Advice on a hand

[Blufferboy]

Hi,

I’m a relative beginner to poker. I’m seeking some advice on a recent hand in the early stages of a MTT tournament (max 8 handed):

Effective stacks 100BB (as this was the 9th hand)

I raise 3BB UTG with QQ
Button 3 bets to 12 BB.
I call.

Flop JJ8

Check.Check

Turn A

Check. Check

River Q

I bet 12 BB

Button raises all in. I call only for my opponent to show AA.

My question is, how could I have played this better? I was hoping my opponent had AK but feared he had AA.

Any thoughts?

 

[Andyreas]

Hey buddy,

thanks for posting your hand! We also have a hand converter where you can paste the text Hand history and it will be nicely converted into a replay video or easy to read text:

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As for your hand, it's basically just a standard cooler with QQ Vs AA. When you hit a boat on river, there's basically no getaway from it. 😕

But happy to hear other thoughts of our poker regulars. 😊

 

[Pokerpoet2]

Happened to me slow playing KK, Flop drops AKQ I check he bets out holding AK I call.
Turn is a brick and he bets out again, I have to call.
Then the River comes Barry Greenstein, The Ace from space so sickening but That's Poker!
I just chalk it up as another bad beat!
You just never know what the outcome is going to be with any 2 cards.

 

[mariussica88]

First what buy-in is this tournament, it matters a lot, but since you said you are a beginner player I take this is mostly a freeroll or a micro stake. So the pool of player type in them is quite wide.

Maybe you should have bet 1/2 pot on the river, betting that big you scream that you have a good hand that you bet for value or a bluff. So it's understanding that when BTN shoves he thinks that he is good there and might have the nuts. By betting 1/2 pot you could not raise that big the pot, it's ok if you don't play for stacks in the first levels. Also what you could have done is 4-bet pre-flop and re-evaluate.

Nevertheless this hand is a cooler and you need to move on, it happened on to the next one. In my opinion you did not play it wrong.

 

[spunka]

With 100 BB you have to think this through.
what do beat you that opponent have could be a Jx, 88, KK, AA that is many combi`s
now you call is not that bad depending on the buyin. But from your checks on the flop / turn you say you dont hold the Jx or 88, so opponent can asume the AA is good.

calling a 100 BB bet you have to be very sure you may have the best hand, or not care as if you have to leave soon anyway.
but if a Q and a A have dropped on the turn and river it would have been a very hard fold to make 😉

 

[duppis]

there are cases like this where every player would lose their entire stack ..
you didn't do anything wrong ..even if you hit the flop they would pay you AA
and then with A on the turn ,,,

 

[PupsikCat]

I don't understand what card came out on the turn? But post-flow 1/3 c-bet with an overpair could be bet after you already need to know what turn... but I saw everything, I think it’s hard to pull off with such a cooler, BUT after a small postflop bet, it’s possible to give up on a reraise

 

[Blufferboy]

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate the feedback. I wanted to keep the question as open as possible without giving my initial thoughts on how I could have avoided trouble.

The buy in was $11.

I think my first mistake was not 4 betting pre flop. If my opponent (of which I had no reads) pushed all in, I probably would have folded QQ but not KK.

The second mistake was probably not making a 50% post flop continuation bet to see whether my opponent had KK or AA or AK, that way any reraise would have been met with a fold.

I think these points have been mentioned here.

Again, thanks for the responses

 

[spunka]

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate the feedback. I wanted to keep the question as open as possible without giving my initial thoughts on how I could have avoided trouble.

The buy in was $11.

I think my first mistake was not 4 betting pre flop. If my opponent (of which I had no reads) pushed all in, I probably would have folded QQ but not KK.

The second mistake was probably not making a 50% post flop continuation bet to see whether my opponent had KK or AA or AK, that way any reraise would have been met with a fold.

I think these points have been mentioned here.

Again, thanks for the responses

Great so you want be a calling station, as that will get you nowhere in poker. 🤓😌😌

 

[Blufferboy]

Great so you want be a calling station, as that will get you nowhere in poker. 🤓😌😌

I’m not sure I follow. I’m suggesting that I should have 4bet and folded on a 5bet or shove.

Are you in favour of 4 betting QQ and folding to aggression preflop?

 

[Blufferboy]

First what buy-in is this tournament, it matters a lot, but since you said you are a beginner player I take this is mostly a freeroll or a micro stake. So the pool of player type in them is quite wide.

Maybe you should have bet 1/2 pot on the river, betting that big you scream that you have a good hand that you bet for value or a bluff. So it's understanding that when BTN shoves he thinks that he is good there and might have the nuts. By betting 1/2 pot you could not raise that big the pot, it's ok if you don't play for stacks in the first levels. Also what you could have done is 4-bet pre-flop and re-evaluate.

Nevertheless this hand is a cooler and you need to move on, it happened on to the next one. In my opinion you did not play it wrong.

Thanks,

Part of me feels I didn’t play it wrong and the other part of me feels I should have 4bet and folded to a shove rather than putting my tournament life on the line so early!

 

[Blufferboy]

Happened to me slow playing KK, Flop drops AKQ I check he bets out holding AK I call.
Turn is a brick and he bets out again, I have to call.
Then the River comes Barry Greenstein, The Ace from space so sickening but That's Poker!
I just chalk it up as another bad beat!
You just never know what the outcome is going to be with any 2 cards.

I think you’re even more unlucky than me here

 

[spunka]

I’m not sure I follow. I’m suggesting that I should have 4bet and folded on a 5bet or shove.

Are you in favour of 4 betting QQ and folding to aggression preflop?

You check twice and call a huge river bet.

if you had C- bet on flop and getting reraise you would have known more about your opponents holding
if you had called opponents raise and check your turn bet and he go all in there. You would know he has
a.: a very strong hand
b.: he is a bully.

you do not get information when you just do check, poker is a game of obtaining and using information.

that said if you had bet all in on flop YOU could have hold an J and he might have folded AA.

 

[Kenzie 96]

I don't understand what card came out on the turn? But post-flow 1/3 c-bet with an overpair could be bet after you already need to know what turn... but I saw everything, I think it’s hard to pull off with such a cooler, BUT after a small postflop bet, it’s possible to give up on a reraise

Turn card was an A.


What interests me here is your identifying yourself as a relative beginner. Relative beginners have no business playing $11 MTT's unless their discretionary income is basically unlimited. The beginner is, in effect, taking a stick to a gunfight.

 

[Blufferboy]

You check twice and call a huge river bet.

if you had C- bet on flop and getting reraise you would have known more about your opponents holding
if you had called opponents raise and check your turn bet and he go all in there. You would know he has
a.: a very strong hand
b.: he is a bully.

you do not get information when you just do check, poker is a game of obtaining and using information.

that said if you had bet all in on flop YOU could have hold an J and he might have folded AA.

Thanks. Makes a lot of sense.

 

[rastapapolos]

If Villain is an aggressive player who 3bet with KQ, A5s and this type of hands, 4betting preflop is ok and profitable. But if he's a tight player or you don't have any read, calling is the best option preflop.
This hand is a cooler as both of you had a fullhouse and it's difficult to fold QQ with all the combos out there (88, KJ, AJ, JT, J9, AK)

 

[Mauricio Perrotta]

For me your opponent had 9 T or AJ and I wait for you to swallow all the bait, or he is a very good liar

 

[spunka]

If Villain is an aggressive player who 3bet with KQ, A5s and this type of hands, 4betting preflop is ok and profitable. But if he's a tight player or you don't have any read, calling is the best option preflop.
This hand is a cooler as both of you had a fullhouse and it's difficult to fold QQ with all the combos out there (88, KJ, AJ, JT, J9, AK)

Yes you are partly right….
But we do not know if villan is aggressive after only 9 hands.
We do not seek to find out if he holds marginal hands by betting the flop, however villan has bet strongly with a big 3 bet of + 10% of villans stack, which normally would indicate that villan might hold a very good hand, this early in the tournament, And yes if we reshove here because we think hes a maniac, well you could maybe call it a cooler, if we 4 bet and get reraises all in what then……??? And we call villans shove… is it still a cooler or do we play badly preflop. ?

On flop an A drops, we do not care, we do not seek to find out if villan has an A in his holding, we check……. NOW Villan has the second nuts. And he elect to trap, and gets “lucky” the Q of DOOM!! arrives on the river, we look with stars in our eyes, we have the 3. Nuts Amazing we are now unbeatable….. or are we, we DO NOT bet our 3rd nuts to find out if villans is as strong as he said pre-flop because no we can not lose.

Villan elect to shove with 2nd nuts…. and we do happy call a 88 BB bet, no question asked.

Yes it is a Cooler but we could have done a lot to avoid it and get out of the hand long before the river, by betteing and finding out and not beeing a passiv opponent except for our 3 bet raise before flop…… after that we just call, we do not ask, and most importent we do not have ALARM bells to goes on when that A comes on the turn, were we could easy have gotten away from the hand.

Hero had been told that Villan did have a starting hand villan did like, and villan did like it on the river also, because hero did not try to tell villan otherwise.
We all know this one…

 

[fundiver199]

Preflop
Everything looks fine here. QQ is much to strong to fold to a 3-bet, even a large one out of position. But if you 4-bet and get action, you are typically against a range, you are not doing great against.

Flop
Checking to the preflop raiser is standard.

Turn
No reason to lead out on this particular card, which could easily have helped him.

River
Now you have a boat, and going for a check-raise seem pretty optimistic, when he checked back both flop and turn. So I agree with leading out for value trying to get called by worse. Now he jam, and that is a pretty bizarre line by him. But even if he is only doing this with boats, you beat some boats like AJ or 88, so I dont see, how you can ever fold.

Results
Catching up, when we are behind, is always a bit annoying. But its part of the game, and you played this hand perfectly fine. So its just one of those, where we hit the "reenter" button and fire another bullet, if thats possible. And if not we play the next tournament.

 

[ADRI7HO]

This could not have been achieved in any other way, because if the hand goes to the river, the end will be all-in anyway. At most, if you had raised on the Turn and got an all-in there, you might have been able to fold.

 

[Blufferboy]

Great feedback all around, thank you. It’s a hand I feel I played perfectly fine one day and the next day, I wonder if I could have played it differently. I completely accept that coolers and bad beats are part of poker but just wanted to go deeper without ruminating.

The big things I think I take away are 4bet preflop to test how strong my opponent really is. I could have made a 1/3 continuation bet on the flop but I’m out of position and unsure whether he has AA, KK or AK at this stage.

There’s no point building the pot for him on the turn when the A comes out.

The final river bet by him, I’m thinking he either has AK (18/24 chance) or AA (6/24 chance) so while I knew it was the third nuts, I took my chance.

The last thing to say is that perhaps I shouldn’t have risked my tournament life for the third nuts so early but then we wouldn’t be having this discussion and I wouldn’t have learnt anything!

 

[Blufferboy]

This could not have been achieved in any other way, because if the hand goes to the river, the end will be all-in anyway. At most, if you had raised on the Turn and got an all-in there, you might have been able to fold.

That’s a great point. I could have tested my opponent on the turn given I didn’t 4bet preflop but it’s unlikely he would have gone all in if he just hit the second nuts

 

[eetenor]

Hi,

I’m a relative beginner to poker. I’m seeking some advice on a recent hand in the early stages of a MTT tournament (max 8 handed):

Effective stacks 100BB (as this was the 9th hand)

I raise 3BB UTG with QQ
Button 3 bets to 12 BB.
I call.

Flop JJ8

Check.Check

Turn A

Check. Check

River Q

I bet 12 BB

Button raises all in. I call only for my opponent to show AA.

My question is, how could I have played this better? I was hoping my opponent had AK but feared he had AA.

Any thoughts?

Ok if you are just a beginning and are starting at $11 tournies you want to have some tools you can use to evaluate your choices in these type of pots-
GTOWIAZRD- is a great tool and you can use it for free at this stage of your growth-
you can study 1 hand a day using gto charts and actions so I put this hand into the wizard.
preflop wizard has QQ call 85% of the time- Flop is 100% check-----V is supposed to bet 100% of the time
Turn we have leads here 10% of the time with QQ 10% of pot size 7% frequency 25% pot 3%---but checking is the most frequent action
BTN is now betting AA 40% of time
River gto has us check 75% of the time the most often used size is 15 when we bet but your sizing is fine just less frequent
BTN now has jams which we call 100% with QQ---this is of course gto- which means the BTN has bluffs which standard players do not have

 

[Blufferboy]

Ok if you are just a beginning and are starting at $11 tournies you want to have some tools you can use to evaluate your choices in these type of pots-
GTOWIAZRD- is a great tool and you can use it for free at this stage of your growth-
you can study 1 hand a day using gto charts and actions so I put this hand into the wizard.
preflop wizard has QQ call 85% of the time- Flop is 100% check-----V is supposed to bet 100% of the time
Turn we have leads here 10% of the time with QQ 10% of pot size 7% frequency 25% pot 3%---but checking is the most frequent action
BTN is now betting AA 40% of time
River gto has us check 75% of the time the most often used size is 15 when we bet but your sizing is fine just less frequent
BTN now has jams which we call 100% with QQ---this is of course gto- which means the BTN has bluffs which standard players do not have

Thank you for the advice. I’ve had a look at it and it’s very informative. According to my exact hand, I should have made a pot size bet on the river rather than a half pot bet. It also said that 34% of the time I should have 4bet with QQ although call the 3bet 66% of the time.

Really interesting to analyse.