$10 NL HE MTT: TT in UTG+1 against UTG open

[Andyreas]

Game

Hold'em

Game Format

No Limit

Table Format

MTT

Buy-in

10

Currency

$

Hi forum,

I would like some feedback on this hand since I am unsure if I played it wrong or just got coolered here.

We're in the early/mid-stage of a tournament. Late reg is still open for 20 mins but blinds are 6 min, so average stack around 30-35 BB.

I get dealt TT in UTG+1 and have a stack of 50 BBs. UTG min-raises in. No read on opp.

My first question to you: Fold, call or 3-bet?

I decide to 3-bet to 6 BB. Folds to him. He 4-bet jams on me for 23 BBs.

My second question to you: Fold or call?

Re-thinking about this hand, I think this situation is kinda awkward. Supposing, he folds his bottom range and assuming most people do not 4-bet bluff, I am against his top range.

Not thinking it through, I decided to call and he reveals AA. 😵

Should I have avoided this confrontation by folding to the 4-bet to preserve my stack? 🤔

Happy about your feedback.

 

[fundiver199]

Against an EP open it is often best to just call with hands like TT and JJ. The reason is, that if you get action, you are usually not in great shape, and if you get 4-bet, both your options kind of suck. The latter is especially important, when stacks are relatively short, because then an out of position opponent will often either 4-bet jam or fold rather than call. And if you dont want to call that 4-bet, and also dont want to fold, then you should avoid creating the situation by not 3-betting in the first place.

As played you have to pay 17BB to win a pot of 2 x 23BB plus the blinds and antes, so you need roughly 35% equity to break even in chip EV. A realistic worst case scenario is, that he is getting it in with JJ+, AK. In that case you have 33,7% equity, so TT would be a fold, but getting it in is not a significant mistake. If his range is TT+, AQ+, you have 40,4% equity, so now you are winning chips, but adjusted for ICM its somewhat marginal. So depending on his range your call is either slightly losing or slightly winning, which illustrate, why the 3-bet was not a good idea. If you are just trying to get him to fold, then you would much rather 3-bet a hand like A5s, which block his 4-betting range and has an easy fold, if the 4-bet happen anyway.

 

[Goggelheimer]

Hi forum,

I would like some feedback on this hand since I am unsure if I played it wrong or just got coolered here.

We're in the early/mid-stage of a tournament. Late reg is still open for 20 mins but blinds are 6 min, so average stack around 30-35 BB.

I get dealt TT in UTG+1 and have a stack of 50 BBs. UTG min-raises in. No read on opp.

My first question to you: Fold, call or 3-bet?

I decide to 3-bet to 6 BB. Folds to him. He 4-bet jams on me for 23 BBs.

My second question to you: Fold or call?

Re-thinking about this hand, I think this situation is kinda awkward. Supposing, he folds his bottom range and assuming most people do not 4-bet bluff, I am against his top range.

Not thinking it through, I decided to call and he reveals AA. 😵

Should I have avoided this confrontation by folding to the 4-bet to preserve my stack? 🤔

Happy about your feedback.

fundiver199 made a nice analysis the ranges in those positions are normally polarized, depending on nationality ( brazillians open 8Ts UTG, eastern europe you can bet on any Ace ).
So you run normally into JJ+, AJs+, AK, in rare cases middle to small pairs but these will not 4 bet you.
I bet you played on mobile, so you could not use a hud.
There are recreational players at these buy ins but they begin to be not very often at the tables, the 4 bet move implies a strong hand.

 

[puzzlefish]

If you just call the min-raise, you will invite a bunch of other players to also call for a huge community pot. I'm not so sure if TT is that good for isolating someone on UTG. If you 3bet and then get 4bet by UTG, their range mostly crushes yours. I think the correct move is to just call and go for the community pot, since it will allow you to get away from the hand with minimal damage if you don't flop something really good AND there will be a greater chance of several other players putting their stacks at risk. It punishes the slow playing from UTG as well.

 

[dallam]

This spot is not easy at all for sure. And when you are in the moment, it could take time to overthink.

As an UTG 25bb open pocket pairs in a limited number like 77+, J10+ suited hands or KQ+ overcards could appear, at least this is what a low buy-in could handle. As long as you beat some of them pre, the whole table is still left to act, and of course the original agressor.
So if you put a 3-bet as you did, which is definitely a strong move to the others, if everyone apart from UTG moves in, you actually had to fold like all the time if the stack size is up above somewhere your 1/3. But if you isolate well, and original agressor still put in, without a note you are risking half of your stack. So in this case, to avoid the collusions 3-bet is not something you wanna do.

If you call, and someone do make a 3-bet in a later position, we have great read now that this is something more than capable to broke us, so we only loose 2bbs. Which is not a significant number of the 50bbs, as we could pick up sets or straights still.

There are two concepts which I would overthink here in long-term:
- If we're folding here pre; we are avoiding possible collusions with the table. We save ourselves from acting out of position with a mediocrate pair, and also respect the range of the UTG and both of the big amount of players, who are left to act. Cause to any 3-bet from anywhere, we are in a bad shape, and more likely chasing.

- Also 50bbs is a lot, almost two times more than the average stack. Our mission is to control parties, hunt positions and stacks to be able to strenghten ours. So we are not in risk, or don't have to take uneseccary risks.

So only my idea, but at a 11$ buy-in where the average is around 30bbs or a little more, folding TT is not bad. If the table is 6-max, it's a call. Otherwise we can go to see the flop pretty blind. And in this case the low flop could result us to loose half of our stack, when we already knew that UTG min-bet should have the Aces f.e.

 

[300HPGOD]

Player dependent here. I know you said you are readless (which I take as you didnt have or dont use a HUD) but have you played any hands with them and what have you seen? I think depending on the villain we are playing and them starting with 23 BBs then all of the options are on the table minus jamming since then villain gets to play perfectly against TT and then also we are only UTG+1 so many to act behind us. I do think, though, that if villain is very loose and you see them play a lot of hands then an iso raise is not bad. If they are not loose or we are readless then I think calling is much better. It does leave a squeeze possibility behind us but those should be less frequent since it is an UTG open and an UTG+1 call and not all 3 bets we would face would necessarily be value (although they should definitely heavily lean that way due to UTG open). If we raise a non-loose villain here though I feel like we make life easy on them as they will usually fold worse being at 23 BBs and just jam over us when better. If we knew we going against a tight villain that opened UTG off of 23 BBs then I dont think it would be horrible to fold. It is on the snug side but would not be the worst pre flop fold in the world. Reads are important and we need to have some idea on each villain at the table even if we have only been at the table for 5 hands or whatever. Being truly readless I think this best played as a call.

Your second question is much easier imo and after villain jams I am folding. Maybe they do this with 88 and 99 but I even doubt that so when we call here I feel like we are flipping at best and I think AJ even gets pitched. You are probably facing a range of something close to AQ suited +, 1010+ and of course 1010 is hard for villain to have. This is best to fold instead of hoping just for a flip.

I want to mention that its a good point by Fundiver that even though the hand is way lower in the spectrum and equity than 1010, Ax is a better 3 bet here since it blocks AA.

 

[eetenor]

Hi forum,

I would like some feedback on this hand since I am unsure if I played it wrong or just got coolered here.

We're in the early/mid-stage of a tournament. Late reg is still open for 20 mins but blinds are 6 min, so average stack around 30-35 BB.

I get dealt TT in UTG+1 and have a stack of 50 BBs. UTG min-raises in. No read on opp.

My first question to you: Fold, call or 3-bet?

I decide to 3-bet to 6 BB. Folds to him. He 4-bet jams on me for 23 BBs.

My second question to you: Fold or call?

Re-thinking about this hand, I think this situation is kinda awkward. Supposing, he folds his bottom range and assuming most people do not 4-bet bluff, I am against his top range.

Not thinking it through, I decided to call and he reveals AA. 😵

Should I have avoided this confrontation by folding to the 4-bet to preserve my stack? 🤔

Happy about your feedback.

First the effective stack size is more important than our stack size so we want to be very focused when we post. If we are very focused when we post it will help us to be more focused in game.

With 25 effective-when we raise we should expect shoves from UTG --We then want to preplan how we react to those shoves.

GTO has us shoving the TT vs a GTO open range most often and raising- no folding- we are to be calling a shove if we raise- however standard V seldom find the balance of bluffs that a GTO bot has so we can often fold the TT after raising without a strong read.

 

[G0930]

There are recreational players at these buy ins but they begin to be not very often at the tables, the 4 bet move implies a strong hand.

You mean amateurs or fish.
Recreational means doing an activity in your free time.
So as long as you don't make a living of poker, you're a recreational player😉

 

[Goggelheimer]

You mean amateurs or fish.
Recreational means doing an activity in your free time.
So as long as you don't make a living of poker, you're a recreational player😉

Thanks for the clear definition.
But as I have noticed, the most more or less professionals,
use the term for amateurs ( the are recreationals too I think )
and fish like players, in their streams.
But don't nail me on that.
I think they try to state weak players.

 

[G0930]

Thanks for the clear definition.
But as I have noticed, the most more or less professionals,
use the term for amateurs ( the are recreationals too I think )
and fish like players, in their streams.
But don't nail me on that.
I think they try to state weak players.

Yeah seems its commonly used that way.

 

[fundiver199]

Recreational means doing an activity in your free time.

Recreational means doing something for fun. On Wikipedia its defined like this;

"Recreation is an activity of leisure, leisure being discretionary time.[1] The "need to do something for recreation" is an essential element of human biology and psychology.[2] Recreational activities are often done for enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure and are considered to be "fun"."

Recreation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If for instance a person working a normal office job spend his weekend fixing the roof on his house, then he is not doing that for fun. He is doing it, because the roof need fixing, and he dont want to pay someone to do it, and therefore he is not a "recreational roof fixer". And in a similar fashion there are many people, who spend some of their discretionary time to play poker, but they dont do it solely for enjoyment, amusemend or pleasure. And therefore they are not recreational poker players (or fish).

 

[Andyreas]

I read all your feedback and just wanted to say thank you all for your time and effort to share your opinions on the hand. Highly appreciated and will definitely just call with TT against UTG next time. 😁😇

 

[Goggelheimer]

I read all your feedback and just wanted to say thank you all for your time and effort to share your opinions on the hand. Highly appreciated and will definitely just call with TT against UTG next time. 😁😇

Not directly compareable because a cash hand, but I would play the hand the same way in a tournament.

pokerstars - $0.02 NL - Holdem - 7 players


MP: $2.70 (135 bb)
CO: $1.52 (76 bb)
BTN: $2.34 (117 bb)
SB: $1.66 (83 bb)
BB: $5.43 (271.5 bb)
Hero (UTG): $2.00 (100 bb)
UTG+1: $1.82 (91 bb)

SB posts $0.01, BB posts $0.02

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.03) Hero has
Hero raises to $0.06, 4 folds, SB calls $0.05, BB raises to $0.22, Hero calls $0.16, fold

Flop: ($0.50, 2 players)
BB bets $0.24, Hero raises to $1.30, fold

Results: $0.98 pot ($0.04 rake)
Final Board:

Hero wins $0.94

 

[natnit4life]

I think maybe in this spot against an unknown you could find a call pre, I do think 3 betting is correct as you are getting worse hands to fold by showing strength.
You do have to assume that if they are 2 betting from UTG that they "may" have something strong but as you don't know them they could have anything and not even know about positions at the table.
You also have to look at their stack and ask your self what are you going to do if they do shove?
If I have 50BB and they have 23BB and I'd only be heads up all-in against them I might take the flip sometimes and hope they have a low Ax.
I hate taking flips and I do prefer just to save my chips for better spots where I have better odd but sometimes I do like a gamble haha
Sometimes you gotta take those shots to win big

 

[Andyreas]

Same hand, same situation. But this time on a sattie bubble.

I had this situation in mind and called with TT this time after the UTG open. (Probably my strategy wasn't clever due to other circumstances though. 😅)

SB jams on us. Somehow I had the feeling he doesn't have the nuts like JJ+, so I decide to take the flip and hopefully double up to save my ticket.

My feeling was correct but the RNG decided to teach me another lesson. 🤣


Edit: Rethinking this hand again, I think both decisions are probably wrong ICM wise, right?
With the jam, I'd have a lot of fold equity against big stack and the call with TT might also be slightly negative, since we're on the bubble and he has me covered? 🤔

 

[fundiver199]

Think the initial call is fine in the last hand. But with stacks being so equal, even TT is not good enough to call of a jam on a satellite bubble. This also mean, that if the squeeze is going to happen a lot, it would be better to jam yourself. The difference to the first hand is, that in this one your own stack was short enough to rejam. In the first one that was not an option, because you had 50BB and other deep stacks behind you.