Here is a hand I (mis)played from yesterdays tournament.

Effective stacks are 10.5K. 100-200/25. Villain opens from MP to 700. Villain seems somewhat loose, but loose by calling preflop with mediocre stuff, not raising a lot. I have 54 suited on the button.

This is the sort of implied odds hands all of the books seem to love. I have been struggling to play these well, and clearly have been losing with them.

But, I am on the button, so I do call. Pot is 1900. Flop is 752 Rainbow with one of my suit. Villain bets 1500. His sizing so far is on the big side, but I am not ready to make any reads based on that. His range obviously includes all of the big pairs, plus, I suspect he'd continue with his AK/AQ type hands. I call.

Turn is an Ace completing the rainbow and giving me a gut shot to go with my pair. Villain checks. I am sure this Villain would have bet again if he had an ace, so now it seems likely he has a pair between 99-KK. The question I forgot to ask is what does he think MY range is? I clearly can have all of the slow played sets. What else am I continuing with? My overpairs would clearly call (at least) the flop. What else? I could have suited aces that hit a pair, or small connectors that hit a pair, like the hand I have. In retrospect, I think I do have enough value to bet some bluffs here.

That is what I do, now the question comes to sizing. The pot is 4900 and I have 8300. I could go all in, to maximize my fold equity, but, I choose to bet 5100 instead. Is this an error? In most of the tournaments I play, the all in overbet there looks more bluffy than the committed pot sized bet. I clearly can't bet 5100 and fold, since I will be getting about 7-1 if he check raises me all in.

Villain agonizes, and calls. River is a blank (A ten I think) and he checks, I don't bother bluffing, and save my 16 BB for another day. Villain shows KK.

Feedback on all streets welcome

Fold pre

Yeh, you could 3-bet preflop, but don't call.

It is unlikely you have an ace, since you flat called preflop and called the flop. If you think he has 99-KK, is he really check/folding. It doesn't seem like a good bluffing situation.

That nasty sizing problem at the turn actually began preflop, when you had to decide whether to call a 3.5x BB raiser.

Pots tend to get bigger in a geometric progression -- so a small difference in preflop sizing will greatly affect how much maneuvering room everyone has on the turn or river. In this case, the pot got big too fast, and you ran out of room to apply maximum pressure on the turn.

If Villain had opened at 2x or even 2.5x BB, everything in your strategy makes sense. You get to the turn with a smaller pot -- which means you're perfectly positioned to milk Villain if your draw hits, or to terrify him with well-sized turn and river bets if the right scare cards are in play. You don't get stuck in a situation where the only way to put pressure on him involves a dubious-looking shove.

Thanks for that analysis Dood. Does that mean I can't afford to call preflop for ~7% of my stack? Or, that I need to hit the flop harder than a pair and some backdoors?

As played, maybe it would look stronger to bet smaller on the turn and plan to shove the river?

As played check back turn. Reevaluate river based on card and action. This is not a good bluffing spot.

as pretty as 54ss looks in your hand, its a 60-40 dog against the random holding... so its a fairly standard fold after the MP raise...

given that you played, definitely check the turn would be the play, as you have a small pair with 'some' showdown value. i am curious however...

had he bet the river, what would you have thought/done??? he sorta let you off the hook by checking there.......

Seems like a snap fold on river. Why should I care how my hand does hot and cold against a random hand? I have position and the stacks are still fairly deep. Even against a very tight ranger of TT+ AQs AK I am 30%. I don't think I have much showdown value at all, obviously since his range is ALL ahead of me. I have position, and a decent semibluff with 9 outs to a much better hand if called.

Also note, I can easily have all of the sets here, since I am flatting my entire continuation range on the flop.

Would you really over bet turn with a set though? I think if your putting him on 99-KK you would bet smaller?

When the OR checks the turn he pretty much turns his hand face up and he knows that, which makes it much harder to make them fold in my experience, so I don't think it's a good spot to bluff. Id personally definitely take the free card.

I realise as I'm writing this that I've kind of contradicted myself and maybe it's a perfect spot to over bet with a set

I also think you need greater implied odds than in this hand so I agree with riverdood that had the OR min raised it may have been okay but I think ~7% is too much.

I wrote a long reply to this yesterday that somehow did not get posted. Anyway, the condensed version:

1) With suited connectors I look for 20:1 implied odds. the bet you have to call has to be 5% or less than the effective stacks. Here the bet you have to call is too large for this hand. Implied odds means getting enough extra possible winnings in return for the few times you do hit your monster hand

2) You can always 3 bet bluff with these hands as well. However, this may not be the spot for a light 3 bet. I like to target opens that the villain has higher than 20% PFR from the position they are raising from to attempt a light 3 bet. From your description and the villain's position, I would guess he's probably closer to 10% than over 20%.

3) You can always call the right players in position with the objective to take away the pot later in the hand. For this you need 3 ingredients in the villain, wide range, high c-bet, low 2 barrel and 3 barrel numbers. Basically, the player who will open a wide range, c-bet a lot, then play face up on the turn and river. Again, your description of this villain doesn't indicate you have this type of read.

So for these reasons, I prefer a fold pre-flop.

Flop - you flopped a marginal hand. Your first goal should be to get to showdown cheaply. Your hand has equity if you can get to showdown with pot control. The c-bet call is perfect here.

Turn - It seems you lost track of your goal here. You have a marginal hand that may win at showdown. He can have hands like KQ/22/44 and some others you are ahead of at this time. Additionally, hands like KK/QQ/JJ you have to be prepared to barrel the river as well if your are planning to turn your marginal showdown value hand into a bluff. Finally, not everyone fires again with AK/AQ. I love to check these hands on the turn when I c-bet with overs then hit my TPTK on the turn. It allows me to easily pick off my opponents who will bet the turn whenever I check.

River - As I stated before, if you were planning to turn your hand into a bluff, you had to go all the way. KK was supposed to call your turn bet, then make a river decision. This was specifically the hand you mentioned that you were targeting to bluff. Before you decide to target that hand, you should know what you have to do to make them fold. In today's game, 1 bet will never ever get the job done. Before you make the first bluff you should understand this and plan for this before you fire the first bet. If you are not prepared to fire the turn AND river, you should never bluff the turn here trying to get KK to fold.

Thanks for this analysis. I think my mistake on the turn was in my sizing. If I go small say 2200, I can then jam the river with a decent amount of fold equity. Of course, if he check raised me all in, it would be awful giving up the equity in the pot (with 9 outs, I wouldn't have the odds to call).

Interesting though, if he is never folding his big pairs on the turn, I bet that ~7% of my size for a call is very profitable, if I just wait for 2 pair+. Of course there are boards were the big pair hands won 't call.

I like that you play your big overs 'backwards'. I sometimes do this as well, but I doubt my villain was taking that line. Not that it matters too much, but I was targeting all the over pairs in his range, not just KK. I think he just got 'pot entitled' with that exact hand, would be easier for him to give up say TT.

Totally agree that 54s is either a fold or a 3-bet pre. As played, calling flop is fine.

Turn is interesting. The problem on this board is that our opponent doesn't really have that many logical bluffs, so the idea of checking turn to call a river bet is probably optimistic, as villain's river bet range is going to be value heavy. (probably sets, Ax, maybe hands like QQ-KK) And even their checks are going to be hands that probably have us beat, like 88-ish type hands.

So then the question is whether we want to bluff. If we're going to turn 54 into a bluff, it isn't the worst candidate to do so. We do block dp,r sets (55) and we do have the chance to get there with a 3. We also do block 44, though, which is one of the few value hands our opponent can have that we beat. The other nice thing is that while our opponent will have a lot of Ax in their range, so will we, and we can theoretically have more two-pair Ax hands like A7 and A5 than our opponent as they might not always be opening those hands from MP.

The downside to bluffing is that we have an awkward stack size. If we bet 2.2K on the turn and our opponent calls, we'll have a pot of 9.3K with 6.1K behind. Our opponent will almost certainly be able to call down with their Ax hands on the river and possibly even some hands worse than that. And if we get jammed on the turn we almost certainly have to fold.

In short, there really is no great answer here. I think checking back turn and shrug-calling a reasonably sized river bet is probably better, but I don't think bluffing the turn is bad provided we commit to jamming most rivers.

The payoff isn't the turn bet, but the big river bet that makes the implied odds hands profitable. With KK/QQ/JJ/TT type hands he is supposed to call the turn here with all of those hands. I don't know if he was feeling pot entitled because he felt he started with the best hand. Of course some players do that. But in all reality, good players are not folding those hands, nor should they, to a turn bet.

Good players will call the turn bet with those hands and then evaluate the river.