$0 NL HE MTT: Another example on how not to play your pocket Kings

[Andyreas]

Game

Hold'em

Game Format

No Limit

Table Format

MTT

Buy-in

0

Freeroll

1. Freeroll

Currency

$

This is a hand from the $300 Weekly freeroll on pokerstars.

I get dealt QhJh in UTG and open a min-raise. I get min 3-bet and am thinking: "Ok, this is probably Aces or Kings...". Of course I am not folding with these pot odds and at least see a flop.

On flop, I hit a Queen and make a donk bet of 1/3 of pot and get raised. Since the raise is again not super big, I call again but am confirmed in my assumption. Maybe it would have made sense to fold here but somehow I couldn't find the fold.

Turn in a blank card and I check. He bet 1 BB, of course I call.

And river is a Jack - BOOM! I jam, he calls and reveals one of the hands, I expected to see.

I'd be happy to get some feedback on my game, since ofc I got lucky here. But I think I had to call all the raises/bets due to sizing and odds, no?


PokerStars, Hold'em No Limit - 125/250 (25 ante) - 9 players
Replay this hand on CardsChat

UTG (Hero): 5,398 (22 bb)
UTG+1: 12,021 (48 bb)
MP: 5,242 (21 bb)
MP+1: 900 (4 bb)
LP: 7,408 (30 bb)
CO: 6,775 (27 bb)
BU: 4,975 (20 bb)
SB: 2,545 (10 bb)
BB: 12,967 (52 bb)

Pre-Flop: (600) Hero is UTG with Q♥ J♥
Hero raises to 500, 3 players fold, LP 3-bets to 750, 3 players fold, BB calls 500, Hero calls 250

Flop: (2,600) 3♥ Q♦ 5♠ (3 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 858, LP raises to 1,716, BB folds, Hero calls 858

Turn: (6,032) 2♣ (2 players)
Hero checks, LP bets 250, Hero calls 250

River: (6,532) J♣ (2 players)
Hero bets 2,657 (all-in), LP calls 2,657

Total pot: 11,846

Showdown:
UTG (Hero) shows Q♥ J♥ (two pair, Queens and Jacks)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 17%, Flop: 22%, Turn: 11%, River: 100%)

LP shows K♥ K♦ (a pair of Kings)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 83%, Flop: 78%, Turn: 89%, River: 0%)

UTG (Hero) wins 11,846

 

[gmlew]

And if I go in with kings or with aces, and so to someone so come cards that I lose

 

[G0930]

This is a hand from the $300 Weekly freeroll on PokerStars.

I get dealt QhJh in UTG and open a min-raise. I get min 3-bet and am thinking: "Ok, this is probably Aces or Kings...". Of course I am not folding with these pot odds and at least see a flop.

On flop, I hit a Queen and make a donk bet of 1/3 of pot and get raised. Since the raise is again not super big, I call again but am confirmed in my assumption. Maybe it would have made sense to fold here but somehow I couldn't find the fold.

Turn in a blank card and I check. He bet 1 BB, of course I call.

And river is a Jack - BOOM! I jam, he calls and reveals one of the hands, I expected to see.

I'd be happy to get some feedback on my game, since ofc I got lucky here. But I think I had to call all the raises/bets due to sizing and odds, no?


PokerStars, Hold'em No Limit - 125/250 (25 ante) - 9 players
Replay this hand on CardsChat

UTG (Hero): 5,398 (22 bb)
UTG+1: 12,021 (48 bb)
MP: 5,242 (21 bb)
MP+1: 900 (4 bb)
LP: 7,408 (30 bb)
CO: 6,775 (27 bb)
BU: 4,975 (20 bb)
SB: 2,545 (10 bb)
BB: 12,967 (52 bb)

Pre-Flop: (600) Hero is UTG with Q♥ J♥
Hero raises to 500, 3 players fold, LP 3-bets to 750, 3 players fold, BB calls 500, Hero calls 250

Flop: (2,600) 3♥ Q♦ 5♠ (3 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 858, LP raises to 1,716, BB folds, Hero calls 858

Turn: (6,032) 2♣ (2 players)
Hero checks, LP bets 250, Hero calls 250

River: (6,532) J♣ (2 players)
Hero bets 2,657 (all-in), LP calls 2,657

Total pot: 11,846

Showdown:
UTG (Hero) shows Q♥ J♥ (two pair, Queens and Jacks)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 17%, Flop: 22%, Turn: 11%, River: 100%)

LP shows K♥ K♦ (a pair of Kings)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 83%, Flop: 78%, Turn: 89%, River: 0%)

UTG (Hero) wins 11,846

Perfect example of how not to play Kings.
Im with you , I think he basically forced you to follow through .
Especially with the 1bb bet on the turn

 

[Matt Vaughan]

I'm glad this hand worked out so great for you! And I definitely agree your opponent should have made larger raises/bets every single street. But it's important to point out that you are only 22bb effective to start this hand. So his sizings are not as bad as they would be in other circumstances.

Especially once it's a 3way flop, he should be using small sizings because the pot is quite bloated.

I actually also don't really like your flop lead. I think you wanted to find out "where you are at" by betting and getting raised. But if this is the intention, I think you can size significantly smaller, like 15-20% of the pot, rather than 33%. The fact that you are sort of expecting to maybe get raised, and then planning to call a small size, is a bit problematic. The difference between 15% and 33% might not seem huge, but look at the stack to pot ratio now on the turn! It's less than 0.5! So there's less than a half pot size bet left behind. This would be significantly different if you'd bet smaller.

All in all you're roped into calling the flop raise, and the turn bet as well, but by the time you hit your card, there's relatively little extra to play for. So I think preflop was played great, flop was definitely a little questionable. Turn is a must call and the river jam seems fine as your opponent may check back this card, and it's a freeroll, so I don't expect people to exploitatively fold here, basically ever. Nice hand!

 

[fundiver199]

Preflop
Standard open. To a normal 3-bet I fold this hand with stacks this short, but of course we are not folding any hand, when they just min-click us.

Flop
Sometimes an undersized 3-bet is just a bad player goofing around with nonsense. So given, that you only started with 22 bigs here, I am basically never going to fold top pair decent kicker, but I want to give them as much rope as possible to hang themselfes with that nonsense. So I dont like your lead AKA "donk bet" in this spot. As played when they min-raise, I am thinking, that you are probably behind and most likely against KK or AA. But you are also getting decent odds to call and try to hit your 5 outs. So I would also sigh-call here, but I dont like leading in the first place.

Turn
Of course we are not folding anything to a bet of less than 5% of the pot. Very happy they let us see the last card this cheaply. Not really sure what they have now, since their line makes no sense with any hand.

River
Their turn bet was less than 5% of the pot, which is a meaningless bet. And for that reason I would also not play in flow here but just get it in. Even if they had something much weaker than, what they actually had, they are not folding it getting better than 3:1 in a freeroll.

Results
Nice outcome for you. The opponent slowplayed all the way to the river, which allowed you to see all 5 cards and realise your equity. And they paid the price for this typical beginner mistake

 

[puzzlefish]

I think it's mostly bad play on the turn, where the villain's bet should have been bigger. That way when the river doesn't bring one of those 5 outs, they get the most value stringing you along. They would then just finish up on the river and go ride their bike until next time when the Jack doesn't hit.

 

[MK_]

I think the title of your post is pretty accurate, he clearly gave up on the turn👍

 

[fundiver199]

I think it's mostly bad play on the turn, where the villain's bet should have been bigger. That way when the river doesn't bring one of those 5 outs, they get the most value stringing you along. They would then just finish up on the river and go ride their bike until next time when the Jack doesn't hit.

The min 3-bet preflop is also not a good play. It does not charge people enough to realise their equity, and it create to many multiway pots. And regardless of preflop sizing all the chips should be in the middle on the turn, when the effective stack was only 22BB, and it was a 3-bet pot.

 

[rastapapolos]

In this spot villain has played the hand so poorly that you ended by outdrawing him. But you have to trust your instinct and reads.
I'll talk almost about villain raising the flop: First thing to consider is your equity, if you're up against AA or KK you have around 22%, vs AQ or KQ it's around 18%.
When villain raises OTF you have to have a plan, the SPR will be less than 1 OTT if you call, which is very critical + you have to be prepared for at least a bet of 1/2 pot which mean that you'll end up by putting all your chips in the middle. I would like to know what's your play in this scenario fold/call ?
Preflop standard call.
Flop I would like to check-call at least once with TP.
Turn if villain bets 1bb it's a call
River it's a shove

 

[G0930]

I think the title of your post is pretty accurate, he clearly gave up on the turn👍

If he gave up he wouldn't have went allin on the river. He simply slow played these Kings, He must have suspected that Andyreas has a queen and didn't want to scare him off .
Slowplaying rarely turns out well.

 

[fundiver199]

If he gave up he wouldn't have went allin on the river. He simply slow played these Kings, He must have suspected that Andyreas has a queen and didn't want to scare him off

Which was just totally unnessesary. At the turn there was only a half pot sized bet behind, and then most people are not folding top pair. So all, dalaying the action does, is to allow draws to play perfect. On this particular board there were not many draws, but still no benefit in slowplaying. Maybe he thought, his min-bet would induce Andyreas to check-raise, but thats a serious case of Fancy Play Syndrome.

 

[airxlns]

Both of you played correct, IMHO, except that small bet on the turn...that signaled he had pocket pair and was not happy with what was on the table and left the door open for you to confidently go all in at the end.

 

[fundiver199]

Both of you played correct, IMHO, except that small bet on the turn.

Raising flop and then essentially checking back turn on a card, which changed almost nothing, does not make any sense. If the Villain wanted to slowplay, he should have just called on the flop. And if he wanted to fastplay, he should have jammed the turn. There was no reason for him to change his plan on the turn. Also, as has been said many times, Villain made a sizing mistake preflop, when he just clicked it up from 2BB to 3BB.