$5.5 NLHE MTT Bounty: $5.5$ NLHE MTT Bounty: SCOOP PKO late stage AJo

[dallam]

Hi

My final hand in a late stage of a SCOOP event, and I want to ask for your opinions about the moves I made here. It was a PKO game, but we had similar stacks with OPP. When he opens, he does it with 2.25bbs.

https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/8253Sqlw8

 

[IADaveMark]

Pre: Questionable 3-bet. I would have just flat there. Especially because you now open yourself up to an over-shove from anyone in late position and/or the raiser.

River: When Villain checks to you, why do you not fire the c-bet? Since you did 3-bet pre, you are announcing strength. When you checked back the flop, you are denying that you have strength. Suggest 1/3 pot c-bet.
Turn: V fires 2/3 pot. In that hand, the hearts got there, 56 got there (less likely he has that). After chk/chk on the flop, 2/3 pot is screaming confidence or a strong draw. Yeah, you block the nut flush but that doesn't mean your opponent doesn't already have the flush. Assuming that V has a pair already and not a flush, straight, or 2 pair, you have 14 outs = 29% = needing a bit more than 2:1 to call. You were getting that (still using those assumptions above) so a call could be justified, but the raise is putting extra money in that might already be dead. V only needs 26% (454k / 1738 = 3:1) to call that raise. If he didn't already have at least 26% equity in the hand, he likely wouldn't have put in 2/3 pot on turn to begin with. Suggested flat call and see what comes.
Turn continued: When V shoves over the top of you (and he was pretty much pot-committed with a call so you should have anticipated that this was a possibility), you have to know you are behind. Of course, you are pot-committed at this point with only about 10bb behind. At that point, you pretty much painted yourself into that corner, so you might as well call and hope.

The difference here is that you went from 36bb to either <10 or 0 based on the outcome. When you are in the 30-40 bb range in a tournament, the rule should be "trickle down; jump up". Losing 10bb to a pot hurts more than losing 2.5 to call pre and see what happens. You can literally do that 4x as often using those numbers. You must be willing and able to eject if things don't look good for you. Instead, you pushed more money into pot with nothing but A high and a runner-runner flush draw.

Bad line throughout. Sorry...

 

[fundiver199]

Preflop
I prefer to just fold here. AJo is always a bit of a trap hand against an EP open, because it is so often dominated and offer a lot of reserve implied odds. Maybe we can call on BTN, but here we are next to act, so we still have 5 players left to act behind us. This is an issue, if we just call, because it allow them to squeeze. And its an even bigger issue, if we 3-bet, and someone behind for instance have pocket kings and put in a 4-bet.

Late in a tournament we also want to avoid confrontations with the big stacks as much as possible, especially in a situation like this, where only 2 players on the table have you covered, meaning you cant even win his bounty, but he can win yours. So you have the wrong hand, you have the wrong position, and you are going to war against the wrong opponent.

Flop
You can put out a small C-bet here, but you are rather short, so as played I dont hate checking back either.

Turn
You picked up the nut flushdraw, and he leads out. I dont think, you have enough fold equity, so I prefer to just call and take the price on my draw as played. I think, that when you raise, something like this is going to happen far to often, and you are just getting your entire stack in as a 3:1 dog or even worse, if for instance he has a flush or a set.

Conclusion
For me this hand is good example of a situation, where a small mistake preflop snowball into a huge mistake on the turn causing us to lose our entire stack. Just fold preflop and move on to the next hand. Then everything is nice and easy, and you only lose the ante.

 

[300HPGOD]

Pre flop: I dont really like any of the options that we have. I think AJ off is a hand that looks better than what it really is but its also too good to fold as well imo. I dont like just calling since it sets us up for being squeezed. That depends on the opponents left to act and how they play but I will assume they will squeeze with normal frequency. I dont like 3 betting since that opens this hand to be an all in hand which is not what we are looking to do other than heads up against the SB who has a shove stack. When this happens we have to choose the least worse option which probably is to fold. Its up for debate but I think I would rather 3 bet vs just call and make it a size close to what you did that looks nutty. If we get 4 bet we pitch and move on. Folding is tight but it really is probably the best play depending on how often the villain is opening and who is left to act behind us.

Flop: Imo it is almost mandatory to bet here and you should make it a sizing that looks like you want to be called. I think anywhere from 1/3rd to 40% will work. The other reason to bet here imo (its counter intuitive) is that betting actually pot controls here. When you bet here villain is rarely going to re raise unless they really have it due to our range being all premium pocket pairs. If they do re raise then we fold and move on. If they just call then that starts to narrow their range to pocket pairs since I would think AQ and even AK are folding there and we have the Ace of hearts which cuts down on flush draws. Betting controls the pot here since villain most likely will check to us on the turn and where we can then decide to either check behind and take a free card or decide whether we think we can get 99-JJ to fold (doubt QQ is folding and I think KK+ 4 bets). Checking the flop will usually take you down the road of facing a decent sized turn lead which is what happened in this hand.

Turn: As played I think its quite close because on face value it looks like there are enough implied odds here to call and hope for the heart or ace which can easily still be live here. The problem is how often are there pocket pair hands calling when either an ace or the 4th heart hit on the river? Probably not too often so there is a case for folding here as well. In game I think I would just call and see what happens. The raise does not make sense as villains range that would open and call a 3 bet has a lot of better aces and pocket pairs (hence the reason why folding pre is probably best) and the only group there that would possibly fold is AQ and AK and I doubt those even fold since you checked back the flop. You are never checking back that flop with JJ+ and villain probably knows this. So raising here is throwing chips away. When you do raise and then get jammed on we know we are screwed and behind. At that point you are getting the right price to draw to the hearts and have to go with it and call but you should have never put yourself in that spot to begin with.

 

[dallam]

Thank you each of you of your meaningful comments.

I did see this hand as a bad action as well. My idea was to 3-bet this one as I did a balanced game on this table, not getting big pre actions only postflop, and as I wrote villain opened 2.25 bb-s light, so it could hide many combinations - so took the risk here and cut out the field to 1v1. Which was definitely my first wrong decision as my position was so bad, and someone could easily put their whole amount of chips in, a pre-fold could be a tight but really valid fold, so agree on you Fundriver, that was the perfect way of seeing my game and my chances in a long-term and I even standed amazing to just fold and let them fight.

Coming to the flop we missed it, and it caused me a trouble as I put my opp at least 88+ or J10s+. Now I had to stop the building here with big nothing, I didn't want to give way to much chips or credit to a re-raise for a hand like 10-10 just we were against. So gave myself a free street hoping on catching something, or letting this hand go like this.

My second mistake was on turn. He opened a big, when I had the nuts, so I could call here with this hand, nothing more.

What is exciting for me is that every bad-beat hiding some learning as well. So if I would have A(h) J(h) here, I couldn't mind checking the flop, cause it showed some insecure hand, and as it turned out, when the third heart fall down, opponent just pushed his pocket pair, even he didn't have here any flush blocker, but the small cards made him to go for some kind of value-bet. And seeing how the action goes, I could do a max-value win because of this weird line I represented here.

So yeah, that was an exciting learning for me.

 

[eetenor]

Hi

My final hand in a late stage of a SCOOP event, and I want to ask for your opinions about the moves I made here. It was a PKO game, but we had similar stacks with OPP. When he opens, he does it with 2.25bbs.

https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/8253Sqlw8

Thank you for posting

When we study spots like this we want to create a data list then see how that data applies to our actions.

DATA 1 PKO- we play to win bounties not just chips- therefore stack sizes matter most- We want to be very aware of who has what stack size. We cover the blinds in this spot
This means that we have to be overly careful vs a stack the same size as ours when we cover 4 other players
GTO has AJ off as mostly raise but some calls using the data from above a call here would be a strong strategic play- lessens our chances of big stack battle damage to our stack but also allows the blinds to make a mistake.

DATA 2 When we raise here that will most often force the shorter stacks to fold

therefore when we raise our preplan is to battle the = stack which means we want folds preflop we need to pressure the UTG1 player as they too do not want to lose their stack advantage. which will effect how the other stack responds to a 3-bet
What 3 bet sizing should we use to get more folds?

As played our number 1 goal when we miss is to maintain our stack size to get bounties
How would we play this hand if that is our goal?

Hope this helps