Posting this for a friend, we discussed it and our opinions differed so I'm keen to see what others make of it.

Villain was a random, running 20/13 over a small sample, no further reads. It's relatively early, not more than an hour after addon, but both hero and villain have almost 3x the average stack. Thoughts on flop 3bet/call shove?



PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 11 Tournament, 200/400 Blinds 50 Ante (9 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP2 (t5915)
MP3 (t5264)
CO (t42971)
Button (t25845)
SB (t13390)
BB (t7716)
UTG (t11093)
UTG+1 (t20983)
Hero (MP1) (t41471)

Hero's M: 39.50

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with A, A
2 folds, Hero bets t950, 2 folds, CO calls t950, Button calls t950, 2 folds

Flop: (t3900) 9, 4, 9 (3 players)
Hero bets t2650, CO raises to t5300, 1 fold, Hero raises to t13750, CO raises to t41971 (All-In), Hero calls t26721 (All-In)

Turn: (t84842) 10 (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t84842) 5 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t84842

cbet should be closer to 40-50% me thinks. If it was heads up I'd be much more ok with 3b/c on this flop but meh, there's really not much CO will be tooling with here considering how strong your 3b looks.

Having the Ac isn't helpful and 3 betting the flop isnt good. Just flat and play the hand from there. Once you 3bet you have to get it in tho.

Think we are looking at almost exclusively 44, A9 and 99 with stacks at this depth. I even feel like weaker 9x hands would be more inclined to flat the 3bet than shovel 100bbs so immediately.

Think its really rare for someone to show up with 1010-KK here at 100bb, definitely a strong possibility if we were 50 effective, and given our Ac blocker he is spazzing out with significantly less FD + over combos.

Seems like a fold all day to me and think my preferred line is flatting his raise (despite his sizing) and letting him barrel off his spazzes, keeping in the part of his range we are still doing ok against, i.e. complete air, broadway clubs, 88 and 1010

why did you 3b flop?

the min raise over your huge flop bet in a 3-way pot is showing huge strength and followed by an all-in after you raise again is almost always the nuts.

Seems silly to narrow Villain's range to a single hand, but 44 seems v.likely. Especially since you have the Ac.

I had been really active and had 3bet one particular villain a number of times and taken down the pot uncontested. In the moment, I kind of felt this had translated to a dynamic on the table that was going to allow me to get value from what seemed like a largely passive table through villain calling wider than usual.

I realised this was a huge mistake since I committed the MTT cardinal sin. I 3bet for value not paying much attention to how I would react to a 4bet, and when the shove went in I felt pretty gross about it, hence asking my peers about the hand on AIM.

The notion of cbetting 40% is absurd though. This deep I'm cbetting at least 65% pot with my entire range, and to be honest, I would sometimes cbet more towards 80-90% with value hands like this.

perhaps 40% is too small, but 65% a little too big imo. 80-90% is completely absurd (at this level in the tournament anyway)

Most of the time when we cbet we are going to be doing so with air/draws and for this reason we want to bet as small as possible to get the maximum amount of folds. Because of this, our value cbets should be similarly sized. Obviously if villains are donks, stations, or unperceptive to betting patterns we should just bet as big as we can with our value hands but in general I think it could be agreed that betting 40% and getting all folds (regardless of our hand strength) is better than folding everyone out with a 65% bet.

hi stew!

I think villain is getting way too much credit / respect here. There aren't many 9s in his range so we're almost entirely concerned about 44, and I'm of the opinion that JJ-KK will get excited on this flop. I don't dislike the way you played it.

re cbet sizing, my default would be around half pot and edging more towards 66% with my value range, so your size seems good though 80-90% would be too high and risk folding out too much of his floating / drawing range

I dislike you!


Eat my words!

most villains that would be playing JJ-KK like this almost certainly would 3b them pre.

fair point

Why is it you think we have to balance our range in a 11R MTT? I mean, most of the players are droolers and certainly don't pay a huge amount of attention to betting patterns, let alone the sizes of them. I don't know you, and I respect your opinion, but I am definitely not concerned with balancing my cbet range at this stage of the tournament.

In general, I find I tend to cbet on the smaller side and often opt for the 40-50% pot as you mention. But this seems better when we're like in the 20-40BB effective stacks range. In this instance, I'm happy simply going for max value.

sup

Think betting 80-90% as LO said gets people to fold too much of our villains range especially if we ever want to give him the opportunity to have bluffs. 65-70% looks good at this stack depth across the board.

Cbet is too big, 3bet sucks for obvious reasons. Would only contemplate it if you know ur up against a reg or someone u have weird history against.
Call flop raise and turn a boat or just check/give up a lot.

Wait, so you want to set mine our AA for one street? If we're check giving up on turns that aren't aces I'm pretty we have neither the direct or implied odds to call the flop bet. Maybe I'm misinterpreting your post though.

I'd also be interested to know whether people are saying the flop bet is too big because they think we need to balance our range (and therefore cbet sizing) with bluffs, weaker hands (or semi bluffs) and strong hands, or whether there's another reason. Personally, I feel that if it's simply for range balancing then there's a strong possibility people are overestimating the level of play in an average 11R and therefore the need to range balance.

well i agree with the first sentence. the other 2 are rather stupid.

cbetting anymore then 50% is pretty bad imo. There are really no turn cards that are bad for are hand. Even if a club comes we still have the ace. and 3 betting is just awful on the flop.

I would love you to provide solid reasoning as to why c-betting more than 50% is bad

i think 2222 is a good number

i disagree that there are no 9s in his range, lots and lots and lots of players are calling minraises pre with 97s, 98s, T9s, J9s, A9s when 100 BB deep.

I don't doubt these hands are in his pre-flop calling range but I don't think 97,98,109 or J9 would often 4 bet jam facing such an extreme 3 bet 100bb deep. Combos of A9 I find far more realistic to 4 bet get it in but I think a lot of the weaker trip pairings are flatting the 3-bet

I think flatting the raise is better, but dont think 3bet/calling the flop is a tragedy, people are really spazzy these days

i think most randoms in an $11 are going to be more like OMG trips not OMG I bet this guy somehow has A9 or 44. Our hand looks like what it is or even AKs, and he doesn't want the club to hit the turn.