blonde poker forum

Hey guys, haven't posted anything for a long while but looking to get back into things and hopefully get some good feedback on this spot. Here goes,

Live MTT, 2nd Chance Deepstack @ DTD

£360 buy in

132 runners, 11 remain, 13 paid

blinds 8k-16k/1k

Hero stack 1.5m        1/11

Opponent 1 stack 900,000      3/11     

Opponent 2 stack 950,000       2/11

Average is 600,000

Hero is seen as loose and aggressive, starting to leverage stack in spots but not getting way out of line.

Opponent 1 is Young, Tight, on the passive side but seems reasonably competent.

Opponent 2 is a Young, very good loose aggressive Reg.

6 handed

Hero is UTG and raises to 36k with  Ac Kc 

Opponent 1, UTG+1 calls 36k,

Opponent 2, BTN 3 bets to 105k

Folds to us, How should we proceed and more importantly, why?

Seems like a really easy 4b/gii.

Would be happy flatting, being deep in such a high value live MTT.

Would consider 4b/c more so with AKo but AKs definitely plays well enough post flop to peel, hes probably gonna barrel a bunch of A high and K high boards. With us being so deep and in such a sick position to make a good run it feels too high variance to go getting the lot in, even vs a LAG. I doubt even a LAG would be looking to get the lot in vs you super wide here when he's got abso chunks and doesn't NEED to take this sort of spot wide.
This will also keep dominated hands in from opponent 1.

Depends who villain 2 is.... if they are like really super aggro and you think they might 5b/fold or thinks you're massively getting OOL, i'd possibly 3bet small to induce. Very few people will 5bet fold this spot though, so i'd either 4bet quite big (Just 'cause it looks a bit more fos because it puts villain in a spot where they have to jam/fold), or flatting has to be good.

Tbh i doubt people will think you will be getting really OOL 4betting light in this spot, so I quite like a peel, for the reasons JGJGJGJG3000000 said. If you were Mitch/Alex i'd probs prefer 4bet call because they're massive punters and wont have any edge going forward in the comp :D

Definitely an interesting spot.

Makes it more interesting given I know who Villain 2 is. And seeing as you do too (duh obviously), I'll answer from that perspective, rather than saying what I would do vs a random player with that description.

It seems really close and really depends on how he plays these spots these days. I haven't played with him for a while, I know he's really good, but definitely used to take hugely high variance spots in the past when deep, dick wave a fair amount (but still in a +EV way if you know what I mean) and level people / himself in these ICM spots so for that reason I'd be really tempted to 4b to around 280k and snap off a jam of course.

Having said that, I haven't played or discussed strat much with him over the last couple of years so maybe he plays these spots differently now. If you asked him he might say "well it would be ICM suicide for me to 3b/5b anything there except AA/KK" in which case you 4b/calling AKs would be terrible.

So it really depends on what you think his strategy is at that time, how is his mindset etc. Is he ready to go to war, fk ICM, ready to use the fact that you know that he knows etc? Or is he gonna playing solid and sensible and not go to war when 2/12 vs 1/12 good reg? The answer is in that.

The problem with flatting is that since UTG1 is in the pot, if he's good and as described he will pretty much just have pairs in his range, and any suited broadways, AQo he is peeling your open to, he should fold to the 3bet even when you call. So when you call, he actually won't overcall hands you dominate, and will just have pairs, so you basically need to flop A/K to win the pot. Which will still happen enough and your being suited is obviously a great bonus in that respect, just saying, it's a downside imo that UTG1 will overcall all his pairs but not his dominated hands as JGill suggested (if he's good).

@WotR, I don't see how Hero can 3bet to induce with these stacks. The 3bet is to 105k, Are you suggesting making it 215 or something and hoping villain 4bets to 340 playing 950 total and folds? Seems optimistic, and given villain is IP he'll just peel all his suited bullshit to this size 100%.

Not so sure about this, getting a pretty sick price with KQs-J10s, I expect a very select few to make the fold given stacks and sizing.

Thoughts on ripping?

Yeh agree, although we want JTs, QJs, QTs to fold, so that leaves KQs, KJs, and I guess AQs and AJs as well in the group of hands that we dominate and will continue. And given he will call say 66-JJ (may even be flatting QQ because of ICM and utg vs utg1 vs CL?), combo wise that is 6pairs*6 = 36combos, plus the 12 combos of JTs, QJs and QTs = 48 combos we'd rather him fold vs 16 combos we'd rather him call (KQs, KJs, AQs, AJs), I think overall we'd rather this be heads up than 3 ways. Could be persuaded otherwise, just giving my initial reasoning behind the comment.

yeah makes sense, was more of a marginal reason to peel rather than it being the main reason behind my thoughts.

Think keeping him in should also keep opponent 2 a little more honest, giving us more of a chance to see turns than we normally would do in a HU pot.

Ripping feels a little excessive, even though he has to call with such a narrow range of hands, just seems like a bit of a waste of such a pretty hand and I personally would be more inclined to do so if we had AKo

Ripping is interesting, and agree would much rather rip AKo than AKs

Not a fan of 4betting AKo though, as villain peeling is really awful for us (and I know villain will get fancy and peel a 4bet a lot), however with AKs there's so many more flops we can profitably cbet, and turns we can jam. By the turn we're going to have at least a flush draw or a pair way more often with AKs and AKo, so taking AKo to the streets in a 4bet pot is not something I'm a fan of.

I would be torn between ripping and flatting the 3bet with AKo, whereas AKs seems close to either 4b/call or just call as well.

Like a gibbons in this spot

Also def flatting pre vs this particular villain if I have it correct. Prefer ripping than 4b to any size.

Well yeah that's why i said it would have to be vs a very specific villain in the frame of mind to find a light 5b/fold. If i've got the villain correct, there are certainly times in the past I wouldnt think it that optimistic for that plan to be reasonable. Even vs the most LAG villain i'd rarely 4bet small in this spot of course.

As for the other villain folding all non-pairs, I have to disagree. They're not folding AQs, KQs, even some AJs/AQo, KJs, JQs/TJs stuff potentially. I mean people make pretty big mistakes all the time, and it's not even much of a mistake to peel again with a lot of the hands i've just mentioned.

See my second post on that.

Depending who it is you could potentially 4bf, potentially rip, potentially call. 4bc seems like suicide

Villain peeling us when we have ako and this spr is far far from really awful, especially if his peeling range is mostly hands that we dominate (unlikely he decides to squeeze 87s)

Ok interesting thoughts.

I went for 4b/call because we deny opponent 1 realizing his equity, we have huge ICM leverage over both of them, opponent 2 can be FOS plenty here but with position can put us in tough spots post flop on certain boards.

I was thinking we would be going big but I guess maybe giving opponent 2 the chance to peel with the stack:pot ratio this would give us is too advantageous to him/his range when he flats.

4b/f obv isn't an option vs described villain, so shove and call are interesting.

FML that I put easy 4b/call and BITB thinks it's terrible

All of you reasons from you first paragraph are why I like to 4bf. I really doubt he will 5bet shove worse than queens. He was described as very good in op not a complete maniac. His loose aggressive side will be enough for him to 3b wider than most but we're on a bubble and he's 3/13 he can't just rip it in wide at all here.

It's not bubble its 11 left, 13 paid.

Thanks peeps.

Firstly, will just say that opponent 2 was Tim Chung, think most people ITT know this by now anyway.

I decided to Jam in this spot after a pretty decent tank and this is why I came to this conclusion, hopefully you can all say which play would have been better and why my thought process and choice in this hand was wrong so I can learn from it. Pretty sure I haven't been in a spot like this before with such a big chip lead and still trying to learn the various ICM situations as quickly as possible.

My initial thought was to give both players a range.

Opponent 1 I thought was pretty capped, literally thought this exact player would 3bet QQ+ 100%. So pairs like maybe 55-JJ suited broadways, AQ/AJ etc. Going to put AK in his range too.

Thought Tim's range would be JJ+/AK (maybe TT) for value and gave him some 3bet squeeze's, so lets say AJo/KQo, the hand's I'd probably choose (right or wrong) to squeeze with in this spot. Even though I thought he wouldn't be going nuts here, it felt like a really good spot to squeeze being able to put a decent amount of pressure on both me and especially opponent 1 being IP in the hand. Just for the record, in years past I think Tim would have a much wider 3bet range but my read here was that he wouldn't be getting super OOL here but would have some bluffs because it's a great spot and I'm sure he would like to be kind of balanced vs me.

Next I saw that the pot was at ~14BBs and both stacks had ~55BBs. Tim having like ~50BBs back after his 6.5bbs 3bet.

Now Is the time I think my thought process might be flawed and would like feedback on. I expected opponent 1 being passive to call a jam 0% of the time.

Given the fact that Opponent 1 NEVER has AA/KK and we block Tim form having some combos of AA/KK and the fact we have such a strong hand, if we rip we can pick up 14BBs a pretty high% of the time and even put real ICM pressure on Tim to fold AK/JJ or maybe even QQ.

Where as 4bet calling might induce Tim to shove AK/QQ/JJ and we have to get into a flip I didn't want to take obv. 4bet folding Akcc I thought would be really bad.
So in my head I completely ruled out any kind of 4bet and it was call or Jam.

So by ripping I was trying to put the pressure back on him to even maybe have him fold some value hands high up in his range, and if he did have the miracle KK (34% equity) or AA (12% equity) and called it's not like we are dead even though it's awful for us obv, I thought the amount of times we pick up the 14BBs in the middle, it was worth the risk knowing that Tim could easily have a deece 3bet bluff range being as strong a player as he is, coupled with the fact he would know how bad it is to take a flip with his stack at this stage with the remaining field being kind of weak.

Lastly, I realised if we did get called AND lose. We would still have just under the tournament average and would still have a stack with decent utility and a strong chance of continuing and getting a high finish.

So, there we go.

Flame my thought process by all means. Happy to learn.

i mean i still consider this the bubble.

very much doubt tim would jam ak or jj here if we 4bet. i do think its possible he flats some hands to our 4bet, which is perfectly fine by me thus think 4bf is probably the best option here.

So 4B/fold is best? Only if Tim calls the 4bet with JJ and AK? If not call is best?

It was just a tough spot and I went with the play I knew was +EV as I didn't want to call or 4bet fold such a strong hand. So is my total thought process wrong there? Or should I say which are the parts that are flawed?