$16.50 NLHE MTT: Premium hand bet sizing

[sitingman]

888Poker, Hold'em No Limit - 60/120 (15 ante) - 8 players
Replay this hand on CardsChat

UTG: 16,313 (136 bb)
UTG+1: 9,952 (83 bb)
MP: 16,494 (137 bb)
MP+1: 22,318 (186 bb)
CO (Hero): 7,208 (60 bb)
BU: 47,604 (397 bb)
SB: 10,093 (84 bb)
BB: 9,964 (83 bb)

Pre-Flop: (300) Hero is CO with A♠ A♦
4 players fold, Hero raises to 240, 2 players fold, BB calls 120

Flop: (660) 2♦ Q♣ A♥ (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 120, BB calls 120

Turn: (900) 9♣ (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 240, BB calls 240

River: (1,380) A♣ (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 6,593 (all-in), BB folds

Looking through my hand history I realise I seem to bet big when I think I'm behind and bet small when I think I'm ahead. In this hand I bet small on the flop because I was trying to get a worse hand to call. On the turn I was trying to get a flush draw to call but was unsure about the sizing. On the river I just couldn't resist.

I'd like to know how others would play this hand and what bet sizing you would chose?

Thanks

 

[fundiver199]

Preflop
With stacks this deep and antes, because its a tournament, I think, a min-raise is leaving a lot of money on the table, and its giving people way to good a price to defend their blinds. I would go to somewhere between 2,5 to 3,0BB in this situation. Min-raises are for, when your stack is very short, and you want to lose less, when you have to fold to a rejam. Here however people can not rejam on you, and you are more than deep enough to call a small 3-bet and play some poker.

Flop
You flopped top set, and while its great to have the nuts, this is not an easy situation to get paid. The board is very dry, and you obviously have huge board lock. I can get on board with a slowplay here and simply check back the flop to allow him to bluff the turn or catch up. Betting is also fine though, but just a min-bet makes no sense. If he has something like say a Q, its not like, he is going to fold, because you bet say 240 rather than just 120.

Turn
Now some draws showed up, so more hands can pay you now, or you dont mind, if they fold and give up their equity. You bet 240, and this is also way to small in my opinion. I would bet something like 500-600 here. This is still only 5-6% of his stack, and if he does not have a hand, he does not have a hand. Its not like, he is going to call 240 more than twice as often as 500-600.

River
You improve to quads, and now you move all-in for 5 times the pot. This makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe once in a blue moon he improved to a flush, but even a flush can find a fold, when you make this massive overbet, because as the preflop raiser you can absolutely have every single possible boat on this board. And he cant ever have a boat or trips here. AX is obviously impossible, since we see all 4 of them, QQ would have 3-bet pre, and 22 or 99 would have raised you on the flop or turn.

So you are looking at a very capped range, where he can have a few combos of flushes like KJ, KT or JT, but the rest of his range is second or third pair and busted gutshot draws. And against this kind of range, your best chance to get paid is to continue with your small sizing from the flop and turn. A Q will lock you up even just to see your hand, and you might induce both a flush and the busted draws to come in with a raise. As played I would bet something like 400 now and pray to get raised. And if I did, obviously coming back over the top.

 

[300HPGOD]

Pre flop I think its simple here sitting on 60 BBs that this open should be between 2.5x and 3x. It should depend on what your normal opening size is for what you should do. What you should be trying to do in this spot is not set off any alarm bells but open the same way you have been opening to this point in the tourney. If that has been a min raise then I think we should min raise here but being over 50 BBs I personally dont think a min raise is the best route. Again though, I would open to whatever sizing you have been opening to previously in this tournament.

Post flop there is not one street where I like the sizing. The flop is a hard spot to get paid as mentioned by Fundiver as there is only one Ace left and Qx should be weary of calling an opener on a flop with an ace in it. Knowing that I like going a "standard" 1/3rd or 40 ish% pot bet or checking. I dont like going big and I really dont like a min bet as to me anyway it screams please stay in the hand.

On the turn you get a card that will make some more holdings stay around so you can bet more. On top of that, if villain was floating flop you arent getting anything whether you bet small or big so might as well target draws and put more in. Id recommend as played 400-550 as the bet sizing.

On the river you get the nuts and the flush comes in but you cant expect people to call a gigantic overbet jam with a flush on a paired board often. Bigger is better here but I dont think you can go much over 1.25 times pot (depending on villain as some villains will call a lot of overbets on the river but its hard to know that since you dont see them faced with it much) so I like as played a sizing more like 800-900 (since you went small on flop and turn) to see if you can get a call from flushes and possibly even Qx.

 

[fundiver199]

On the river you get the nuts and the flush comes in but you cant expect people to call a gigantic overbet jam with a flush on a paired board often.

If top of that there are not many flush combos, Villain can even have. It was a very small flop bet, but for him to continue, he probably needed to have more than just a backdoor flushdraw. So combos like T8 of clubs, 87 of clubs, 76 of clubs and so on were probably folded on the flop. And of course he cant have combos containing the A, Q or 9, because those cards are on the board. So maybe we can give him KJ, KT, JT, 54, 53, 43, 42 and 32, and thats probably just about it. And the baby flushes should be even less likely to call such a massive size, because they also need to worry about potentially being overflushed.

 

[Clutchdenier]

The hand didn't play out that we'll tbh - I guess you could make an argument betting small on the river on the line you took - but with the board it would have been hard to get value out of much besides maybe a set. With that In mind, checking the river to allow the opponent to bluff would have been possible if you checked the turn... The double continuation bet screams of an A and you were essentially playing face up poker after the turn IMO

 

[jaworek1405]

Hello, I agree in the large part with guys. Too small bets on the flop and on the turn. With top set and deep stack I think I can play check the flop. On the flop are some combination to straight draw, sometimes 4outs, but we have also some outs to full house. So I think we can check on the flop. If we check on the flop we don't give him too many informations about this very strong hand. If you check on the flop, opponent can think that with for example Qx he has the best hand. The turn - now we can't check, we have to bet for value, because there open the next draw, flush draw that always should call the bet on the turn. If we are with opponent on the river, we bet less than pot, for value. In longrun smaller bet is more valueable. We always will win the chips with quads if we play smaller bet on the river. GL

 

[eetenor]

888Poker, Hold'em No Limit - 60/120 (15 ante) - 8 players
Replay this hand on CardsChat

UTG: 16,313 (136 bb)
UTG+1: 9,952 (83 bb)
MP: 16,494 (137 bb)
MP+1: 22,318 (186 bb)
CO (Hero): 7,208 (60 bb)
BU: 47,604 (397 bb)
SB: 10,093 (84 bb)
BB: 9,964 (83 bb)

Pre-Flop: (300) Hero is CO with A♠ A♦
4 players fold, Hero raises to 240, 2 players fold, BB calls 120

Flop: (660) 2♦ Q♣ A♥ (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 120, BB calls 120

Turn: (900) 9♣ (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 240, BB calls 240

River: (1,380) A♣ (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 6,593 (all-in), BB folds

Looking through my hand history I realise I seem to bet big when I think I'm behind and bet small when I think I'm ahead. In this hand I bet small on the flop because I was trying to get a worse hand to call. On the turn I was trying to get a flush draw to call but was unsure about the sizing. On the river I just couldn't resist.

I'd like to know how others would play this hand and what bet sizing you would chose?

Thanks

Thank you for posting.

Avoiding looking at results

Preflop fine

Flop size 2 small
stopped reply at your bet

When we range our V on this flop no card can come where they improve to a better pair
and any pair they called with is lower than the Q and there are only paint draws JT KT some KJ maybe and backdoors.

So when we choose this sizing most of the time it is to protect vs our V having the nuts not the case here or keeping the V's range wide not the case here as most V fold most of range to any bet size here. So our betting on this flop can be more targeted to the top part of the V's range that will continue so we can use larger sizing on flop or check.

Turn

This sizing targets a Qx but we cannot just put our V on a Qx only and as another draw is now possible we can go for more value on the turn.
This is player dependent of course you could be exploiting here which is fine.

River

Why this size?

So let us look at the data leading to the river to understand what sizing has greatest EV in this situation.

1 we min raise preflop
2 V is in BB has wide range but AKAQ QQ not in that range often
3 Board is ugly for BB because of range
4 We small bet flop and turn BB only calls. We bet both streets though that is polarized
5 River Board pairs We have all the full houses ---Paired board brings in a flush we can have flushes.
6 We bet 6k into 1300 the V can fold flushes easily and move on to the next hand.

So this bet is called so seldom that it does not out EV a pot size or 1.2 pot size river bet targeting made flushes only. We want our V to have difficult choices with a larger part of their range when we bet on rivers this size does not do that.

Hope this helps

 

[lanelosee100]

I play like this sometimes but I think it's a mistake. Typically you are only getting called by drawing hands and letting them get free cards seems like a losing strategy. Bet heavy and allow opponents to make mistakes chasing.

 

[theANMATOR]

I'd bet something like 2bb on the river in an attempt to induce a frustrated re-raise, unless I'm against a solid player - I might go as high as half pot just to get a crying call from the player with a Q or some rando flush.

 

[Endwarfin]

The replies here are great and seem to focus on the river as a glaring inflection point.

When you have quad Aces you actually know that no one else has an ace - a 4x river jam doesn't allow anything but value to call.

The best and only hands that would call here would be Queens full or 9s full. Id fold the king high flush.

This play misses value on every hand that could call river when you 100% know no one else has Ace and everyone is scared of AQ