Standard Spot?

This is a live deep stack tournament with 30K starting stacks and 30 minutes levels. Blinds are $1500 and $3000 with a $300 chip ante; my stack is around 60K and the villain has about 52K.

I’m in the SB and the villain is the BB. The pot is raised from the cutoff seat to $7500 (a loose player with a giant stack, 250K). I find and 3-bet to $18K. The BB then 4-bets all-in for $52K-ish; the cutoff seat folds and I call – he shows and they hold up; I was left with about 8K and busted a few hands later.

In hind-sight I wish I would have just 3-bet all-in, but I didn’t. Then he decided to rub salt in the wound and tell me “I knew you had AK, and it’s hasn’t been hitting tonight, but pocket nines are – there’s been at least two sets of nines at this table recently”. So my opponent is a total jackass, great; he 4-bet all-in OOP into two stacks that have him covered with pocket nines because nines have been coming out and AK isn’t hitting! But I knew we were flipping when I called and I find it funny how they always “know” I have AK after I show AK.

Anyway, I lost! His play was idiotic but I had to call right? I’m just trying to figure out if I got them in good or not. I don’t like calling all-in’s with AK but folding pre leaves me a 5M stack with blind levels going up in 5 minutes, so I think this is a standard spot and I just lost; thoughts?

First off his logic for how he played that hand was stupid but I think considering the blinds and only having a 5m stack I can see calling but knowing ur going to be flipping it just comes down to whether or not u want to flip for ur tourney life but I've seen people catch there cards just as much as small pairs hold up

Bottom line IMO a call is best

very standard

I might 3bet a little bigger here maybe like 3- 3.5x unless your considering a fold.. the 2.5x-ish 3bet still leaves u room to fold to a 4bet shove so if thats ur mindset.. than u just gotta fold and look for a better spot..

Unless you know ur opponent is crazy and willing to shove here with AQ/AK... I think its much more likely for him to have AA,KK,QQ in this spot so id prolly lay it down for my tourney life..

If you're not folding, just shove pre

Other than that it's fine, nh

Ok... I’m glad this is pretty standard in everyone’s minds.

I think he was a total, jackass, but I wanted to make sure I was thinking about it right. I could 3-bet larger I guess, but I don’t think it changes anything – if I even consider a fold than my only two options are fold pre or flat pre, once I 3-bet with one player left to act and with consideration to my stack and blind levels, there’re going in! If I run into Aces, then it’s just not my day.

A 4-bet with 99 does frustrate the f&*^ out of me though – what’s he thinking? He’s not; that’s probably the answer. I lost, but at least it wasn’t my fault this time.