$1.10 NLHE MTT Bounty: villain shoves this river, was that a hero call?

[italorohdrigues]

Hand: https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/524Not9KO

No info on the villain - he has the minimum bounty on his head $0.25
I call his bet from utg-1 on the SB
Flop I check giving him a chance to c-bet, he checks behind.
Turn I make a small bet to extract some value and give him a chance to do something again, he just calls
River I can't see a reason to bet again to get value and I just check expecting him to check behind and go for showdown bc I can't see with what worst hands he can call another bet, and he decides to jam!

My big question on this hand is that river all-in from the villain, I almost spent all my time bank before calling that, is a strange river the completes a flush draw he may have called with on the turn, or he could have a T and made trips, I don't know.

I decided to call because I thought he would have bet the flop if he was on a flush draw, at the same time is a strange bluff, specially because of the stacks, I mean this is a bounty tournament where there are toons of players who would have call it with anything

So with this in mind I think he actually made a value bet (?) and that made me think about the time it took me to call this. what do you think? was that a hero call? easy call? I'm right to consider folding so hard on this spot?

 

[jaworek1405]

Hello, I prefer fold pre flop A3o against raise from the utg. We should always respect raise from the utg position, because usually players from utg raise strong hand, stronger hands than a3o. So fold pre flop from the small blind or big blind for me is standard move. As played - check on the flop can be good, but on the turn bet should be a little bigger, at least 50% of the pot. The river card - I think that we can call his allin, because if opponent had top pair from the flop he should play cbet on the flop. He played check on the flop and seems that he afraid of something on the flop like this ace. Players from utg positions usually don't raise too many suited connector hands, so I don't afraid a flush on the board. It seems that top pair from the flop is enough to call his allin and besides we are bigger stack than opponent, so I think that it is good situation to risk. GL

 

[slicheri93]

I would also fold that A3 cause of that raise, unless it was suited

when you called the river what did you put him on?

think i wouldve folded that river with the 10 and flush chance being there and the pot being so small you lose to a few Ax hands and his bounty being only 0,25 not really worth the call for 3400 and the pot being 2600.

 

[Igor Popadyk]

we beat some bluffs and having an ace at these limits my opinion is more aggressive most villains

 

[fundiver199]

Preflop
Very clear fold against an UTG+1 open. A3o is a garbage hand, you are out of position postflop, and you are not even closing action. The close decision is, if we defend this against a min-raise, if we are in big blind, and even then I would not consider a fold overly tight.

Flop
Great flop for you obviously, and I dont see any point in donk betting. He should C-bet this board very often, but unfortunately this time he did not.

Turn
You could actually consider to get tricky here by checking again with intentions to put in a check-raise. But the safe play is to bet out. However I would also make this larger. If you make it 1.000 chips (or 995 to look cheaper), you will have less than a pot sized bet left for the river, so its very easy to jam and get it in. There are also a lot of river cards, that are not great for you, so I prefer to get more chips in the pot right now.

River
This was probably the worst card, that could even have come, and I certainly agree with checking. Not only is a flush and trips now possible, but you also got counterfeited and essentially have top pair no kicker.

His jam is an overbet, so its pretty polarizing, and I think, we can rule out some of the hands, that potentially beat you. I dont think, he check back flop and just call your small turn bet with two pair or a set. For the same reason, you should look to pile chips in on the turn, so should he, if he had two pair or a set. So I dont think, he will ever have a boat here. I am also not worried about AJ-AK, because why would those hands play this passive on the early streets and then pile it in on a river card, that was also very bad for them.

Flushes are somewhat unlikely also, because most of the suited hands, that open from EP, has an A or a T in them. And these hands are not possible, because we see those two cards on the board. Which leave KQ, KJ and QJ and his most likely flush combos. Maybe he can have a few more, if he open wide, but its not a ton. And as you said yourself, some percentage of the time he would probably C-bet with these good draws.

Trips is actually the value hand, which makes most sense for him to have. KT, QT, JT had pretty much nothing on the flop, unless they were of clubs exactly, so checking back with intentions to mostly just give up is certainly not out of the ordinary. On the turn he then made second pair and facing a very small bet from you, he obviously had to continue.

But even so his value range is kind of thin, and you can have more nutted hands than him, which makes it look a bit fishy. There are also busted draws like spades and QJ, which are logical candidates for bluffing. So I kind of get, what you are saying, that this could be a spot to dig out a huge call.

However your hand is not a particularly good bluff catcher. You dont block the flush, and you also dont block the logical combos of trips like KT, QT or JT. And you have a lot of better hands in your range to call with. You can have a boat here, you can have more flushes than him, and you can also have trips. Or you can even have AQ with Q of clubs or AJ with J of clubs for much better removal.

I also dont think, this is an overbluffed spot in general in the micros. In fact I would rather assume, its probably underbluffed. Meaning that he is supposed to have a bluff here around 40% of the time, but if you make this call 100 times, are you really winning 40? I dont think so, so I would have folded.

Results
I think, jamming QQ is clearly a bluff, and its a pretty bad play by him. He still beat your busted draws, that are giving up, or maybe a hand like JJ betting turn for thin value. So his hand is to in between to make this play. He is never getting called by worse, and as your hero call demonstrate, trying to bluff people off top pair is often a good way to set money on fire in the micros

 

[marianexbj]

Hello, to begin with, I would not call with A3o in SB against early position, I think that your range is dominating you a lot for pairs and better Axes, on the flop with A you will always end up all in and losing many times unnecessarily, despite being a tournament with buy In low it is important that you start to correct that from the beginning. Especially for the stacks, so I think the sequence is pretty standard and I agree that if I had had flush draws that complete the river, I would have flopped most of the time.

 

[italorohdrigues]

I agree with you all about the A3o, a really bad call. the only two reasons I've done this is bc I was with a confort stack and whiling to gamble for a bounty hitting something on the flop, reading your answers and re-viewing the hand I can see even though I got 2 pairs they are a lot vunerable, it's not worth the risk

Thanks for claryfing about the river, looks like villain did a bad bluff

 

[fundiver199]

Yeah I think, these are generally the lessons to be learned from the hand:

1) Dont call with garbage out of position, just because you have someone covered and can potentially win their bounty.

2) Understand showdown value in the shoes of Villain. Its perfectly fine to check back QQ on the river and lose a small pot to a hand like A3.

3) Dont get to deep into hero calling in the micros. In general its not the way to beat these games, even though it worked this time.