$15 NLHE MTT Turbo: AA with 3 to a flush hitting the turn

[Ecolando]

I started out playing this hand by calling the aggressor preflop and on the flop. He checks the turn and I decide now is my time to put pressure on in case he has a heart. What say you?


Winning Poker, Hold'em No Limit - 2,750/5,500 (650 ante) - 5 players
Replay this hand on CardsChat

PungentCrotchSweat (UTG): 141,197 (26 bb)
Ecolando (CO): 316,686 (58 bb)
slushpuppie224 (BU): 91,763 (17 bb)
AchillesHealNA (SB): 141,130 (26 bb)
ButtCakes (BB): 90,290 (16 bb)

Pre-Flop: (11,500) Hero (Ecolando) is CO with A♠ A♣
PungentCrotchSweat (UTG) raises to 11,000, Ecolando (CO) calls 11,000, 3 players fold

Flop: (33,500) 8♥ Q♠ 3♥ (2 players)
PungentCrotchSweat (UTG) bets 17,420, Ecolando (CO) calls 17,420

Turn: (68,340) K♥ (2 players)
PungentCrotchSweat (UTG) checks, Ecolando (CO) bets 287,616 (all-in), PungentCrotchSweat (UTG) folds

Total pot: 68,340
Ecolando (CO) wins 68,340

 

[fundiver199]

Preflop
Of course the default play with AA should be to 3-bet. But with everyone so short, I can get on board with mixing in a trap. Ideally you induce someone behind to jam as a squeeze with a hand, that they would have folded facing a 3-bet. And BOOM there you are snapping them off with AA. Another option could be to make a very small 3-bet to like maybe 25.000. Annoying sizing, that UTG (HJ) almost has to call with his entire range.

Flop
As played totally on board with just calling and handing him the rope to continue hanging himself

Turn
I like a bet here but not a jam. He still have around 115k left behind, and pot is only 68k, so this is a fairly substantial overbet. And I think, he play rather well against that, folding most of the hands, you are ahead of, and mainly continuing on with hands, that you are behind to. Hands like sets, KQ for two pair or even flushes, that he is trapping you with. I dont put to much into the fact, he checked, because he is supposed to do a lot of checking on a card, that completely changed the texture.

With this line I think, you are setting yourself up to lose a big pot, when you are beat and only win a small one, when you are not. I would bet something like 30-40k here and then make a decision on the river, or if he check-jam. Your hand has very bad removal, since you block AK/AQ, which are hands, you want him to have, but you dont block the flush or any of the two pair and set combinations. So actually I could see this being a bet-fold on the turn, but it also depends on reads and dynamics.

 

[300HPGOD]

I dont like the played this hand. I prefer to 3 bet pre since I am not sure how often those behind will squeeze with UTG opening (yes, its 5 handed but even squeezers squeeze less against UTG openers) and we dont want to be overcalled by two or more either which could happen. We all know aces are strong but going to a pot 4 way here I would not be jumping for joy. Id rather 3 bet and see if I can induce UTG to decide they are going with something especially if we have the image of being a bully (not sure what our image is but I think that factors in to the moves we can make pre here).

On the flop, if we didnt raise pre then I like raising here now especially with hearts. If villain has air I dont think they are continuing on the turn given their stack size. If they have hearts they are calling of course and I think Qx might even call depending on kicker and the type of villain we go against. I dont think it is bad to call here but I do believe calling pre and calling flop is setting ourselves up here to win the minimum or lose the maximum especially with a flush draw out there.

The turn I dont get. I agree as played its a bet but jamming here makes villain play perfectly against us. They fold non flush hands and call with stuff only that beats us. Maybe you make a case for KQ thinking about folding there but I dont think villain will fold that often top two pair when they have something like 21 BBs left and at that point a SPR less than 2. Therefore no better hands are folding to us and no worse hands are calling us (as all single pair hands should fold except maybe AK with the ace of hearts villain will call). Thats a extremely narrow range of getting a worse hand to call so this should be a bet but it should be a smaller one. Seems like you got a little scared on the turn with hearts coming which I can see and would be concerned myself but I would be trying to get value from those one heart hands and not trying to just blow them out of the water.

 

[Bnobob]

Certainty
Worse it would be if he paid

 

[Ecolando]

Preflop
Of course the default play with AA should be to 3-bet. But with everyone so short, I can get on board with mixing in a trap. Ideally you induce someone behind to jam as a squeeze with a hand, that they would have folded facing a 3-bet. And BOOM there you are snapping them off with AA. Another option could be to make a very small 3-bet to like maybe 25.000. Annoying sizing, that UTG (HJ) almost has to call with his entire range.

Flop
As played totally on board with just calling and handing him the rope to continue hanging himself

Turn
I like a bet here but not a jam. He still have around 115k left behind, and pot is only 68k, so this is a fairly substantial overbet. And I think, he play rather well against that, folding most of the hands, you are ahead of, and mainly continuing on with hands, that you are behind to. Hands like sets, KQ for two pair or even flushes, that he is trapping you with. I dont put to much into the fact, he checked, because he is supposed to do a lot of checking on a card, that completely changed the texture.

With this line I think, you are setting yourself up to lose a big pot, when you are beat and only win a small one, when you are not. I would bet something like 30-40k here and then make a decision on the river, or if he check-jam. Your hand has very bad removal, since you block AK/AQ, which are hands, you want him to have, but you dont block the flush or any of the two pair and set combinations. So actually I could see this being a bet-fold on the turn, but it also depends on reads and dynamics.

I dont like the played this hand. I prefer to 3 bet pre since I am not sure how often those behind will squeeze with UTG opening (yes, its 5 handed but even squeezers squeeze less against UTG openers) and we dont want to be overcalled by two or more either which could happen. We all know aces are strong but going to a pot 4 way here I would not be jumping for joy. Id rather 3 bet and see if I can induce UTG to decide they are going with something especially if we have the image of being a bully (not sure what our image is but I think that factors in to the moves we can make pre here).

On the flop, if we didnt raise pre then I like raising here now especially with hearts. If villain has air I dont think they are continuing on the turn given their stack size. If they have hearts they are calling of course and I think Qx might even call depending on kicker and the type of villain we go against. I dont think it is bad to call here but I do believe calling pre and calling flop is setting ourselves up here to win the minimum or lose the maximum especially with a flush draw out there.

The turn I dont get. I agree as played its a bet but jamming here makes villain play perfectly against us. They fold non flush hands and call with stuff only that beats us. Maybe you make a case for KQ thinking about folding there but I dont think villain will fold that often top two pair when they have something like 21 BBs left and at that point a SPR less than 2. Therefore no better hands are folding to us and no worse hands are calling us (as all single pair hands should fold except maybe AK with the ace of hearts villain will call). Thats a extremely narrow range of getting a worse hand to call so this should be a bet but it should be a smaller one. Seems like you got a little scared on the turn with hearts coming which I can see and would be concerned myself but I would be trying to get value from those one heart hands and not trying to just blow them out of the water.

Excellent feedback from you both. Thank you!

 

[kkonicke]

I almost never call/trap with AA, but I really like the play here. Everyone else at the table has a jam stack, you could easily get some very loose jam steal attempts.

On the flop, I like the call as well. Very few bad cards for him if he does have Qx, and you should be way ahead here almost all the time.

The turn jam is a bit overkill. I think I'd bet between 50-60% of the pot here. A big bet like that probably scares off QJ/QT...only hands that call here are flushes, sneaky sets, KQ, and possibly some AQ/AK one heart hands. Most of the calling range has you crushed. You might be able to string along some of the Qx with a smaller bet. I suspect in this hand villain has a pocket pair under Q, like 99 or something...so once the K rattled off he probably wasn't calling anything anyway.

 

[Jon Poker]

Keeping this one short and on point -- I like the play with flatting the AA pre here - the table is short and there are tons of rejam stacks behind us that can squeeze here and get it all in and then we jist get to snap off. Where as if we 3bet, hands like 66s or 77s can just sigh and fold and we never give them the chance to stack off. If we were all about 40bb+ effective, im always 3betting.

Post flop is fine with the cbet and a call from us - the turn is where things become bad for me - when we overbet jam turn after villan checks to us - are we doing this for value or as a bluff? Assuming we are going for value here, what hands that are worse than our AA are calling off the 2x pot jam? My brain says none...this is a spot and a bet sizing where we likely ALWAYS get called by better and get worse to fold. I see these spots all the time where ppl are like "oh he can have AK or AQ off suit with the A of hearts" - and that basis falls apart with us blocking his Ax combos soooo heavily, so it's alot less likely. What is likely is villan has all the middling set combos, villan still has KQ and still has made flushes. The end result here is we are getting a ton of folds from this bet, and when villans do call, we are going to be behind ALOT.

I would likely bet turn around 40k to leverage 1/3 of villans retaining stack, while still going for value in this spot. I dont know 100% that I'm folding if villan check/jams on me, but I'm going to find the fold here a large portion of the time for sure because of the ranging reasons mentioned above.