$4 NLHE MTT: TT - BB

[Ambur]

poker stars, $4 Buy-in (600/1,200 blinds, 150 ante) No Limit Hold'em Tournament, 9 Players

initial opener: 18/9 limp 10 - hands 34
I was new in this table, do not have more info!

Thoughts about pre?
postflop?

SB: 59,165 (49.3 bb)
Hero (BB): 44,092 (36.7 bb)
UTG+1: 15,399 (12.8 bb)
UTG+2: 12,054 (10 bb)
MP1: 42,048 (35 bb)
MP2: 29,536 (24.6 bb)
MP3: 19,905 (16.6 bb)
CO: 16,458 (13.7 bb)
BTN: 93,119 (77.6 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with T

T

3 folds, MP2 raises to 3,600, 4 folds, Hero calls 2,400

Flop: (9,150) 2

K

3

(2 players)
Hero checks, MP2 bets 4,800, hero?

 

[Michael Paler]

I hope you don't already hate me, lol. I opined on the top post first.

Ok, this is a tough spot - or is it? An unknown is betting out 3x in a close-to early position. Looks sort of like a steal attempt, especially since it was folded to him, right? So, he is either very weak or very strong, for practical purposes. However, look at the button; he has a little over 3 times this guys stack!

Would you 3x light OOP into a far larger stack? No? Well, you don't know him or the table. Big stack could be just tight as it gets. Does he always C-bet? You don't know that either.

I hate to say it, but flat pre-flop and fold if no set is safest here. Not having time at a table really sucks. Answer? Hero folds. And then bemoans having so little time with this villain, lol. But all is not lost - folding to his C-bet means he might C-bet with air next time, assuming you will fold again. Keep that in mind. So when you check-raise him, it will look very strong. If he is a thinking player.

 

[WiZZiM]

hero should 3bet jam all in and stop trying to play postflop OOP with hands that will encounter overcards aLOT of the time...

just for your own knowledge/info this is the % and overcard hits flops, might help you next time you are deciding weather calling or 3betting is better with certain hands...

KK 23%
QQ 43%
JJ 59%
TT 71%
99 81%
88 88%
77 93%
66 97%
55 99%
44 99.7%
33 99.9%

 

[Ambur]

hero should 3bet jam all in and stop trying to play postflop OOP with hands that will encounter overcards aLOT of the time..

Even vs unknown opener?

 

[Poker Orifice]

An unknown is betting out 3x in a close-to early position. Looks sort of like a steal attempt, especially since it was folded to him, right? So, he is either very weak or very strong, for practical purposes. However, look at the button; he has a little over 3 times this guys stack!

.

Why would a MP 3x raise coming from a 24bb stack seem like a steal?

Then suggesting it might not be a steal because some player has a stack 3x that guy's stack This isn't what HERO should be considering in the hand (imo).
Instead he should be looking at all the re-shove stacks that villain will be priced in to call which (imo) would have me thinkin' even more so that villain isn't stealing.

When I first looked at the hand my initial thought was to 3bet.
No matter how long I looked at the hand, my thought was NEVER to flat hoping to hit a set (folding pre would be better imo)

 

[WiZZiM]

vs an unknown in a $4 mtt i'm shipping TT here for value for a 22BB stack almost always. It's a pretty typical/easy ship overall here. we're also last to act, so we don't have to worry about anyone behind us. The stats indicate he is tight, but it's only over 30 hands i wouldn't really look into it much.

I also wouldn't look into the 3x open, i Don't think he is stealing, i think he is opening with his value range, whatever that may be. Typically bad fishy players value GII range is something like 22+ broadays and AX which TT does very nicely against, some people will be tighter some people will be looser, but overall we do fine vs just about any range since we only have 30ish BB. But having said all that it's getting close to the bottom of my range for jamming here, i might shove 99 and something like AJ+ KQ but that would be about it here.

calling isn't really much of an option here, don't think theres any real reason to do so apart from being scared of putting chips in preflop with a pretty solid starting hand.

 

[Ambur]

Overall vs unknown person, i will agree push is profitable. But keep this in mind that, it is high variance spot and to beat the variance we have play similar situation thousands or even more!

Calling preflop is slightly negative expectation overall, since we are giving huge value away by not shoving! Hero is getting pot odds about 26% and our hand has basically set value since 71% of time we'r facing overcards on flop and hard to play OOP, but we can lower the variance by just calling!

Folding it preflop is safe, if we really do not want to play poker and taking the 0 line - Basically this would go poker is dead thread hand if we fold preflop here! But overall we are breaking even, which is nice! Nobody will ever know that we folded this

So, decide yourselfe which kind of play would you consider - i would say the reason why i called, was to lower the variance and bring up some skill play (i believe my skill is higher then average person on this 4buy in tourney). I do not really belive, it is need to go full gorilla mode ~22bb active stack on postflop vs weak tight tendents villain! So i called and look what happens next!

Some further thoughts: To look into tournament structure (it was 15 minutes lvls - sorry to not give this info in OP, i was playing at the time) and ante compared of BB is 12,5%. And this is 9 players table. "Tournament is not a sprint, it is marathon"

Thanks for sharing thoughts..

 

[Jacki Burkhart]

In general I would 3bet shove this.

However, based on our stats I think flatting here is barely OK. He is a tightish player who limps some hands. A lot of times people will limp their small pairs so he most likely has at least 2 overs. so you could flat and if the flop comes OK for you then be happy to GII on the flop. But the fact that we have so few hands on him gives me less confidence in his range and so I'd revert back to jamming; much easier to play a difficult hand like this OOP. TT is hard enough to play in position. We don't know the guy.

As played (which again, I don't think flatting is the worst. I think folding is the worst) then this is not the worst flop for you, but not a good flop either. An Ace is the most likely card he is playing, but a K is the 2nd most likely card. I think once you check and he bets half the pot it's best to just fold here. we played the hand weakly and there's not a lot of options. If he had a high Cbet % I might check-raise jam here. If he was very straightforward I might donk-lead and then shut down to any further shows of aggression.

tricky spot. #1 jam pre. #2 flat, donk #3 flat, check/fold.

 

[Ambur]

But the fact that we have so few hands on him gives me less confidence in his range and so I'd revert back to jamming

Even low sample like this will give us useful information about villains tendents - seems you are really underestimate this information+dynamics where you are in at that point! Villain range have tendents to be really strong pretty huge amount of the time! imo

 

[Jacki Burkhart]

Even low sample like this will give us useful information about villains tendents - seems you are really underestimate this information+dynamics where you are in at that point! Villain range have tendents to be really strong pretty huge amount of the time! imo

I think I'm actually the only one defending your preflop line, and it's completely because of the info you provided and the dynamics. It's just that I don't think that info is quite enough to make your play better than jamming, but I think the info makes it a lot closer. If you had even 150 hands on him with those same tendencies then I think his range is really strong and then I think your line becomes slightly better than jamming.

 

[Ambur]

Thanks for your comments, really interesting spot for me..

 

[WiZZiM]

Overall vs unknown person, i will agree push is profitable. But keep this in mind that, it is high variance spot and to beat the variance we have play similar situation thousands or even more!
He basically is unknown, these stats give us nothign essentially, so i'm treating him like a slightly tighter than average unknown here
Calling preflop is slightly negative expectation overall, since we are giving huge value away by not shoving! Hero is getting pot odds about 26% and our hand has basically set value since 71% of time we'r facing overcards on flop and hard to play OOP, but we can lower the variance by just calling!
how do you know this has a slightly negative expectation? seems hard to calculate that, i would think considering our position, hand, sheer number of bad flops and our percieved lack of plans/moves postflop that it would be a really negative play, but that's just an opinion which menas nothing without seeing numbers.... This hand does have set value, but you are still losing money on a call here most often, just based on the math of it, and the fact were OOP.
Folding it preflop is safe, if we really do not want to play poker and taking the 0 line - Basically this would go poker is dead thread hand if we fold preflop here! But overall we are breaking even, which is nice! Nobody will ever know that we folded this
If you are going to fold this preflop you should seriously consider not registering for the tournament
So, decide yourselfe which kind of play would you consider - i would say the reason why i called, was to lower the variance and bring up some skill play (i believe my skill is higher then average person on this 4buy in tourney). I do not really belive, it is need to go full gorilla mode ~22bb active stack on postflop vs weak tight tendents villain! So i called and look what happens next!
Lowering variance is great, but this is a spot where you are actually increasing variance, not lowering at all. The main reasons why you are actually increasing variance (which by the way is also a long term thing requiring thousands of games to make a differance)

1.you are losing chips on this play long term, making losing plays will increase variance.
2. You are not putting yourself into spots where you can have huge stacks, marathon or not our move doesn't change here, we just have more time to find better spots or to recover those chips we just gave away.
3.We don't care about decreasing variance all we want to do is put ourselves in positions to take the top 3, and if we do that the variance will take care of itself, as taking those top 3 spots is what will boost our ROI. If this is a SNG i would be agreeing with alot of your points about decreasing variance, but it's not, it's a high variance MTT where you need to win to do any good long term
Some further thoughts: To look into tournament structure (it was 15 minutes lvls - sorry to not give this info in OP, i was playing at the time) and ante compared of BB is 12,5%. And this is 9 players table. "Tournament is not a sprint, it is marathon" ante of 12.5% is quite high, adding to the dead money pickup and also adding the the fact jamming is the only play here.

Thanks for sharing thoughts..

Hope this helps

 

[Ambur]

Thanks for your comment Wizzim (based on intuition)!

It is almost impossible to work out villain range reasonable accurancy. But we can follow our intuition+villain tendencies+dynamics which makes this for me flating preflop spot given position!

Hard to say but i am going to set mine here against odds, since i can not work villain range out reasonable accurancy! But i can assume almost certainly that this villain has tight range tendents based on experience which makes it high variance spot for me.

-Vs fully unknown person we really not know what is going to happen with variance (probably increases if we flat or jam), we can only assume it based on intuition! But in our case we have villain with small sample size with tight tendents, which means we can lower reasonable x% of time variance since his range tend to be strong overall. - But we can say this only based on intuition, since i do not know how to make nosebleed math or i do not want to make it..whatever the reason is!

Basically good flops for us are hitting set ~12% or hitting low flop, which will be ~29% of time! 12+29=41% possibly we can continue and pot odds are 26%.



But all other people go for it and jam preflop! Definetly good coinflip situation vs unknown villain!

 

[WiZZiM]

well working out ranges is never 100% accurate, but our best guess is better than no guess at all right?

so my best guess for someone who is "tighter than average" is something like

opening AT+ A9+ 66+ KQ KJs and he will call with something like 88 AJ+

very rough guesstimate, but if we have this as a starting point, we can then look at calcuations and work out how tight or loose he needs to be to make shoving profitable situation. So we tinker with making it wider, or tighter and see how it affects the ev of the shove.

Not going to work out EV of this hand since you're mind is set on calling (which is fine) but that is how/why we work out ranges, and the more and more you do this the easier it becomes and the closer to this players actual range you will get. The problem with not being able to work out villians ranges is that postflop you still don't know villians preflop range or what he will do postflop, so i don't see your argument as being that valid overall.

 

[Ambur]

This is all about ranges.

Thanks for your thoughts!