$4.4 NLHE MTT: Losing Final Table from large lead - where did it go wrong?

[PPT]

Playing a satellite on final table, 5 players get the ticket. I went in to the final with a large chip lead.

Three bad hands saw me go from chip-leader to getting eliminated. Should I have folded these hands or played them differently? Did I play badly, or was it unlucky?

Hand 1: https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/4a1IgVAT
I had AK and opened with a 3BB bet. BB re-raised all-in and only had a fraction of my chips. I thought this was a call to try and take another player out and get closer to the ticket, plus AK usually has at worse a 50/50 shot, but he had KK and no A came.

Hand 2: https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/4a1IgVG5
I had KQ in Dealer position and everyone had folded around. I opened with a 2.5 raise, Turn pushed, I called.

Hand 3: https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/4a1IgVJb
Now lowest stack, UTG so will be forced into BB next hand. Get A8o, I chose to push and BB had A9 and Quad 9s came on the flop! Game over.

Raising with AK was the beginning of the end for me, but not raising with AK in that situation just doesn't feel right, should that have been a pre-flop fold or a fold to the 3-bet?

Similarly raising with KQ while in the dealer position seems to make sense to me, but calling the 3-bet was probably a mistake?

I felt forced into pushing with the A8 and that's a push or fold situation. So was push or fold right?

Its infuriating to get so close to the ticket and piss it away over three hands. Would have been better off if I'd just folded everything even AK but is that how I have to play? Would you have played this any differently?

 

[fundiver199]

I was actually at this final table but did not recognice you, since I did not know your 888 Poker username. I know this, because I remember your last hand, where the opponent flopped quads leaving you drawing stone dead on the flop. When you busted, I had a decent stack, but unfortunately the short stacks kept on surviving and chipping up, so eventually I was the shortest stack with 6BB. I then jammed K5o blind vs. blind into the chip leader, who was on my direct left, he called with A7o, he won, and I was the bubble boy. So I kind of share your pain on this one

Anyways lets look at the hands:

Hand 1 AK
Nobody were so short at this table, that you could afford to just fold your way to a ticket. You would have blinded away, until suddenly you were the short stack. So not playing AK is definitely not an option. I do think, your 3BB open is way to large though. A min-raise is much better in general with these stack sizes, and then you can actually fold AKo, if the 20BB stack behind you (which was me) jam. But against the shorter stacks you have to call it off, and running into KK was just very unlucky.

Hand 2 KQo
This hand is another sizing mistake in my opinion and this time the issue is not open jamming. Near the bubble of a satellite there is a massive gap between jamming and calling ranges, and with an effective stack size of 11BB and you covering both players in the blinds this is a spot, where you apply a ton of ICM-pressure by open jamming and force them to either fold or call it off for their tournament live.

I plugged the hand into ICMizer, and you can profitably jam 94% of hands here, which mean any two except the worst junk like 72o and 32o. And had you jammed, its really difficult and a massive mistake for SB to call it off for his tournament life with A7o. He is even supposed to fold AQo, which ok maybe he is not good enough to do that, but he is for sure folding A7o.

Whereas when you make a small raise, he probably thought, he had fold equity, and thats why he went for the rejam with A7o. I might have done the same, because there are lots of players, who make this mistake of raising small and then folding to a rejam on final tables and near bubbles, when they should instead have open jammed themselfes. So this was a 100% avoidable loss, and you can significantly improve your results, if you learn, when its time to stop min-raising and instead open jam.

Hand 3 A8o
This jam was a little bit to loose. ICMizer wants you to have either a suited ace or ATo to open jam. Its not a big mistake like hand 2 though, so as in hand 1 you were mostly just a little unlucky to run into a better hand and then also not bink a suck-out. Better luck to both of us next time.

Oh and by the way my own bust-out hand, which I checked with ICMizer as well. And at least I did make a good jam, although its marginal. So I also just got a little bit unlucky to run into a hand, that was supposed to call, and then not bink a suck-out

CardsChat Poker Hands Converter

 

[PPT]

Ouch sorry you burst on the bubble. I knew you were on the table, as I recognised your name, and I was tempted to say that coincidentally there was a Cardschat member on the table (but not in the hands) in my opening post but I felt that was your news to share if you were interested in doing so.

Glad to hear that you think the first hand was just unlucky, that's what I thought, and yes I would have folded if you'd shoved (due to stack size and respect) but not the BB.

Interesting to think that I should have shoved the KQ. Fair point about the 'life' pressure to make SB fold instead of re-raise. He may have called despite that, but he might not have. I have only recently started playing shove/fold after reading about it here, but I normally wait until I have 10BB or fewer and I still had more here. But I suppose SB and BB had fewer than 10, so they would be in shove or fold territory and wouldn't be calling my raise. So I may as well shove I guess?

At what point do you start jamming then instead of raising?

 

[fundiver199]

At what point do you start jamming then instead of raising?

< 10 BB - pure push-fold unless you get a good price to defend your big blind, in which case you should then often consider a stop-and-go on the flop.

10-15BB - situational.

> 15 BB - rarely open jam except maybe sometimes blind vs. blind, because its such a big disadvantage to play out of position.

This hand fall in the situational category, and with less intense ICM-pressure the min-raise would have been ok. But because you really dont want to either raise-fold or call it off for 2/3 of your stack, open pushing would be vastly better here. Whereas if this was far from the bubble, or if you were the chip leader, there would have been more merits to a min-raise. I recommend this video on the subject:

 

[eetenor]

Playing a satellite on final table, 5 players get the ticket. I went in to the final with a large chip lead.

Three bad hands saw me go from chip-leader to getting eliminated. Should I have folded these hands or played them differently? Did I play badly, or was it unlucky?

Hand 1: https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/4a1IgVAT
I had AK and opened with a 3BB bet. BB re-raised all-in and only had a fraction of my chips. I thought this was a call to try and take another player out and get closer to the ticket, plus AK usually has at worse a 50/50 shot, but he had KK and no A came.

Hand 2: https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/4a1IgVG5
I had KQ in Dealer position and everyone had folded around. I opened with a 2.5 raise, Turn pushed, I called.

Hand 3: https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/4a1IgVJb
Now lowest stack, UTG so will be forced into BB next hand. Get A8o, I chose to push and BB had A9 and Quad 9s came on the flop! Game over.

Raising with AK was the beginning of the end for me, but not raising with AK in that situation just doesn't feel right, should that have been a pre-flop fold or a fold to the 3-bet?

Similarly raising with KQ while in the dealer position seems to make sense to me, but calling the 3-bet was probably a mistake?

I felt forced into pushing with the A8 and that's a push or fold situation. So was push or fold right?

Its infuriating to get so close to the ticket and piss it away over three hands. Would have been better off if I'd just folded everything even AK but is that how I have to play? Would you have played this any differently?

Thank you for posting

Sattie FT play very differently from regular SNG because the payout is equal to all winners.
Therefore we play according to stack size and situation. Look closely at stack sizes here.
There are 6 20bb or less stacks out of 8 players paying 5 spots.
When we are the chip leader but only by 10bb with this table dynamic we are not looking to play pots. We may not be able to fold to win but we are very close to that point. So when we are so close to folding to win but not certain of it our strategy becomes-we just want to win back our blinds. UTG is the worst spot for this strategy.

So even with AK UTG we fold because we do not want to shove and if we raise and someone shoves we need to fold why?
The equity we use to guide us is calculated based on winning a seat. We are definitely above 60% to win a seat so we cannot call a shove and be flipping-so we cannot enter the pot from this position because we cannot safely spend any bb’s on bet folds.
We are in a risk reward situation here the risk UTG far out weighs the reward of entering the pot. We may not at this stage want to play any hands from UTG that is how important not losing our chip lead is based on this table’s dynamics at this time.

A simple example of why is- We fold AK 13bb shoves and 11bb calls with the KK. That is perfect for us. Any other player entering the pot and running into the KK is perfect for us. When we raise we stop that from happening so UTG we fold AK only AA could be played confidently for a raise all other hands are folds. Yes you fold KK in this spot.

Hope this helps


You should be stalling on every hand at this point in the satty use as much time as you can on every action- get those blinds doubling -make your V feel like they have to act soon.