https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/4qUnQZ6

MTT was in the money stage and Hero was in about 20th place with 300 remaining.


What do you think is there a calling range here? Is villain ever having missed diamonds here or some Ax hands that he is jamming after Hero bets on the river. When I look the hand now it feels like this should be fold 100% of the time?

Preflop
This is one of the rare spots, where I agree with flat calling from SB. AJs is way to strong to fold to a BTN open, and stack sizes are very awkward for 3-betting. If you jam, you give yourself terrible risk-reward, and if you 3-bet small, and he call, you are in an awkward spot out of position with a low SPR. If BB jam, you get to see, what BTN does first, and if he overjam, you can actually get away from your hand losing only 2BB more.

Flop
Fantastic flop for you obviously. You essentially have the nuts, since you only lose to sets, and you block 4 combos of those. This is a mandatory check-raise, and especially when he bet so small. By just check-calling you are essentially giving him two free cards to potentially draw out on you and also get away cheap, when he has some second best hand, that would pay you now. If you are not check-raising top two pair, then what are you even check-raising? Its either nothing at all or only bluff, and both of that is a huge issue from a theoretical point of view.

Turn
Since you check-called flop, its kind of standard to check to him.

River
Definitely betting for value, and I prefer more like half pot. His hand is looking kind of weak after checking back turn, but I still think, there is more value in betting slightly larger. When he move all in an as overbet, I would indeed fold. Yes you still have top two pair, but the river did pair bottom card, and while not the most common card in his range, he can have some 3x opening from BTN. He then C-bet his entire range very small, and checking back turn makes sense, when he pick up a little bit of showdown value.

Results
Him having 33 is a little surpricing, not only because there is only 1 combo of that hand left, but also because he really should not be checking back turn with a set. He should bet for value. Was this a 16,5$ tournament or a freeroll? The hand history says "0 + 0", and the action surely looks more like something, you would see in a freeroll.

I do think, you could have gotten away on the river, but as played I dont blame you for going broke. Bet-folding, when you are near the top of your range, is pretty tough. Also if he dont make his silly slowplay on the turn, then you either check-call again, or you check-jam, and then the chips are obviously going in.

So really the turn card doomed you, and the main thing, you should have done differently, was to check-raise the flop and put some chips in the middle, when you had esentially the nuts. In this particularly situation that would likely have ended the hand, and thats totally fine. He is never playing a big pot with 33, unless he hits his set, so you are either winning a small pot or losing a big one, if you let him continue.

Originally Posted by fundiver199

Preflop
This is one of the rare spots, where I agree with flat calling from SB. AJs is way to strong to fold to a BTN open, and stack sizes are very awkward for 3-betting. If you jam, you give yourself terrible risk-reward, and if you 3-bet small, and he call, you are in an awkward spot out of position with a low SPR. If BB jam, you get to see, what BTN does first, and if he overjam, you can actually get away from your hand losing only 2BB more.

Flop
Fantastic flop for you obviously. You essentially have the nuts, since you only lose to sets, and you block 4 combos of those. This is a mandatory check-raise, and especially when he bet so small. By just check-calling you are essentially giving him two free cards to potentially draw out on you and also get away cheap, when he has some second best hand, that would pay you now. If you are not check-raising top two pair, then what are you even check-raising? Its either nothing at all or only bluff, and both of that is a huge issue from a theoretical point of view.

Turn
Since you check-called flop, its kind of standard to check to him.

River
Definitely betting for value, and I prefer more like half pot. His hand is looking kind of weak after checking back turn, but I still think, there is more value in betting slightly larger. When he move all in an as overbet, I would indeed fold. Yes you still have top two pair, but the river did pair bottom card, and while not the most common card in his range, he can have some 3x opening from BTN. He then C-bet his entire range very small, and checking back turn makes sense, when he pick up a little bit of showdown value.

Results
Him having 33 is a little surpricing, not only because there is only 1 combo of that hand left, but also because he really should not be checking back turn with a set. He should bet for value. Was this a 16,5$ tournament or a freeroll? The hand history says "0 + 0", and the action surely looks more like something, you would see in a freeroll.

I do think, you could have gotten away on the river, but as played I dont blame you for going broke. Bet-folding, when you are near the top of your range, is pretty tough. Also if he dont make his silly slowplay on the turn, then you either check-call again, or you check-jam, and then the chips are obviously going in.

So really the turn card doomed you, and the main thing, you should have done differently, was to check-raise the flop and put some chips in the middle, when you had esentially the nuts. In this particularly situation that would likely have ended the hand, and thats totally fine. He is never playing a big pot with 33, unless he hits his set, so you are either winning a small pot or losing a big one, if you let him continue.

It is the 16.5 MTT with huge field - 2000+, so there are all kinds of players. This villain sat down 5-6 hands before this hand and I didn't know him from before.


pf: That was exactly my reasoning when decided to flat. Also, I try to play less 3-Bet pots out of position lately, as they have been killing me in the past month.

flop: I thought about check-raising but his sizing was so small, so I didn't want him to fold his bluffs, so I was hoping to induce on the T and the R.

turn: If he would have bet the turn, I would just call again and check-call the river also.

river: when he jams after my lead here and he previously checked the turn, I just couldn't think any hand but 22 and A3 that is beating me here. And I thought both hands would bet bigger on the flop as well and continue to c-bet the turn. I just didn't think of pocket 3 at any second and couldn't get to fold this...

I can get behind the flat preflop - it does keep worse Ax, Kx, Qx and Jx in the pot to extract value from -- that being said I just tend to 3bet this spot alot. Plug it into icmizer and if villan 4bet jams this is a snap call off for 30bb. That being said, 3b folding is fine if you choose to go down that route. Its ok to nit it up for a significant portion of your stack with the bubble approaching.

Post flop - we miss our 2nd opportunity, I am x/r this flop. Small blind range should be alot of paint and pair combos with some variations of 9x suited combos - that said our villan is cbetting into a flop that should smack the small blinds defense range and so our villan should be fairly strong in theory - so I am x/r this flop for value.

As played its pretty tough to fold river...but I'm not seeing a hand villan does this with that doesnt have us beat. AK, AQ, AT probably never checking turns - that said I can't imagine sets check turns very much either here so that makes it weird as well...tough one to try and get away from. I think we are too high up in our range to fold and we meet MDF enough to make the call here not expecting to be good very often. Part of the problem is we block alot of combos we want our villan to have when he does jam river, like the AK and AQ variations...only 8 combos of each left in the deck, so targeting only 16 combos of hands seems pretty optimistic that we are ahead here.

My conclusion is I probably sigh call this one off alot not expecting to be good very often - then once in a good while ill find the hero fold simply because we just don't encounter enough river bluffs in this scenario and we block alot of value combos we want our villan to jam off with. I would be WAAAY more inclined to call this off if our villan triple barreled off instead of x/jamming river.

I agree with others though I think this is a decent spot to raise here just to make it heads up vs a big blind that will usually call given that price. Hero will be out of position no matter what being in the SB so I would rather be out of position against 1 player rather than 2. I dont think it would take a large raise either as I would expect button to call a lot unless Im going really large so my raise intention is not to get folds (just because I dont think it will happen often enough) but more to just target the BB and get them out of the way.

Completely agree with other posts as you cant let villain bet this small and get away with it. On a dry board with two pair I would consider just calling here but not on this type of board with two diamonds, possible straight draw, plus the fact that villain could have some other type of hand that will call a raise here and we get extra value. If they fold because they have nothing then they fold and no reason to worry as you would likely not get any more chips from them anyway.

On the turn I think I would lead out as I would not want villain to have an easy check behind with diamonds or even a hand like K10 where they could catch something. Again if they fold because they have nothing then they fold but if they have some piece here they will at least consider calling.

I wouldnt love the river. I know 3x is rare here but villain is also opening a button so their range is usually wide here and could contain any two cards. Especially with how they bet the flop and checked the turn. Dont think I could fold here though unless I know something about this villain that they only do this with big catches on the river. I would call here and then swear up a storm probably. However, this likely does not happen if you raise the flop and that is how I would look at this hand. The runout is bad but ask yourself how it could have been avoided while still trying to attain value from your good hands.

Originally Posted by 300HPGOD

If they fold because they have nothing then they fold and no reason to worry as you would likely not get any more chips from them anyway.

Exactly. When they bet this small, they are either going to bet very small again on the turn or check behind, so its not like, we are getting any value at all by "handing them the rope to hang themselfes". Its different, if they bet full pot or something. Then I can be much more on board with check-calling and giving them the chance to continue.

Also this was apparently a 16,5$ tournament, which is the highest limit, before its officially called "mid stakes". And if you play this high, you need to play somewhat fundamentally sound poker against unknown opponents. You need to have some sort of balance in your game.

And we have a fair amount of draws on this board, which would certainly like to check-raise and take it down. If we have a hand like QT of clubs it would be fantastic to check-raise and have Villain fold 33. Which mean we also need to check-raise a decent amount of hands for value in order to be balanced and get that fold, when we are bluffing. With this tiny sizing even a decent top pair like AQ, if we flatted that hand pre, is almost certainly a check-raise, if you plug this into a solver. OP should watch some of the videos, Jonathan Little put out on Youtube.

Originally Posted by 300HPGOD

On the turn I think I would lead out as I would not want villain to have an easy check behind with diamonds or even a hand like K10 where they could catch something. Again if they fold because they have nothing then they fold but if they have some piece here they will at least consider calling.

If for some reason I check-called the flop, like maybe I was scared of timing out or something, then I really like this idea of leading the turn. Send a message, that we are done with these tiny bets now, and its time for you to make a decision. It can look bluffy and maybe even induce a spazz raise from time to time, in which case we obviously just get it in now.

Hello, I agree in the large part with guys. I think that pre flop we have to options, call or 3bet. 3bet pre flop is a little more risky move, so I prefer playing call pre flop from the small blind. The flop I think that check is a little risky move, because opponent has wide range and there are many suited connector hands. I also think that on the flop we should play check/raise, because of flush draw on the flop. On the flop we have usually the best hand. As played on the river - I think that we can't escape on the river, because board seems even safe. This time opponent hits his outs and win this hand. GL

Originally Posted by ciriciric

https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/4qUnQZ6

MTT was in the money stage and Hero was in about 20th place with 300 remaining.


What do you think is there a calling range here? Is villain ever having missed diamonds here or some Ax hands that he is jamming after Hero bets on the river. When I look the hand now it feels like this should be fold 100% of the time?

I think you can jam preflop and call looks good too but flop is x\r for value cause spr is low and you ll have very often x\x turn so I think you missed it.In general you should play such spots fast in short effective stacks with so strong hands on flop!

I would 3-bet pre-flop to around 24k and then call off a jam.

Post-flop I like your line. River: He shouldn't have many 3X hands in his range and your very strong considering how little money has gone into the pot so far post-flop. You're also high enough up in your range that if you fold, you have almost no calling range (as you say in the post title!). So definitely we can fold against a passive or predictable opponent. But normally I would call here.