$.25 NLHE MTT: $$0.25 NLHE MTT: KTs Mid Position Flop Top Pair & Flush Draw

The Villain is chip leader and has been playing fairly loose but not too aggressively, in fact he had folded to my previous 3 raised hands, then this:


https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/824CUWkOR

I am fine with raising pre flop and the sizing. The bet on the flop is the correct amount imo but when he raises us and just min raises us we can narrow villains range. At this point the worst hand I see him with is Ax spades here. Especially since min raises are rarely bluffs and usually a sign of strength. I see a lot of 2 pair combos, 97 for the made straight and sets (I discounted over pairs here expecting him to 3 bet pre with those). Against all of those we are not doing well except that we are ahead of Ax spades and flipping but barely ahead of A7 and A9 spades and actually ahead slightly against 86. The rest we are 30-40% against depending on the hand. With all that being said I would lean towards taking the passive approach and just calling the min raise, taking the good price and seeing if I can hit the flush on the turn instead of jamming. There is nothing that should be in his range that we are crushing (maybe J9 spades exception) so I wouldn't want to get my money all in here. If I missed the flush on the turn I think I would be check folding which I know is weak but I just see villains range beating a one pair hand.

Preflop
The first thing to always look at in a tournament poker hand is stack sizes. In this situation you have 3 players with rejam stacks behind you, and you have the chip leader on BTN, which is the best seat on the table. For both these reasons I prefer to let a marginal hand like KTs go from this position.

If you are going to play, you should size down to 2,5BB or even a mini-raise, so that you lose less, when you have to fold to a 3-bet. It is also nice to already think about, who you are going to call, if they 3-bet, and in this spot that is probably only SB at most, since he has less than 10BB.

Postflop
You could just call his mini-raise, but turns and river can get a bit awkward, if you dont improve. Getting it in takes away his positional advantage and his opportunity to "bully" you with his stack, so I am totally on board with this. Of course you will sometimes be behind, when he call you, but that is baked into the math, and 40% equity is certainly not the end of the world. Just sad that you were unable to improve on any of your many outs, but thats poker.