Andy.
The hand in question is very unlucky, you had an extremely good hand and you rather unfortunately ran into a slightly better one, when this happens in any form of poker you either have to be a mind-reader or get very very luck to avoid dusting off a bunch of chips.
However, just from your post and the way its been written there are a few things I can offer in way of advice...
all fold 2 button foreign lad bets 450 I'm on small blind with ak I called knowing if I hit flop he would cbet flop no matter what flop . Big blind called
This isn't terrible thinking at all, but the REASON you are flatting is because 1) (as you say) he will very likely c-bet "your boards" boards that come Ace or King high are, rightly so, good boards to C-Bet with all your range IP as these are boards that typical hit stronger ranges, and you would expect that the strongest of hands that hit these boards AA/KK/AK would re-raise pre-flop. The other reason why it's an very good spot to flat is you're OOP vs a good player with quite a defined range (he'll expect you to have big cards) so pot control/under-repping your hand and saving yourself some horrible spots in a big pot on later streets make flatting here preferable to 3betting generically in this spot at THIS stage of the tournament.
Flop is king king 10 spades . So 2 spades on flop . He bets 450 I put him on ace rag of spades or ace 10 . I rerise 1450 big blinds fold . He now bets 4500 so Im pretty sure he's flushing or got king with worse kicker .
Now you're really all over the place here, it's important when you find yourself in these situations not to make a snap judgement such as "He has Ace-Rag spades" think the hand through like a story, where each action gives you a little more information and an additional part of the puzzle. So far in this hand the info we have is...
He has raised the button when it's folded to himThis makes his range EXTREMELY wide, sure he could have
or
and all the
X spades combinations, as he would raise ALL of these from the button 100% of the time. Remember though, this is only 10 combinations of a range that is SO wide. He's going to be raising with
and all hands like this. The point is we can't make ANY snap judgements on what hand he has at THIS point in the hand because he can have SO MANY hands.
he cbet a KKT spade/spade flop when checked to him in positionNow, what information does this action give us? Well, we know he's reached this point in the hand with a range of hands that opens the button when folded to him (which is as we said could be the vast majority of the deck) if he has completely nothing then he is very likely to bet here, a hand like, for example
- there is a very very slim chance that he can get to the river with
and win the pot and literally no card he can hit to make a good hand - so he will very likely just bet here and hope you all fold slighty better hands as he has no other feesible way to win the pot. So once he bets, all the junk he raises pre-flop is still there.
He can ofc have some hands he might want to VALUE-BET (as in, he legitimately thinks one of you two could call with a worse hand) hands like JJ, QQ or AA, maybe even AT + ofc he could have a number of Kings himself, ofc there is only one KING left for him to have, but he would open near enough any king he was dealt on the BTN (AK-K2) all these hands he would bet as well.
He might also "semi-bluff" i.e betting with a draw, I think, from my experience the worse his flush draw is, the more likely he is to bet it here.
or
etc a hand which has NO value at all unless he makes a flush (and someone could very well have a bigger one) he would almost certainly bet as there is a lot of value to be gained from making you fold 55 or A3s etc. if he has a BIG draw like
or
then he'd bet as well ofc, because his hand is very very strong. I can see him checking a few
X spades hands back because ACE high has a small amount of showdown value and he'd hate ot get c/r. There is also hands like AQ AJ Q9 and J9 (gut shots) that he would bet often and ofc QJ for the open-ended.
The point of this ^^^^ is that you make a very quick SNAP judgement (I can actually imagine your thought process going exactly as the post reads - very quick and lacking a little composure and thoroughness of thought) that you think he has either AT or
Xspades , both hands he could legitimately have granted, but you're not considering the VAST array of hands he COULD have - you've basically made this judgement based purely on the fact that there is a Ten and two spades on the board. The best way to play in these situations is to look at the board, consider ALL the hands your opponent could have and then decide the best way to proceed against ALL those hands.
we raise to 1450 and he 3bets the flop to 4500Ok, so now we've raised - lets consider how that makes us look, he's is going to think, quite rightly, that we are POLARIZED when we make this raise (basically we either have a hand we're going with - which would need to be a very strong hand, or we're bluffing) So how is he going to proceed with all the hands he has once we've raised - he's going to have the decision to fold (if he has nothing) to bluff (if he has nothing) to try catch US bluffing (if he has SOMETHING - mostly likely JJ/QQ/AA) or he is going to raise again for value or as a semi-bluff (he needs a good hand or a strong draw for this) but when I say for value I mean he ISN'T going to fold if we went all in.) these hands would be hands like TT, Kx or maybe AQ/AJ of sapde - so you say you're putting him on either a flush-draw or a bad King. This is a pretty reasonable assumption as I think by this point in the hand nearly all the junky hands he has will have folded and he'll be left with good hands mostly now.
So having thought this, why did you not consider re-raising the flop again? He isn't going to fold a King or a Flush draw if he's re-raised with it so there is a lot of value to be had from re-raising here, if you are worried he has TT or KT then this is not a good concern to have here, as all it will do is DAMAGE the profit you can make vs the weaker hands in his range by being paranoid and worried about the very best hands he can have. If he has TT then we are going to go broke to him at some point in the hand once we've re-raised so lets focus on punishing the worse KINGS he has.
If you were concerned that he would fold a KING then you should re-consider the flop c/r. If he has a worse KING he's going to bet again regardless but if we just chk/call then it makes our range look like a marginal pair hand, Tx most likely and he may well decide that he can get us to fold our hand and barrel turn/maybe river - this is remembering that we've realised on the flop his range after hs C-bet is MAJORITY air/junk. Something to consider.
I'm not saying that the C/R was bad it most certainly wasn't, what I'm saying is I don't think you thought through WHY you were check-raising well enough.
I call the extra 3k now turn is jack hearts he bets 5k I have 11k left . Really not putting him on aq . So I still think he's flushing or bad kicker and trying 2 push me off pot . I call river blank 6 . Now he bets 5500 leaves me with 500 if I call pot is big tank 4 ages eventually make the call he flops over 10s full house
Really not putting him on AQ? I think AQ is definitive a possibility, if he was going to BLUFF the flop AQ and AJ would be the IDEAL hands to do it with as he has some equity and a strong ACE high has some showdown value vs some of your draws. I agree it's unlikely he has AQ but ruling it out would DEFO be a mistake.
I don't understand why he would be pushing you of the pot with a King+Bad kicker, if he has that hand he DEFO won't be bluffing with it (trying to make you fold) I think a very common mistake people make is that they assume people are trying to push them around and they let that feeling detract from reading the hand and noticing that at this point in the hand he is clearly either VERY strong, or semi-bluffing, most likely with a
type hand. A point to notice is that he bets quite small. about 50% of the pot - this, imo would make me more inclined to think he was betitng for value over bluffing - with the stacks set up as the are, 10k~ in the pot and 11k in stacks he would go for one BIG turn bet as his best way to make you fold. 5k and 5k gives you a good price to call on both streets and this would make me think he has a value hand OVER a bluff/semi-bluff.
Im not saying I would fold, I 100% would not fold, I'm just trying to demonstrate a slightly better way to think about the hand. From this point in the hand I would chk/call, chk/call just as you did because he is betting his Kx's OTR regardless and whereas Ithink he is unlikely to bluff the river again if he does it 1/100 times we make a small profit from chk/call turn over going all in.
I hope this doesn't come across as too critical, it seems to me as if the conclusions you have reached in the hand are pretty sound, albeit you've arrived at them in what seems like quite a frantic and jumbled up kind of way, constantly changing your mind what hand you think he has and generally a bit lost in the hand, which as I say was a cooler and nearly everyone goes broke in some fashion in this hand.
Try to really plan things out in these big pots, and have very solid reasons WHY you are doing everything you are doing, raising just because you have AK on KKT isn't the best way to go, raising to get value from pairs and worse kings or FD's, or to induce him to bluff is the best way to go even though the raise will still be the same raise - if you understand me?
Personally I think chk/call chk/call chk/call or chk raise river is the best line in this hand, we open him up to bluff off and valuebet worse by making our hand look a bit weaker like a mid-strength pair or half decent draw, on this run out I would just chk call the turn and river because I think AQ and JJ are legitimate possibilities and aside from worse kings there isn't a lot that will call a raise from us OTR once we've taken such a passive line. We're exploiting the weakest parts of his range on the flop (all the air he raises from the btn pre-flop)
Hope this helps!
Gl in scotland, lets winnnnnnnnn
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