$16.5 NLHE MTT: Raise or flat?

[blix177]

Mid levels 800 remaining out of 3600 players

Heroes 18BB in the SB Holding A 10S

UTG min raise to 2BB with 30BB
Cutoff flat calls. With 22BB

Should the hero flat or min raise to 3BB or raise bigger?

I am thinking raising to 3BB has it's merits, if UTG has AJ+ hands he will flat call or if he has even monsters like QQ-AA which will have us dominated , he will for sure reraise to isolate.

But flatting give us a chance to flop the nuts with a flush and if we are dominated we essentially wasted 3BB out of 18BB to raise.

 

[stylebender72]

If you re not sure what to do in this spot why are you playing a $16.5 tournament at the first place you re just wasting your money you need to study and improve THEN you can play, my advice is hire a coach that helps understand some concepts that you will never understand by reading books or watch tournaments or cash games on youtube. in this spot 3betting to 3bb has no merits its just a terrible play it doesnt accomplish anything your just making the pot slightly bigger and you re gonna play a relatively big pot out of position to two players so you wont realize your equity that often, min 3bet to 3bb and they both will call anything because they re getting a good price and your 3bet is meaningless. flatting is okay but I dont like it for the same reason lets say a king high flops comes the UTG can take the pot down with a small cbet and you cant do anything about it so you wont realize your equity. the best play is 3bet shove at 20bb depth, its the highest ev play you can deny equity to hands like AJ AQo dominates your ATs, I would shove AA-22 AKs-A2s AKo-A9o KQ KJ KTs JTs its a standard spot, I would do the same vs CO's open at <40bb depth. if you re struggling at these standard spots I imagine you re playing terribly postflop more than you can imagine, poker players tend to think they re good, ask yourself what makes you better than so many players and you re gonna struggle to answer that question and your answer will stem from an obsessive psychotic denial of reality its self-deception my friend. stop playing hire a cheap coach invest some money if you wanna make money stop wasting so much time, good luck.

 

[blix177]

There is merit to jamming here. But I think most people opening really strong UTG, so there is a strong possibility that you are very much dominated.

So you are risking 18BB to win 6.5BB

If jamming is the play, I am guessing a 9BB raise should also do the trick. The only one that would call a 9BB raise would have your hand dominated. This would also leave room for a fold, if they do jam on you.

And you are right, I have horrible post flop play. But that doesn't matter too much in MTT, most of the time we are in the 5-20BB zone so by the time flop. Lots of time the hand is predetermined preflop.

 

[6bet]

Mid levels 800 remaining out of 3600 players

Heroes 18BB in the SB Holding A 10S

UTG min raise to 2BB with 30BB
Cutoff flat calls. With 22BB

Should the hero flat or min raise to 3BB or raise bigger?

I am thinking raising to 3BB has it's merits, if UTG has AJ+ hands he will flat call or if he has even monsters like QQ-AA which will have us dominated , he will for sure reraise to isolate.

But flatting give us a chance to flop the nuts with a flush and if we are dominated we essentially wasted 3BB out of 18BB to raise.

I would never raise to 3BB here. In fact, I would never raise here unless UTG is particularly loose aggressive. In that case I would be all in. Best play here is to call and try to flop a FD or 2 pair to continue in the hand.

 

[6bet]

There is merit to jamming here. But I think most people opening really strong UTG, so there is a strong possibility that you are very much dominated.

So you are risking 18BB to win 6.5BB

If jamming is the play, I am guessing a 9BB raise should also do the trick. The only one that would call a 9BB raise would have your hand dominated. This would also leave room for a fold, if they do jam on you.

And you are right, I have horrible post flop play. But that doesn't matter too much in MTT, most of the time we are in the 5-20BB zone so by the time flop. Lots of time the hand is predetermined preflop.

Disagree. Raising half your stack to fold is not a good idea. As a general rule of thumb you'd want to make plays raise folding no more than 33% of your stack and these plays are made sparingly where you are more than likely to get a fold.

 

[ph_il]

You close the action and you're getting 6:1 to see a flop with a decent hand. I think flatting and re-evaluating the flop is fine.

Jam pre if you don't want to play post flop.