$250 NLHE MTT: Low M, check or shove spot

$250 tournament with $50K GTD, flight B bags at end of lvl 14

8 handed

Effective stack is mine at T20K, blinds 600/1200 BBA, so my M<7

EPs fold, MP limps, BTN limps, SB calls.

MP has T22K
BTN has T60K
SB has T55K

All 3 players have limp folded to raises one more than few hands. Table has been very limpy in this regard. Haven't noticed anyone limp-call with premiums yet.

I am in BB with

Shove or check?

Given that you block some of the strongest calling hands you can get called by, you can definitely shove at 16bb.

However, the best strategy would include some checking and mostly shoving. You probably don't need to be worried about the BTN and SB since they would have probably already raised if they had a premium of their own. You only need to worry about MP who may or may not have a strong enough hand to call with, but given the table dynamics, a it's likely they don't.
You might sometimes get called by a hand like 88 or AQo from BTN or SB but you'll still have lots of equity against those hands.

Otherwise, if you want to avoid any regrets of getting trapped, you may tighten your shoving range to only the hands you'd call a shove with.
For instance: if only the SB called you'd have a pretty easy shove, because you'd call a SB shove with that hand anyways at 16bb.

I think we HAVE to shove here and realize all of our fold equity - if we flop a pair we likely have no idea where we are in the hand and if we flop any sort of combo draw/flush draw we will have to go with it anyhow. Shove and avoid all of the weird spots post flop - when we do get called we are generally going to be a 45% dog vs most any other hands - still not a bad spot to take a flip. Anyhow - with all the dead money in the pot and our decent odds when we do get called I would say shove it in and the rest will be what it will be!

I rely heavily on my HUD in situations like this. If the limpers have stats like 42/13 or 61/28, then they are usually so bad, that all their strong hands go in the raising range and the weak hands in the limping range. So they have essentially said, that their hand is not very good, and a jam will get through an enormously large percentage of the time. Or if they call, it will be with a range, which we do ok against. A hand like 66 or 77 would be typical, which ok we are not exited about this, but its a flip, so whatever. If however one or more limpers have stats like 52/1, 25/2 or 12/0, then their ranges are uncapped, and I prefer to just take a freeplay with this particular hand.

snapshove

fundiver199 said:

I rely heavily on my HUD in situations like this. If the limpers have stats like 42/13 or 61/28, then they are usually so bad, that all their strong hands go in the raising range and the weak hands in the limping range. So they have essentially said, that their hand is not very good, and a jam will get through an enormously large percentage of the time. Or if they call, it will be with a range, which we do ok against. A hand like 66 or 77 would be typical, which ok we are not exited about this, but its a flip, so whatever. If however one or more limpers have stats like 52/1, 25/2 or 12/0, then their ranges are uncapped, and I prefer to just take a freeplay with this particular hand.

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I think it’s live tournament, HUD it’s not good there

With there stacks, and limping history of the table, I think that nobody would call your jam, so all in definitely.

popstani said:

I think it’s live tournament, HUD it’s not good there

Click to expand...

In that case we should have some live reads, which will substitute for the HUD. Its not like, its rocket science to observe, if someone ever raise before the flop, or if they always limp or call.

Thanks all. I've been getting run over in these spots lately and needed to confirm that I hadn't missed some change in the way these spots should be played.


Results:

I shove, MP tanked, called, others folded, MP showed JJ

FLOP AQx Turn & River were bricks

I've busted a number of tournaments lately where the short M limpers have called my shove with what I'd consider an open-shove hand. And none of them have made it even seem like they had planned a trap before hand, which is the same with this opponent - he said he hates JJ, almost folded but decided he had to go with it, sheesh!!

If we have players considering folding JJ in that spot we are making the correct move. We cannot be results oriented in these spots - we can lose the next 6 hands we get it all in preflop with AA - that doesn't mean we made the wrong choice, it just didnt work out in the short run. Same principle applies here - keep making correct plays and dont look back!

Live games might play different, but in online micro or low stakes tournaments the limp trap is rare compared to the times, people limp junk. But of course it does happen from time to time, and then we have egg all over our face. On the other hand, had the JJ player put in a normal open raise, and the other guys folded, KTs could certainly also be a hand to 3-bet jam as a bluff short-handed. So its not even like, his limp induced action, he could not have gotten by raising.