Hey guys,

Have been knocked out in 2 tourneys today in the same fashion wondering how pro's/better players handle this situation when they are faced with it:

Both times I have had a big stack going against another decent stack a bit less than mine but the loss takes over 90% of the stack away.

The situation:
KhQc vs villain in position

Flop: Qs 6d 3d

villain leads out half pot, I 3-bet to 3/4 to find out where I am at, villain shoves and shows Ad 2d

River always delivers.

Questions:
1. If you are this type of player, why do you risk all your chips in this spot?
2. I am starting to think maybe not 3 betting flop and betting almost pot on turn if they check to me
3. What is the best play here? this seems to be the spot that gets me in trouble a lot

We need more info son.

What was the pre flop action in the example? What are the exact positions? What are the stack sizes? What is the potsize? What are the bet sizes?

Seems like a bad flop to raise in general. Think about this: You say you raise to 'find out where you're at and then have to call a shove. Pretty expensive to just find out where you're at.

Is your flop raise for value or information?
You say raised to "find out where your at". Villains shove says you're beat. So you should fold right? In the actual hand villain has worse hand and 12 outs, so shove/call is a great result for you
OTOH, you ave a good but not great hand on the flop. Probably a call is better. but its not possible to give a better response without knowing stack sizes and any information you have on villain

at flop important question is " who i am playing with" rather than asking " where i am at". call flop then think turn carefully.

I'm wondering 2 things about your play:

If you have a "big" stack, why are you building a big pot with only top pair good kicker and why are you calling a 3 bet shove with only top pair and big stack.

And if the opponent does put you on one pair, he has one over and 9 outs for the flush draw for 48% equity right there, then add in the backdoor straight draws that he has, he may even be a slight favorite over your hand.

At the very least, no matter how strong your hand is, he has 9 outs to the nuts for at least 36% equity.

Betting to find out where you are at is generally a horrible idea.

While knowing the preflop action is helpful, I can't think of a scenario where I'm doing anything here other than calling with top pair. We get almost zero better hands to fold (AQ might be the only one and that's optimistic) so the only hands that are continuing are hands that have us crushed, like sets, and hands with lots of equity, like premium draws. When we call, we can keep our opponents' entire c-bet range in the hand which we should be doing very well against.

I'm not sure on that board if I want a big raising range. I can argue not even having a raising range at all, but if I do it's probably just sets and maybe some AA/KK with some draws to balance.

^^^ this.

i would say a call post-flop is fairly standard, though there is a lot of info
missing from your pre-flop description.

the good news that way is... you are NOT all-in already and can make
a better decision when you see the turn. btw, you say he rivers it, so i assume you meant the turn was a total blank for both of you

Wow, very informative guys thank you very much I will take it all on board!

Preflop action was just a 3x raise by villain and I called after him, everyone else folds. That's why I raised his C-bet to say I hit the 'Q'

When I was up against this guy I know he wanted to stack off because we were the 2 biggest stacks at the table and in the top 10 the current standings out of 3000 runners. And to be honest I wanted his stack, so I got it in but just question why they raise all in on a draw?

Probably the next questions is, I will change to calling the flop and if the turn blanks like it does most of the time, is me shoving here going to deter such a player from risking all his chips to see the last card? or should I see the river as cheaply as possible. What would you do?

forgot stack sizes: 250 was bb, so about 1800 in pot on the flop, he lead out 1100, i raised to 3260, then the shove, we both had ~30k stacks to begin with

This is what I was talking about. With over 100BBs stacks, you got all in on the flop with only one pair. In your reply you seemed to think that this is ok. One pair is not a hand to play for stacks when you are this deep. I don't care how big the pair is.

Over a decade ago, I got the best advice from a poker pro in my young career:

"Big hands = big pots and small hands = small pots, and one pair is always a small hand."

Now in today's game, I would slightly disagree with this advice I got a decade ago, but only in this respect, I would remove the word always and replace it with usually.

In my mind, I am more willing to get all in with your opponent's hand than your hand. In my mind, you made the mistake in this hand and not the "flush chaser." You see he was drawing to a big hand and therefore warranted making the pot big. You had a small hand and still decided to play a big pot.

great thanks for the advice!

I can understand that train of thought in a cash game, but a tourney???

He raised all in on a draw for several reasons:
- Calling puts him in a bad spot if he misses the turn (which is likely)
- He is all in for 2 cards. At worst you call and he is about a flip to win. At best you fold. Taken altogether it is a +Ev move.
The problem with shoving on the turn is, no he won't call with his draw because he will be getting far less than the 3:1 he would need to break even. However if he has you beat he will almost certainly call.

So it depends on stack sizes at that point. If you would always call a shove on the turn then shoving might be best (because he will likely check back his draws). Otherwise, I would consider betting half pot and then folding to a raise on the turn. Or just checking the turn and river and hope he bluffs the river.

Yes, deep stacks in a MTT plays very similar to cash game. It is once stacks get to 60BBs and under that alot of the cash game strategies start going out the window.

When you raise the c-bet on the board, you're not really saying you hit the Q - at least not that often. You're really saying that you either have a set or a draw, or maybe air some part of the time. Your range is much more polarized than it would be if you had just called.

That makes it easy for our opponents to play well. If they have a premium draw or a set, they're going to consider getting their stack in. If they have worse hands, like a worse Q, or some kind of second pair, or air, they're going to fold - and quite frankly, our opponent is going to have way more of those type of hands than premium draws and sets. When we call, we keep all of our opponents bluffs in, and all of our opponents worse hands in that they might bet for perceived value.

If you call the flop and the turn blanks, it depends on what our opponent does. If our opponent checks, I think making a reasonable 2/3 bet on the turn is fine with your hand because you don't have a diamond (making it more likely our opponent has a diamond draw) and if our opponent had a draw they'd often fire at the turn as well. If our opponent bets, I'd evaluate based on the size of the bet, but more often than not I'm calling at least one more street with top pair and evaluating river.