blonde poker forum

Here goes for a second installment of possibly poor play...

£30 buy in live tournament. I have around 22,000 chips and I'm in BB again, blinds are 300, 600.

UTG (villain) with around 16,000 limps in. Villain limps in a lot from all positions with hands as varied as J3 to AA.  Two other players limp in. SB folds. I have KQoff (no diamonds) and check. I'm possibly ahead and could raise but most raises get called on this table and I dont want to have to play a big pot out of position.

Flop comes  Ks 4d 2d. Happy days it seems. I check hoping someone else will bet with a worse king or just trying to steal the pot from late position if it goes check check check.

UTG bets 1,000. One player calls, one folds. I make it 4,000. UTG+1 insta calls (which should have been more of a warning on reflection) and the other player folds.

So theres around 12,000 in the pot, around what villain has left and I have a bit more.

The turn is the   8d completing the possible flush draw. I haven't seen UTG bet a flush draw up to now and I'm guessing he's not that sort of a player. I think he most likely has a king and he's probably scared of the flush.

I decide to shove thinking he might fold a better hand like two pair as its for his tournament life. He might hero call with a worse hand than mine like KJ, K10 - especialy if he has the king of diamonds.

UTG thinks for a while and calls.

Did I do a bad thing?

i dont think you can be trying to get him to fold better AND call worse, that seems tough to do.

i would more often than not lead this flop there are lots of worse hands to get called by, especially given the nature of the tournament/table. the turn seems a terrible card both if u are trying to get value and for the strength of your hand.

the turn is a pretty tough spot and i think i would be inclined to cehck/decide, see what he bets, if he bets etc,

Yes i think with the insta call of the check raise on the flop and then with the horrible turn card I panicked a bit.

On the turn I was thinking if I check and he bets what do I do? Check raising the flop and folding the turn seems pretty weak. I suppose pray he checks it also but then I have the same problem on the river.

if he cehcks back you have less of a problem as his range can be perceived as somewhat weaker.

Checking pre seems ok to me tbf, though raising for value probably preferable.

Lead flop, we probably have the best hand and have no need to overrep our 1 pair by check raising. As played the snap call is probably an indication of weakness, and probably i just shove turn now knowing he won't fold any worse k's cos it's live and will prob call with a few pair + fd hands he's now made too.

OK so not too far off what I did then.

As played it turned out villain had K4 for top two pair on the flop and called my turn shove after some deliberation.  Maybe I was just unlucky here?

On reflection I think maybe I was best to just check/call the flop then try to get to showdown as cheaply as possible. Or maybe that's missing value when he has KJ/K10?

Check pre is good/standard

Bet flop>>>checking

Not sure about check/call vs check/raise, I never really get into these spots as I'd never check top pair good kicker in the first place.

Basically by raising you don't really know whether you've been called by a better or worse hand do you? And when the turn comes you don't know what to do.

By taking a simple bet bet bet line you can confidently assume you're ahead until you get raised.

That's why I wouldn't c/raise the flop because you really don't know whether you're in front or not.