Folding 99 five handed on FT, too weak?

[blueskies]

This was in a freeroll. The prize structure is 1st $25, 2nd $15.50, 3rd $11, 4th $8.50, 5th $7.

Blinds were 3000/6000, ante 750.

Stack sizes were approximately:

Me: 101K, and then going clockwise:
Villain 1: 75k
Villain 2: 23k
Villain 3: 59k
Villain 4: 32k

I had the BTN and V1 was on SB. I raised to a bit over 2xBB with 99. V1 instashoves.

V1 is an aggressive type. 2 hands earlier he had doubled me up with a bluff with nothing but QJ on a highly coordinated board. 3 to a flush (the 3rd flush card landed on the river) and 4 to a str (all low cards). I had a str and check/raised on the turn and check/called on the river.

I felt I was ahead if I called. 99 was only in trouble vs. 4 hands and no worse than a coinflip against everything else. V1 would probably shove a small PP so I may have even been dominating him.

But most likely he had two overcards and I didn't wanna flip for it. If I lost I would have slipped to almost last place. I ended up folding.

V1 and I ended up in HU. He knocked out 2 of the other 3 guys and started HU with a big advantage and it lasted one hand. 77 vs. A3 all in pre and he turned an ace.

I've been thinking I should have just called with 99. My reason for folding was that if I folded I would still have the chip lead and I didn't wanna let a coinflip determine if I fell to last.

Too weak...

Would you call the shove? Had I called and won I probably would have won.

 

[fundiver199]

The effective stack in this hand was only 12,5BB, and therefore you should have open jammed any hand, you wanted to play, rather than make a small raise. And if you did make a small raise and got jammed on, then 99 is a very easy call. Just think about how much you are folding to that 3-bet, if you only get it in with TT+ and AK. Its probably around 90%, and this mean, people can print money by jamming any two cards on you. Even 72 is a massively profitable 3-bet for your opponents, if you dont defend 99 after opening from BTN.

Not saying that everyone will be smart enough to actually exploit you like this in a freeroll. But you asked, if you played the hand well, and the answer to that is clearly no. Of all the possible lines you picked the one, which is by far the worst. As for "not wanting to flip", this is exactly why, we open jam with such a short stack. When you open jam, a lot of hands, you are flipping with, like KJ, KT, QJ, QT, JT and so on will fold, and this is an excellent outcome, because then you pick up the blinds and antes uncontested.