$7.77 NLHE MTT Turbo: Should I have played this hand differently?

[blkmoney12]

I made the final table of the $777 jackpot reentry tournament on WSOPPA. The table was down to 4 players and I was under the gun with AJ off with 23.6 BB.

I have uploaded a video for the hand in question and how could I have played the hand differently to avoid what happened. Offer some opinions please and thanks.

(it's a very short video) https://screenrec.com/share/Yrzh9sBK06

 

[maestro121920]

due to icm, with 2 shorter stacks, i'm leaning toward a fold to a jam

 

[fundiver199]

Preflop
First thing to note here is the distribution of stacks with a runaway chip leader and two stacks much shorter than ours. It would be a bit on the tight side, but if the chip leader was an aggressive player, we could actually just fold here and hope, that someone else takes out the short stack in BB. Sure AJ is normally a nobrainer open from CO, but this situation is far from standard, because we are under so much ICM pressure.

Flop
As played there is no way, we can bet-fold TPTK on the flop. The chip leader should be jamming extremely wide here to put us under pressure, and very few hands beat us on this board. He likely dont have J4 or T4, because he fold those hands pre, and he likely dont have JJ or TT either, because those are 3-bet, especially when he can apply so much ICM-pressure to us. So the only hands, we are behind to here, are 44 or JT, which is unfortunately, what he had.

 

[blkmoney12]

Preflop
First thing to note here is the distribution of stacks with a runaway chip leader and two stacks much shorter than ours. It would be a bit on the tight side, but if the chip leader was an aggressive player, we could actually just fold here and hope, that someone else takes out the short stack in BB. Sure AJ is normally a nobrainer open from CO, but this situation is far from standard, because we are under so much ICM pressure.

Flop
As played there is no way, we can bet-fold TPTK on the flop. The chip leader should be jamming extremely wide here to put us under pressure, and very few hands beat us on this board. He likely dont have J4 or T4, because he fold those hands pre, and he likely dont have JJ or TT either, because those are 3-bet, especially when he can apply so much ICM-pressure to us. So the only hands, we are behind to here, are 44 or JT, which is unfortunately, what he had.

Ty for making a comment on this hand I think next time I'm in the position I will take more time to think about the hand before I make a decision on the hand.

 

[StealTheButton]

Tough break. Even accounting for ICM, I think the hand is just too strong to fold. I like the raise of 2.5bb. I think the flop bet C-bet was too much and I would have bet closer to 45- 50%.. After being check raised all in you have a decision to make.

I would probably lean towards fold here. Only problem is you are sometimes folding against hands like 10 10 and K J. You also cannot discount QQ or better. Yes you expect a 3 bet, but it happens all the time.

 

[fedkov]

After shoving on the turn, I think it's normal to fold. The point is that we are now facing a chip if there are two food contacts.

 

[makisaa]

It ended in a battle between one pair against two pair. At that phase of the game from the moment you see a J I think it was a good play, the remaining players are only 4.

 

[pegasus888]

You were 2nd in chips, 4 handed, AJ I go all in pre-flop, most of the time you are going to get call by worst Ace and going to win.

 

[eetenor]

I made the final table of the $777 jackpot reentry tournament on WSOPPA. The table was down to 4 players and I was under the gun with AJ off with 23.6 BB.

I have uploaded a video for the hand in question and how could I have played the hand differently to avoid what happened. Offer some opinions please and thanks.

(it's a very short video) https://screenrec.com/share/Yrzh9sBK06

Thank you for posting.

A study point for you may be bet sizing based on ICM and stack sizes. We always want to preplan our hands.

In this spot we have 2 short stacks and the large stack is OOP. Our preplan is to know we are getting it all-in vs either of the short stacks and that we do not want to get it all-in with the big stack due to ICM. Therefore preflop we do not need to bet more than 2.1.

We are then called by the big stack and again our #1 ICM goal is to not get all-in unless we feel we are dominating that range.

Therefore your bet sizing on flop is too large for our goal. The size you chose either gets too many folds or the result we saw.

We want to ask our selves what is the SB shoving here?

The board is rainbow so no combo draw you raised UTG and then bet big for value. Would the SB shove weak draws weak pairs when you can have AA KK QQ AJ.
They might do that but we would need to know they would.

ICM bet sizing is your next growth point as well as preplanning based on ICM we did not want to get all-in vs the big stack.

Hope this helps

 

[eetenor]

Preflop
First thing to note here is the distribution of stacks with a runaway chip leader and two stacks much shorter than ours. It would be a bit on the tight side, but if the chip leader was an aggressive player, we could actually just fold here and hope, that someone else takes out the short stack in BB. Sure AJ is normally a nobrainer open from CO, but this situation is far from standard, because we are under so much ICM pressure.

Flop
As played there is no way, we can bet-fold TPTK on the flop. The chip leader should be jamming extremely wide here to put us under pressure, and very few hands beat us on this board. He likely dont have J4 or T4, because he fold those hands pre, and he likely dont have JJ or TT either, because those are 3-bet, especially when he can apply so much ICM-pressure to us. So the only hands, we are behind to here, are 44 or JT, which is unfortunately, what he had.

Thank you for sharing.

Your points are all very good we may also consider a low freq post flop play based on ICM of folding to the shove.

If we look at stack sizes and assume the SB is ICM aware the SB does not want to lose this pot to us as we become the big stack. Therefore it is possible at some freq that the SB would just call made hands and draws on flop that we are ahead of instead of check jamming range here.

We cannot assume skill for our V but some V may be capable of smooth calling big pairs here as a trap as the BB has 0 overcalls. AA KK QQ might call to trap or expect a BB shove and then reshove.

It is not that freq a trap but we have to be aware that AJ is not crushing very much of an ICM aware shove range here. The V can easily fold into top 2 spots so why battle us when we are showing soo much strength? The hero's bet sizing is very typical for the hand strength they had so a skilled player may limit their thin value shoves expecting it to be a middling strong hand that is not folding.

Just a few low freq thoughts

Hope this helps

 

[fundiver199]

Thank you for sharing.

Your points are all very good we may also consider a low freq post flop play based on ICM of folding to the shove.

If we look at stack sizes and assume the SB is ICM aware the SB does not want to lose this pot to us as we become the big stack. Therefore it is possible at some freq that the SB would just call made hands and draws on flop that we are ahead of instead of check jamming range here.

We cannot assume skill for our V but some V may be capable of smooth calling big pairs here as a trap as the BB has 0 overcalls. AA KK QQ might call to trap or expect a BB shove and then reshove.

It is not that freq a trap but we have to be aware that AJ is not crushing very much of an ICM aware shove range here. The V can easily fold into top 2 spots so why battle us when we are showing soo much strength? The hero's bet sizing is very typical for the hand strength they had so a skilled player may limit their thin value shoves expecting it to be a middling strong hand that is not folding.

Just a few low freq thoughts

Hope this helps

You do make some fair points especially about bet sizing, but for me it would still be a huge mistake to fold on the flop. First of all if the chip leader dubble us up, he still have almost 40BB, and with two very short stacks hanging around, he is still almost sure to get at least second place, and he still has a decent chance of winning. So it is by no means a disaster for him to dubble us up, but it is a disaster for us to bust next. A good player will understand this, so his jamming range should contain a ton of bluffs as well as weaker made hands, that want protection.

I cant help feeling, that whenever people share the results of a hand, the answers, they get, often become very results oriented. Like in this case "yeah he had two pair, that was obvious". But its not obvious except for the fact we know his cards. To some extend this hand is also being overanalysed. The guy called from SB with JTo, which is likely a long term losing play, and most likely he was a recreational player. On TXX we lose at most a C-bet, and on JXX we likely get a full dubble up or at least 2 streets of value. If both miss, we take it down with a C-bet. But oh no it had to come exactly JTX, which was just really lucky for him and unlucky for us.

It sucks, that this happened late in the tournament, where it cost us a lot of money. But as far as I am concerned, its still just a cooler, and people spend way to much time worrying about coolers. In the long run he is losing money by calling from SB with a hand as bad as JTo, and we are printing money by getting it in on the flop with TPTK. So just suck it up, say "nice hand sir" and look forward to the next tournament. Making huge folds against recreational players is not the way to get ahead in the game.