$11 NLHE MTT Deep Stacked: awkward check raising

https://www.weaktight.com/h/5cd93578d3904385068b45b9
Hello! on the flop, Im in a awkward spot given that on one hand ,my hand needs a lot protection , on other hand the villian has a lot of Ks and middle pairs in his range. what ,do you think, would be the action here??

On action never enough

serna said:

https://www.weaktight.com/h/5cd93578d3904385068b45b9
Hello! on the flop, Im in a awkward spot given that on one hand ,my hand needs a lot protection , on other hand the villian has a lot of Ks and middle pairs in his range. what ,do you think, would be the action here??

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Thank you for posting.

There are many spots where a single action is ineffective. This is one of those spots. If we raise or call we must take another action on the turn. Betting or calling again. The villain still has bluffs on the turn as well as better hands. Very few villains are just going to give up after betting into 2 players on KK2 we need to know this.


We also must know how to play a hand like 42 postflop if we are going to call there. That flop is not THE flop. I might suggest avoiding these spots preflop until you know how to play it well post flop.

Hope this helps

That's a fold on the flop.

eetenor said:

Thank you for posting.

There are many spots where a single action is ineffective. This is one of those spots. If we raise or call we must take another action on the turn. Betting or calling again. The villain still has bluffs on the turn as well as better hands. Very few villains are just going to give up after betting into 2 players on KK2 we need to know this.


We also must know how to play a hand like 42 postflop if we are going to call there. That flop is not THE flop. I might suggest avoiding these spots preflop until you know how to play it well post flop.

Hope this helps

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Thanks for answer but could you tell me more reasons

Ranges and position.

serna said:

Thanks for answer but could you tell me more reasons

Click to expand...

Thank you for responding.

As I stated in my title there are two main reasons not to play 42 in that spot.

1 Position: We have the worst position vs 2 villains not just one. As played you had to check fold turn as your villain can put pressure on you with any hand 33 44 etc. A3 who knows. Good villains can call and bluff any weakness. NL is not just about making hands.

2 Hand Ranges. Good villains do not put their villains (you) on only having a K when you check raise. In fact with a board of KK2 a good villain would be thinking why raise a K. The villain would then call and see what you did on the turn. So to sell a K you would have to bet turn and shove river if villain has AA or QQ to get them to fold 80% of the time. That is why I said this was not a one action flop.

A bad villain just calls hoping you do not have a K therefore you must take the same betting pattern but a bad villain might call river. How many times have you seen AA or QQ just lose their stacks hoping no K?

Not THE flop for you hand. If you call with 42 you want a baby flop 436 etc this way you can represent 44 33 66 57 55 or a flush draw.
Then when you check raise the flop you can improve to the nuts or bluff turn and river when cards good for your range come even when you miss.

KK2 you represent K why check raise? 22 that is it. No turn card helps that range.

Are you really going to check raise 66 OOP and then play for stacks when called. Remember the villain bet KK2 into 2 players. Both of you should have K's in your preflop calling range but why would either of you raise the flop? There are no draws why protect a K?

I hope this helps. If you have any more questions please be specific.

I would not check raise this flop. you can't really rep anything. and why turn bottom pair into a bluff? it might be ahead right now.

I would check call flop and re-evaluate on turn.

please note....24s is nearing the bottom of our BB defend range but we still CAN defend it....however if we would consider check folding this flop, then we should NOT be defending hands like this. It's a marginal defend and you can choose whether to call or fold preflop based on the skill level of your opponents and relative to how confident you are in proceeding with bottom pair post flop (since usually you will just have bottom pair or worse when you defend 24s).

Fold flop, UTG c-bets into 3 ppland bottom pair with backdoor FD not realy worth.

I disagree with everybody here and think that OP played this hand very well.

Preflop, easy call. We have more than enough equity to make a call.

Flop. At this kind of flops you have a lot of hands, like small pairs and small pocket pairs, in your range that hate to see turn and river and you can't really fold them. Even your flush draws also don't want to go to turn that much, because villain can hit full houses with his pocket pairs. Correct strategy here is to never call and play fold or check raise. You would check raise with Kx, all pairs, flush draws and some Ax hands with back door straight draw, like A5, A3 or AT, AJ. Obviously we check raise 2x hands too.

Turn. Once we check-raised and villain called, we can not continue with our whole range, most of our small pairs should check turn and give up. Villain's range is full of strong pocket pairs and Kx hands. We also should check some of our Kx hands and some of our flush draws to protect checking range, otherwise we would check-fold 100%. 2x hands also lies in our check folding range. Question is what hands we use to bluff? Obviously we will have some flush draws, but we also want pure bluffs, because if we hit our flush on the river we will not have bluffs. So, to bluff turn I suggest strong Ax hands: AQ, AJ, AT. You block AK and you also can hit pair with your kicker on the river.

Overall OP played this hand perfectly. Don't listen to previous posters, piosolver plays this spot exactly like you. In fact, this hand actually shows that you are better than most CC members and shouldn't really be asking for advise here.