$2 NLHE MTT Deep Stacked: AKo in BB against shove + multiple callers

[ph_il]

79638985-130 - $300 Gtd (79624312-1)
Holdem Tournament No Limit Holdem Tournament
Wednesday 29 Oct 2014 2:22:04 AM
1: Golowjoe [3560]
2: Charlie76Couv [2480]
3: cpYacmbH4 [7440]
4: RBL1120 [42507]
5: FranSwaa [48209]
6: Destroyer770 [9166] (Dealer)
7: kpeeze [18307]
8: ohshootmybad [40546]
9: lelnegro [7160]
*** BLINDS ***
Golowjoe Paid Ante 80
Charlie76Couv Paid Ante 80
cpYacmbH4 Paid Ante 80
RBL1120 Paid Ante 80
FranSwaa Paid Ante 80
Destroyer770 Paid Ante 80
kpeeze Paid Ante 80
ohshootmybad Paid Ante 80
lelnegro Paid Ante 80
kpeeze Posts Small Blind 400
ohshootmybad Posts Big Blind 800
*** PREFLOP ***
ohshootmybad Hole Cards: Ac,Kh
lelnegro Calls 800
Golowjoe Folds
Charlie76Couv went All In 2400
cpYacmbH4 Folds
RBL1120 Folds
FranSwaa Calls 2400
Destroyer770 Folds
kpeeze Calls 2000
ohshootmybad ???

Whats my best option here?

Raising is an option, but equal sized stack just called and I didn't want to play a big pot OOP or beforced to fold if they 4bet shove. Or is folding to a shove weak with AK here for 60BBs?

Calling is another option, but it just feels super weak.

 

[horizon12]

Isolate all limp, reraise 9-10k enough , if kpeeze shove this easy call,
if FranSwaa shove need look on stats HUD , but we can find fold , it is unlikely that he will go shove ,against an unknown villain , we'll be far behind...
If some one call , we can win in postflop..

 

[10058765]

My thoughts...
We don't want to play a 4- or 5-way pot OOP so just calling is no option.
Folding AK pre ? Hey, none of the callers show real strength....they just call a 3 BB shove...so, no folding isn't an option either...
Obv, what remains is a 3-bet.
Guess I would make it close to 11K.....

 

[rumsey182]

your honestly doing the shortie a favor by raising but i would just raise you are too strong to flat here and have no real risk your calling kpeeze if he backshoves that stack and folding to FranSwaa because he should be very nutted if does that

 

[Jacki Burkhart]

This is a very interesting spot. My gut instinct is to jam preflop, but I'm intrigued by this spot and want to consider all the options: Folding, Flatting, Raising All in, or Raising less than All In.

I think folding is a silly idea as you're getting 6:1 with a premium hand

I think flatting is a fairly bad idea for 2 reasons: playing AK multiway out of position is a recipe for disaster with huge reverse implied odds. Also, the early position limper can still re-open the betting. IF you closed the betting then flatting would only be mildly terrible.

So that leave us with 3betting. There are 2 options here, 3bet all in, or 3bet less than all in?

If you 3bet all in then you are at risk since franswaa has you covered; but he hasn't shown any real strength, so it is unlikely he is going to show up with a monster in this spot. You'll rarely be crushed, and there will be some dead money but most importantly I think your fold equity is HUGE here. Let's say he flatted with a range of AT+, KQ, 22-TT and AA (seems unlikely he would flat instead of raise with JJ,QQ,KK) (10%). Which of those hands will he now call with? obviously AA, possibly AK and TT (or 2%). Meaning 80% of the time he just folds, and 20% of the time he calls and you'll have about 40% equity vs. his calling range. That's actually not too bad, especially given the fold equity and the dead money.

If you 3bet to something like 10,000 the pot will be something like 20,000 giving your opponents 2:1 on their call. You'll likely get called by at least 1 player and the pot will be 30,000 and you'll have a stack of 30,000 left behind. MEANING ANY FLOP BET BASICALLY POT COMMITS YOU, and you are out of position to boot. You don't get to wait and see if they check to you before you CBet. You'll miss the flop 2/3 of the time and then what? check fold? Open jam when you missed the flop? If you were going to jam on any flop, then why not just jam preflop?

If you were 3betting with the intentions of folding to a 4bet from FranSwaa, let's examine that idea. you 3bet to 10k making the pot 20k and then Franswaa jams for effectively 30k more meaning you need to put in 30k to win 50k or 1.66:1 pot odds. (you only need to win 37% of the time to break even on this call). Basically, the only hand he could do this with where you have less than 37% equity is precisely AA. Even with KK you'd have 30% equity which is close to break even, AND you have to admit this would be a pretty strange way for him to play KK. Some folks might just flat the short tack jam to slow play with AA right there but almost never KK or QQ or JJ.

So, esentially you are making a mistake if you fold to any of his 4bet jams except AA, and since he could jam wider than AA here, folding to his 4bet jam is a mistake unless you have a read that he is VERY strong.

Conclusion: keep it simple and just jam preflop. Maximize your fold equity with a premium hand in a growing pot where nobody is showing any real strength.

 

[rumsey182]

This is a very interesting spot. My gut instinct is to jam preflop, but I'm intrigued by this spot and want to consider all the options: Folding, Flatting, Raising All in, or Raising less than All In.

I think folding is a silly idea as you're getting 6:1 with a premium hand

I think flatting is a fairly bad idea for 2 reasons: playing AK multiway out of position is a recipe for disaster with huge reverse implied odds. Also, the early position limper can still re-open the betting. IF you closed the betting then flatting would only be mildly terrible.

So that leave us with 3betting. There are 2 options here, 3bet all in, or 3bet less than all in?

If you 3bet all in then you are at risk since franswaa has you covered; but he hasn't shown any real strength, so it is unlikely he is going to show up with a monster in this spot. You'll rarely be crushed, and there will be some dead money but most importantly I think your fold equity is HUGE here. Let's say he flatted with a range of AT+, KQ, 22-TT and AA (seems unlikely he would flat instead of raise with JJ,QQ,KK) (10%). Which of those hands will he now call with? obviously AA, possibly AK and TT (or 2%). Meaning 80% of the time he just folds, and 20% of the time he calls and you'll have about 40% equity vs. his calling range. That's actually not too bad, especially given the fold equity and the dead money.

If you 3bet to something like 10,000 the pot will be something like 20,000 giving your opponents 2:1 on their call. You'll likely get called by at least 1 player and the pot will be 30,000 and you'll have a stack of 30,000 left behind. MEANING ANY FLOP BET BASICALLY POT COMMITS YOU, and you are out of position to boot. You don't get to wait and see if they check to you before you CBet. You'll miss the flop 2/3 of the time and then what? check fold? Open jam when you missed the flop? If you were going to jam on any flop, then why not just jam preflop?

If you were 3betting with the intentions of folding to a 4bet from FranSwaa, let's examine that idea. you 3bet to 10k making the pot 20k and then Franswaa jams for effectively 30k more meaning you need to put in 30k to win 50k or 1.66:1 pot odds. (you only need to win 37% of the time to break even on this call). Basically, the only hand he could do this with where you have less than 37% equity is precisely AA. Even with KK you'd have 30% equity which is close to break even, AND you have to admit this would be a pretty strange way for him to play KK. Some folks might just flat the short tack jam to slow play with AA right there but almost never KK or QQ or JJ.

So, esentially you are making a mistake if you fold to any of his 4bet jams except AA, and since he could jam wider than AA here, folding to his 4bet jam is a mistake unless you have a read that he is VERY strong.

Conclusion: keep it simple and just jam preflop. Maximize your fold equity with a premium hand in a growing pot where nobody is showing any real strength.

it is a little deep effective stacks for me to do that,.. it may be +ev but seems excessively risky. I would raise and jam a lot of flops. I have been so shocked at how often you can leave yourself a PSB or even like 80% PSB and shove flops and people fold ( likely they have some sort of middling PP or something and just can't decide how to play it) but we can actually profit a little more from this because it is still very possible to get flatted and get folds OTF which is so nice to get that free chips preflop

I would say the more you have some reads the more i would want to raise instead of shove ( in an academic sense here i would have to give a shove a little more credit here due to lack of info) but i still think this can be done readless more or less assuming you make decent judgments on which flops we shove and which flops we don't

Sorry for being TLDR last point: if we do raise, get flatted, and hit the flop very nicely,.. lets say A49 rainbow i would be checking for some reason people will assume you would have bet an A after raising it and can sometimes tool out spazz the flop with,..idk KJ. Worst case you push the turn if he checks back and you almost always fine. A unique situation but worth mentioning imo

 

[NineLions]

Phil! Long time no see!

 

[suby_rafael]

I would also like to shove here pre flop and force the big stack to lay his hand down. Perfect spot to this in my mind. Doing anything else just seems a bad idea to me.:canabis:

 

[Jacki Burkhart]

it is a little deep effective stacks for me to do that,.. it may be +ev but seems excessively risky. I would raise and jam a lot of flops. I have been so shocked at how often you can leave yourself a PSB or even like 80% PSB and shove flops and people fold ( likely they have some sort of middling PP or something and just can't decide how to play it) but we can actually profit a little more from this because it is still very possible to get flatted and get folds OTF which is so nice to get that free chips preflop

I would say the more you have some reads the more i would want to raise instead of shove ( in an academic sense here i would have to give a shove a little more credit here due to lack of info) but i still think this can be done readless more or less assuming you make decent judgments on which flops we shove and which flops we don't

Sorry for being TLDR last point: if we do raise, get flatted, and hit the flop very nicely,.. lets say A49 rainbow i would be checking for some reason people will assume you would have bet an A after raising it and can sometimes tool out spazz the flop with,..idk KJ. Worst case you push the turn if he checks back and you almost always fine. A unique situation but worth mentioning imo

Effective stacks are 50bb or less depending on who plays along. There is no way the other players are calling a 3bet preflop then folding on the flop because it represents more than half their stack. So the only player who might do that is franswaa.

So your plan is to jam AK on the flops you miss and check when you hit to induce a hand like KJ to spazz out and bluff their stack off? I don't think you've really thought this through. If the flop comes 9 high and you jam you'll only get called by A9 or TT+ or a set. If you actually think you're going to get action from hands like KJ then it would be better to keep hands you dominate on the hook for their full stack. This line folds out the hands you're beating and gets called by hands that beat you.

I just don't understand raising huge then jamming any flop in a multiway pot. Usually a stop n go is best heads up.

I understand you're just presenting an alternative line; but I'm not sure it's better.

 

[rumsey182]

Effective stacks are 50bb or less depending on who plays along. There is no way the other players are calling a 3bet preflop then folding on the flop because it represents more than half their stack. So the only player who might do that is franswaa.

you can't assume this and i used to think people wouldn't,.. until i saw it happen. I think your right in general, but if you never give people a chance to make this kind of mistake you are guaranteed that they will never bc you don't allow them too

So your plan is to jam AK on the flops you miss and check when you hit to induce a hand like KJ to spazz out and bluff their stack off? I don't think you've really thought this through. If the flop comes 9 high and you jam you'll only get called by A9 or TT+ or a set. If you actually think you're going to get action from hands like KJ then it would be better to keep hands you dominate on the hook for their full stack. This line folds out the hands you're beating and gets called by hands that beat you.

possibly,.. it really depends on the texture. I'm not always shoving, and it is ok if I'm only getting called by overs and stuff that hits hard. Most of the stuff that is calling on the flop,.. was calling pre anyways. Some of the stuff that would have gotten it in pre, missed and can't call. Sometimes hands that would have called and i was flipping with, are now facing a really crappy decision on the flop. Also it boils down to wanting to balance ranges some, if you never have a raising range when you aren't shoving, are you ever worse then AQ? AK?

This situation is not as ideal of an example of what im trying to get at bc we are having to show are hand with the shortie allin but for a second lets just assume he was just a normal opener: can you ever be weak ( or at least precived as weak) when you pile your whole range? Not likely, you risking a ton i think just about anyone would see that as pretty spewy. But raising gives a chance for someone to see you as possibly being weak ( depends some on image)

I just don't understand raising huge then jamming any flop in a multiway pot. Usually a stop n go is best heads up.

It may or may not be HU, we can cross that bridge when we get to it. Shoving it is a little simpler, so if your not confident in making a decision OTF ( or you expect a lot of multiway pots) just shove.

I understand you're just presenting an alternative line; but I'm not sure it's better.

with these stacks, you have some decisions. A lot of people just blindly push buttons ( more so in 30BB situations) and i really think people should consider things. This is something that took me a very long time to really wrap my brain around in poker, when i would talk to people who had a much better understanding of poker ( more cash game players but sometimes very good MTTers) would find themselves in situations where they leave people a chance to make a big mistake, and it helped them to maximize their profit potential. It boils down to the definition of what a better player is: someone who can extract more overall EV then others. Once you get comfortable in what your overall gameplan "should be" you can make judgements in trying to vary your lines some. More so, i would recommend people do this when they have a hand they know they will call someone coming overtop of them.


What is nice about this is, either play is almost def +ev, so we get to pick between which one we think is higher ev.

 

[Jacki Burkhart]

I can appreciate what you're saying from a theoretical sense...but for practical application the simplest solution with +EV will often be best.

It seems like your counterpoints are "you can't assume xxxxxx" but you'll never arrive at any decisions in poker without making some assumptions. I mean, you could never rule out ANY hands by that logic....but by the time I reach the river in a 4 bet pot on a board of AKT97 I can be pretty sure my opponent isn't calling my river bet with pocket 6s or worse....

and when we point out that most players would never take a certain line your response is basically: "Who knows? Maybe they will play bad" and it seems poor strategy to rely on others making poor plays when we have other options available to us (like making better plays).

I wonder if you have primarily a cash game background....and I mean no disrespect I think it's very difficult and have loads of respect for successful cash players....but concepts like "range balancing" are of limited use in tournaments. And reluctance to get it in preflop with AK is also a tendency I notice among cash players. Maybe because cash players aren't used to getting to a point where they "have" to flip they are less willing to take an extremely profitable flip? I dunno...I'm just spitballin here...

 

[Aces2w1n]

If we are playing against a weaker Ace though it'll work on the flop ramsey said... And we would gain more chips that way, people flatting would more likely have those types of hands though?? Or middle PP...

So checking a flop we hit hard I do agree with because it'll open up to later streets for our villains to bluff and we still get the job done or win more than shoving pre and scaring off everyone?...

Villain could still have AA and all our other customers fold... don't we want to keep worse hands in the pot thinking we can win more money and not be scared to play some poker?? just saying... we should have a skill edge.

On a really tight great table... perhaps we are only getting called by better hands making it -ev? but since we don't have reads on our opponents.... and we are quite deep it's risky jamming and seems like an error.

 

[TomLeach]

If we are playing against a weaker Ace though it'll work on the flop ramsey said... And we would gain more chips that way, people flatting would more likely have those types of hands though?? Or middle PP...

So checking a flop we hit hard I do agree with because it'll open up to later streets for our villains to bluff and we still get the job done or win more than shoving pre and scaring off everyone?...

Villain could still have AA and all our other customers fold... don't we want to keep worse hands in the pot thinking we can win more money and not be scared to play some poker?? just saying... we should have a skill edge.

On a really tight great table... perhaps we are only getting called by better hands making it -ev? but since we don't have reads on our opponents.... and we are quite deep it's risky jamming and seems like an error.

On a tight great table, they are perhaps folding TT JJ to a jam? If the 20bb calls/shoves, its only half our stack, and with lots of dead money im happy racing. I dont see anyone showing up with JJ QQ here for the reasons missjacki already said..

Maybe someone is getting really tricky with AA, but i think its a weird play.


In relation to the actual raise, folding is NOT an option, maybe this guy has AA or some KK (hes got down to 3bb, was that a pot he lost for most his stack, or has been folding waiting for the perfect hand?) Hes also shoving when he has a few more hands to go before the blinds come round, so lets put his range pretty high, because im assuming hes the guy that folds round until he gets a monster. Hes at worse showing up with Ax or Kx. You have an A and a K. So there are now only two combinations of AK, eight combinations of AQ, lets say 1.5 KK and 1.5 AA and 7 combinations of TT. If were feeling really good maybe there are some AJ in there too.

Looking at that entire range for the people that have flatted, if you shove its definitely profitable eV, and you hope you get called by worse, or race in what is still +eV because of the dead money.

TL;Dr - 3bb stack is turning up with a monster, crush everyone else.

 

[Jacki Burkhart]

Also, just winning the pot preflop is a fine outcome.

If you get called and flip with dead money, that's fine.

Anytime you can jam and whether they fold or call you are happy either way; then jamming is probably best.

 

[rumsey182]

I can appreciate what you're saying from a theoretical sense...but for practical application the simplest solution with +EV will often be best.

It seems like your counterpoints are "you can't assume xxxxxx" but you'll never arrive at any decisions in poker without making some assumptions. I mean, you could never rule out ANY hands by that logic....but by the time I reach the river in a 4 bet pot on a board of AKT97 I can be pretty sure my opponent isn't calling my river bet with pocket 6s or worse....

and when we point out that most players would never take a certain line your response is basically: "Who knows? Maybe they will play bad" and it seems poor strategy to rely on others making poor plays when we have other options available to us (like making better plays).

I wonder if you have primarily a cash game background....and I mean no disrespect I think it's very difficult and have loads of respect for successful cash players....but concepts like "range balancing" are of limited use in tournaments. And reluctance to get it in preflop with AK is also a tendency I notice among cash players. Maybe because cash players aren't used to getting to a point where they "have" to flip they are less willing to take an extremely profitable flip? I dunno...I'm just spitballin here...

you can make the least amount of assumptions as possible in a vacuum thou. Also it is more exploring the options and seeing what fits different situations because you should really not truly be in a pure vacuum that often unless you just moved tables but even a few hands and showdowns can make a huge difference. The problem is people make general assumptions instead of paying attention to the players and the exact situation they are in.