Hey guys,

just wondering about your opinions about this barrel in the 109 Scoop main event. The opponent is basically an unknwon which is the main problem with this hand. Personally I think he should have folded his specific hand due to the Kh blocker in his hand.

https://www.jivaro.com/profile/Samus...5d9e025bab297/

No way he should fold KK there, which is close to the top of his range. You can have draws on that flop. You might just flat call a lot of value hands and allow him to barrel with bluffs or over pairs if you beat them.

I agree that there are a lot of draws on the flop that I could be barreling. However, most of the straight draws (96, J9) are now straights that I would definitely be shoving. Also if u think about the most obvious heart flush draw:

AQ very likely to check/call river or even turn as we have showdown value
KQ and JQ definitely checking turn
AK and KJ not possible as he has the K of hearts in his hand
TJ and T9 might check river with some showdown value (2nd pair)
89 and 76 check calling

This leaves only AJ of hearts and 56 of hearts as my missed heart draws on the river.

What I am trying to say is that although it looks like I could have a lot of bluffs there, there aren't actually that many.

So let's roll back the clock.

What are you representing with your c/r on the flop? If I'm in Villain's shoes, I'm considering all kinds of Ah-xh hands, as well as someone getting frisky with 99,TT, JJ, QQ. The fact that I have the King of hearts isn't blocking much of anything.

You lead the turn, with 1/2 pot. Value bet? Blocking bet? Setting up a river bluff? Hard to say. If I'm Villain, I still think I'm ahead.

You shove the river with a big bet on a runout that has no Ace, no heart, and no spade. If I'm in Villain's shoes, that feels bluffy. It only helps you if you've overplayed TT and just caught your miracle card, which feels unlikely. What's more, if you're a happy man with AQ and think your hand is good against most of Villain's range, he's got news for you. It's not.

Yes, if you had 96 or J9, Villain is dead, but his big preflop raise is meant to kick such possibilities out of the hand.

I don't think Villain gets on the escalator to play the hand at the level where you'd like him to be.

We were extremely deep which means I could have peeled with any suited connectors or low pairs. This makes 22/77/88 and 87 my immediate value on the flop. Q on the turn means I now have a set if I was overplaying pocket queens. I am very unlikely to be betting 99/JJ/TT on the turn and even if, TT has a set on the river. What's even more important 96 and J9 got there. It is a 109 dollar tournament so u would expect people to be decent players at this level. I don't think an overpair is necessarily the top of your range 200 blinds deep facing an all in tripple barrel.

Just trying to help.

Yes, in theory, this deep, you could be trying to stack a big pair with anything. 72o would have crushed him. No need to limit yourself to small pairs or suited connectors. But in this case, Villain failed to see the many imaginary terrors that you wanted him to find.

Looking at the hand in its totality, I think the big problem is that Villain didn't assign a more frightening range to your c/r on the flop. You're doing a valiant job of trying to argue, after the fact, that you could have been representing a lot of trouble there.

But it seems like Villain didn't go there. Instead, he played this as if you were a plain-vanilla guy trying to semi-bluff with an Ax heart draw. Once he formed that view, there wasn't much you could do -- given the board run-out -- to win the hand.

I'd wanted to ask you earlier: How would you have played this if a third heart came on the turn or river? Would you have bluffed the flush, hard, hoping to fold his likely overpair? Or would you have backed off, figuring that AhKh was in his range, too?

That's the most tantalizing element of the whole hand. It might have been your best hope of getting paid.

For sure there are some heart hands in his range. However, I think he has way more overpairs and hands with a queen, possibly hands like JJ, 99 or draws such as T9. Therefore, I think a flush coming in on the turn or river would definitely help me barrel him of off those holdings. I probably would not even change my bet sizing.

It should make it impossible for him to call as the number of bluffs in my range would be limited to some backdoor combos (coincidentally what I actually had) and I don't think u can construct a reliable range from that.

Two things:

1. If I'm constructing a c/r range on the flop, I think it's going to be sets (which my opponent can't really have), 87s and some AA/KK as value, with heart combos and T9s for balance. I'm not sure we need to use AJs with a backdoor spade draw as a c/r bluff, unless you want to put some of your strongest draws in a check/call range then I guess it's ok-ish.

2. Should our opponent have called? Because our opponent 3-bet us pre and called two streets, what hands does our opponent have here? I think it's unlikely our opponent will 3-bet pre with hands like T9 or 99 facing an EP open. So their range is probably exactly AQhh, AKhh and JJ+, which is 17 combos.

Now I'm not a minimum defense frequency expert, but I think to not be "exploitable", he has to defend at least 9 combos. If our opponent calls with QQ and AA, that's only 6 combos. He still needs to call some KK, and if he calls with only his KK without a heart that's 3 more.

So yes, you can make an argument that our opponent should fold KK with the Kh in his hand, but it's really, really close. And because none of the draws connected, I think it's perfectly reasonable for your opponent to think that calling with all of his KK hands is fine, provided he does find some folds. And he'll have JJ and AKhh, and maybe even AQhh, that he can fold.

Thanks jpgiro,

that was a pretty useful and accurate analysis of the hand. I agree he probably wouldn't 3bet an EP open with 99 in order to protect his implied odds from possible 4bets. But as I said, it is 200BB deep so our ranges are pretty uncapped pre flop. I chose to C/R the flop because I was OOP and I could barrel a lot of turns.

Now my question is, what do you think about my overall play in this hand and would u also shove the river as played?

Preflop, I think all of our options are reasonable. Calling, raising or folding all have some level of merit. I lean towards calling deep stacked.

On the flop, I think my c/r range here is for sure 88, 77 and 87s for value, but that's only 9 combos. I guess we can add an overpair (maybe QQ if we don't 4-bet), giving us 15 combos for value. If that's the case, we should be able to use JThh, QJhh, KQhh, plus T9s, and have bluff combos to balance even if we want to leave a couple of nut flush combos in our check-call range. With AJs and a backdoor I actually think this isn't a terrible spot to peel as there will be flops (spades, Ax, Jx) that we will be able to continue on, but folding isn't unreasonable either.

On the river, if we assumed we're at 0% when we get called, we need to get about 48% folds in order for our shove to be profitable. Is our opponent folding half their range here? As noted, I think when all of the draws miss and our opponent has called two streets, QQ+ is a LOT of their range. And it's very difficult for me to think someone is folding any of those hands in real time, which makes our shove unprofitable as they'll only be folding JJ+ and AKhh with a fair degree of certainty.

Seems like a spew. This is a really big $100 MTT. We don't know anything about villain, who may be a random. His range for 3-betting an UTG raiser early could be QQ+. He should have some bluffs, but he probably doesn't. When you c/r the flop, you are representing a set or a draw. It isn't a good idea to try to get him to fold a big pair.

Preflop is fine. C/f flop. Turn is OK with draw. C/f river.

I am starting to realise that it was just unnecessary to take a high variance line like this in a tournament full of fish where a lot of chips can be made in the first levels just by making good hands and getting value.

However, I don't actually think that folding is an option on the flop with a backdoor nut flush draw and a backdoor straight draw. + A high. The reason why I chose to play the hand this aggresively is that we were extremely deepstacked which should make it quite possible to fold out overpairs on favourable runouts. By this I mean turns and rivers with a heart, 6 or jack. In position I would most probably call the hand, but I don't think repping a set on later streets would be too credible after check calling OOP on a board with striaght draws and a flush draw. Furthermore, our hand doesn't actually have terrible equity against overpairs (around 20% if I am not mistaken) so we sometimes find our ourselves valuebetting on the river.

In addition, the fact that he only flatted on the Qs turn which brought the 2nd flush draw makes it hard to believe he could have QQ there. One would think he usually jams top set, as he still gets called by all lower sets and two pairs + protects his hand by denying equity from possible combo draws (up to 25%). This only leaves KK and AA as his overpairs which really isn't many combos. This made me lean towards the shove on the river.

All that being sad, I still have no clue what was the best way to play this hand. Thank you all for insight though (especially jpgiro with the detailed numerical stuff). Appreciate it.

Pre, flop, and turn seem fine. River seems spewy when both draws brick. Bluff-shoving a heart river would have been fine.

C/r flop is OK if villain has AK and maybe AQ and bluffs in his range. At this stage an unknown player may be 3-betting JJ+, QQ+, or KK+.