearly eliminate from the tournament, and whom I may well never see again, you have lost your mind. Getting to see the players cards here is such a minor benefit that it has no bearing on my decision.

Fair enough.

If I were a betting man though I'd wager that you find yourself often in situations where you put a lot of chips in against a hand that has you dominated.

Anyways, GG. Not sure if youre looking for advice or just to prove yourself right. If its advice youre looking for, here it is. Otherwise, well..

mbrenneman0 said:

If I were a betting man though I'd wager that you find yourself often in situations where you put a lot of chips in against a hand that has you dominated.

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It's a good thing you're not a betting man.

I expected that this hand would spark a debate. I thought I made the right play here, but was open to being convinced otherwise, as I have been before in this section of the forum. I got what I hoped for.

@AlexTheOwl,
actually on the river small bet makes sense with some kind of strong hands, like set or two pair, showing weakness, trying to make you call or even induce a bluff from you. When you see small bet on the river, don't rule out monsters from his range. Alsoregardles of his range, he is not calling with weaker hands, maybe Qx will call, but there are not many of those in his range. So by raising you are not gaining anythhin, and risking additional 36bb practically for nothing.

liuouhgkres said:

@AlexTheOwl,
actually on the river small bet makes sense with some kind of strong hands, like set or two pair, showing weakness, trying to make you call or even induce a bluff from you.

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That's true. He'd be outsmarting himself by making that play against an almost unknown opponent, but he could be making that mistake. The donk on the flop doesn't make much sense if he flopped a big hand, but maybe he improved on the turn or river, or maybe he's just erratic.

liuouhgkres said:

Alsoregardles of his range, he is not calling with weaker hands, maybe Qx will call, but there are not many of those in his range. So by raising you are not gaining anythhin, and risking additional 36bb practically for nothing.

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I see this "he'll only call with better" argument too often regarding tournament and cash hand analysis in the micros.
It's a valid argument in certain spots, and against certain players. Here, it's a pot-sized raise against an unknown player. Many players at this level call when they should not. It's the #1 flaw of players at the micros.