$3.25 NLHE STT Turbo: Folding mid PP getting 3:1

Hi all,

I have a hand that I played in a recent turbo SnG on BCP. I've been trying to play tight in my early game which tends to have me folding hands that I'd be playing in other situations (and folding very often if I'm going to be out of position).

7 players left in the Turbo SnG and I'd be out of position if I called. UTG opens for a 3x raise (I've played 56 hands with him; he's never raised from this position before and has an 11% PFR overall). The caller in the CO is a relative unknown (only 18 hands on him) but so far hasn't opened any hands/has been playing tight. The BB seems loose/passive over 31 hands (55/17) so if I call he's probably coming along as well.

What would you do in this situation?

Winning Poker Network - 50/100 NL - Holdem - 7 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

MP: 1,360
CO: 1,885
BTN: 1,500
Hero (SB): 2,263
BB: 3,359
UTG: 1,405
UTG+1: 1,728

Hero posts SB 50, BB posts BB 100

Pre Flop: (pot: 150) Hero has 8♥ 8♦

UTG raises to 300, fold, fold, CO calls 300, fold, what should I do?

Fold preflop, for call you not have right pot odds, also no position and postflop very difficult play when will be overcards, set will not so often.. For shove you have big stack, so better fold... If UTG was LAG easy shove...

what range would you assign the UTG player nabmom?

that is the most important thing here. I doubt we have much fold equity(might fold out a few hands) so the question is can we jam in 88 here for value.

It's kinda tough either way but looks like a fold since we still have one player left to act and we have a very nice stack currently.

Fold is safe

Is this 3x UTG standard bet size and what is his vpip?

Call to set mine obv

Fantastic implied odds

you can either fold or shove for the squeeze play. calling is the worst option.

at 22bbs you might have enough to make some decent hands fold but expect to be racing often (racing with dead money is ok).

For me, I'd probably fold 80% of the time here and shove 20%

edit to add: it's an interesting spot because I think 88 is exactly the cutoff hand, or possibly 99 is the question hand but definitely with TT+ shoving becomes the better option I think (easier to be getting it in as a 70-80% favorite with TT as there are fewer 2 overcard combos and fewer overpair combos.)

Shove is close, although it seems that we don't have enough stats on the opener to decide and what we do have suggests it's not a +EV jam so I'm happy with the fold. That said we are putting in 250 into a pot that will be 1200 more than 50% of the time (and 1000 the other times) to win the openers stack almost always and possibly get chips from CO or BB a lot too if we hit out set. I'm playing atm so I can't do the math but it's possible if we don't think BB will squeeze hardly ever that a call in this situation would be ok.

Look, we don't have any stats on the BB, I can assume he'll come along if we flat, I don't like the squeeze play because the player who opened the pot has committed about 1/4 of their stack from utg. He has a hand and he's not folding - OP even said she hasn't seen him open from utg in 50+ hands and only raises preflop 11% of the time overall. I think considering the fact that we can get the openers stack + the dead money in the pot and maybe more if we hit our set, it's more than worth the money. We just have to be disciplined if all undercards come out (3,5,7) and we can't shove after the flop first to act or call the utg's shove unless we hit a set or a great draw + overpair. (5,6,7) I'd love to hear other's perspectives on this hand. Once again, I think the squeeze is the worst play because the utg player is never folding and we're either flipping or crushed against his range.

We do not have the proper implied odds to set mine with effective stacks being 14bbs. UTG opener only has 1400 so that is the most likely stack we could get. Even the CO only has 18bbs.

It is generally thought that you need at least 30bb effective stacks to set mine. (and that's conservative. some players think you need 50+bbs). This is because You need to get paid handsomely for the times you hit your set because you'll only flop a set 1/8 of the time (12.5%). And even then you won't always win their stack. Sometimes they'll have nothing, and fold sometimes they'll catch a bigger set or a monster draw and you'll lose a huge pot and sometimes they'll call off their stack as a huge dog and then suck out so you need a big reward for all that risk.

Because effective stacks are relatively shallow flatting to set mine is the worst option in this scenario.

Shoving is slightly better but still very risky as not many players will raise/fold 20% of their stack from under the gun.

Make your life easy and just fold this one

Also, the tourney structure matters here.

Generally you should be willing to take more risks in a large MTT and fewer risks in a SnG. This dichotomy is so apparent that the proper structure in a DoN SnG is to basically just sit on your chips until you get a real solid profitable situation and once you get a stack to basically sit on your chips until you have a monster. If you employed that same strategy in a 1,000 player MTT you'd be dead money.

Because it's a SnG and only 7 players remain and I'm assuming 3 are paid and we are 2nd in chips we have no real incentive to try and "bust" the 14bb opener. In SnGs most of your edge will come from applying pressure to the other short and medium stacks around the bubble when the blinds are huge and just stealing the blinds quite often will help you chip up much more predictably. In a SnG squeaking into the money has a lot more value than in a large MTT. so we shouldn't be pissing away our 2nd place chip position by overcalling a tight opener with a medium strength hand. Not to mention the action is still open and the BB could jam.

Add in the fact that we're in the SB so we're out of position. That will make it much harder to fully extract the times we hit a set and it will make it very hard to play the hand profitably the times the board comes 236 and we are possibly ahead. Because of all these things I just mentioned I'm amending my previous recommendation: I will fold 90% of the time I will jam 10% of the time and I will flat 0% of the time.

Not sure implied odds at the point in question even applies.....yet.

We are presented with a decision of whether or not the pot odds presented to us at the point in question are good enough to set mine. The tempering notion for me is whether or not we think BB (also big stack) could jam after us. His temptation to do so will be significant.

I'm going against the grain and think flatting here to set mine is the better move....for me. If the BB shoves, easy fold, worse would be a RR from the BB. << suggests a true big hand vs the shoves large steal component.

Post flop becomes so much simpler.

horizon12 said:

Fold preflop, If UTG was LAG easy shove...

Click to expand...

If UTG vpip compared pfr is huge differences, which means he is LAG i would jam here most of the time!

If UTG is really solid TAG, i would fold it most of the time!

flatting is ok if we are planning to do things postflop. but planning to fold a 7 5 2 board or "be patient" on boards like that is throwing chips away for no reason. I think calling here can show a profit, but your gonna have to get it in on a lot of flops, basically like a "stop and go" type play, but our plan is to c/r a high frequency of good flops. Obv overpairs don't fold, but we might fold out some QJ KQ type hands that we're flipping against pre.