$33 mini Saturday KO, IIRC I didn't have any strong reads on opponent but he rather seemed to be TAG-ish. Therefore, his bets looked strong since he opened from early position. Your thoughts?

Hi there,

I don't think I could find a fold with less than 20BB postflop and trip aces. This got to be a crai on the flop.

Or fold pre. Seriously, depending on villain I might fold my ace to an UTG+2 raise.

+1

A big part of Villain's range has you dominated. Playing around with Slice, I get Hero as a 32/68 dog to Villain raising with top 10%. The implied odds make it even worse.

If your Ace is good, Villain will probably let go pretty quickly on a board that helps you. If Villain has a better Ace and the board helps you both, this becomes a very costly and unpleasant hand.

x/c three streets nh

+1.

You've made your bed with an RIO hand, and now you have to lie in it. Not folding with less than 20BB.

The challenge is he knows that AK, AQ, and possibly AJ are out of your range, since you would have raised or more likely jammed with them. He knows that, so he's not worried about barreling any ace he has in his hand.

The one (tiny) bright spot - against AQ, AJ, you have 6 outs to a chop, plus your 3 outs to 3s for a win.

I agree with the not folding with ~20 BB's and trip aces. If you are going to fold in this spot I think you have to fold pre-flop...

Personally I don't care when you gii. Flop c/r might get called because you can have a flush draw. Turn c/r guards against a flush draw (you won't know which one hits on the river and at least you make him pay for his draw).

But you only have 3 outs to a chop against AQ/AJ... And the 3 outs to a win.

i absolutely love that logic of either going with it postflop or folding preflop

I avoid these type of situations by rarely, ever, playing Ace-rag offsuit out of position, especially against early raises. If you hit you're not getting paid off by lower aces. I find ace-rag offsuit to be one of the most played/least-profitable combinations in the game. Unless you're playing against a LAG and want to make a stand (in which case jam the 20bb) just fold it pre next time and move to the next hand.

Call or Fold preflop depends on villian. If he has been very active in raising preflop, I guess defending isn fine as long as you don't married to your hand postflop with just toppair on certain runouts.

On this flop, he wil bet his Fdraws (hearts and Backdoor Clubs), Gutshots (QJ/QT/JT) and his Ax hands, except for AK+KK and probably most air too.
He's either betting AK/KK small (hoping you raise allin with a Fdraw) or just checking to let you catch a piece/let you make a move. He bets over 1/2p, which I think is setting up to get allin on the river with either Ax or a Fdraw/air for max pressure.

With the Tc on the turn he bets over 1/2p again. His QJ got there and AT has a full house too now. I wonder if he would barrel AT again here, since might Ch-R an ace, and if you have a Kx hand he's not getting 3 streets anyway (unless you improve).
He might check AT now and try to get one more street of value vs Kx
When I think of hands that want to continue here, are Fdraws (Both clubs and hearts), A9s-A2s and ofcourse AQ-AJ.
I think the turn is where I would go allin or fold.
But realy when you have 20BBs as starting stack and there is a chance you are ahead (vs Fdraws) or chopping (vs A9s-A2s), I think we just have to go with it.
If he has AQ/AJ we just have to hit the 6 outer, but that's the risk we took defending preflop with this hand.

Check/shove turn on wet board for like half pot. Villain has big stack and could be bluffing representing ace against BB. Ace is less likely as only one ace is left. He could also be value betting and you are chopping against A9s or something. The fold is terrible.

I don't like defending ace/rag against an ep raise, but if you do it is with the idea of picking off bluffs in situations like this.

Yeah. There's a lot of bad poker logic going around in this thread.

My biggest one is the one that Lissi is alluding to. In poker, you should be cofortable of the idea of calling one street to fold the next. This is part of the game and something you will have to get used to, especially in the BB.

Lets take an extreme example which is displaying the same logic as we have to fold pre or go with it now.

We call in the BB with 22 vs a raise and the flop is JT9. We check he bets and we call that flop ready to catch that bluff. Turn is a 7, we check, he bets and we decide to get our hero on. River is an A. We check, he bets a 3rd time and we tank with the logic "well, I've come this far". Time to look him up. We call and lose to a flopped straight in KQ.

If you were villain and saw hero call down with 22 in this example, I think we'd all agree, you'd never bluff this opponent. His calling range on the flop = his calling range on the river. As villain you'd laugh at such a fishy call.

Now this imaginary hand is ridiculous, but I'm trying to get across the point that in poker we don't just call 100% of our range becasue we called the previous street. That is just terribly exploitable and plays no part in developing some kind of winning strategy. This hand never took into account where we are in our overall range.

In the BB, your goal is to realise your equity and reduce the profitability of your opponents opens. Remember, folding loses -110bb/100 as a win rate out of the BB when faced with a raise. You should be prepared to make life difficult for your opponent.

That's enough general talk, lets talk about the actual hand. I think our QJ/Kx/Ax is going to call flop. QJ will bluff river with some Ax as value bets when turn checks through. On the turn, as played we improve to a straight with QJ and hit a boat with AT. Vs a turn continuation bet, in these positions, I'd fold Kx (which will be a big chunk of your range). If you start folding Ax, you will begin overfolding. We now reach the river with Ax, QJ and AT for a boat and potentially another boat if the river was a 5 for example and we had A5. In thi scenario, I'd probably fold some of my weakest Ax. Maybe A2o-A8o (depending if we didn't improve). I'd call A9o to QJ and then x/rai with ATo and another boat if I improved.

Why would you check shove a marginal hand vs a polarised range?

I would shove for a half pot on the wet board with all broadway cards and 2 2-flushes.

I don't think we can fold trips when there is only one ace left and we chop versus most aces (though maybe not most aces he opens with) and he can have many draws.

Flop sizing on Vs part is kinda shady and seems ambitious for any hand that beats us on the turn.

I'm not folding turn, and snapping a lot of rivers

I will have to read this a third time and maybe more. I thank you for the thoughtfulness and effort you put into it.

I will say that you miss part of my point. I am not saying that in any situation if you call the flop you have to call the turn. Nor am I saying that if you call pre-flop that you have to see it through to all streets.

However, in this hand when I flop trips at this point on the turn I can't fold. If I knew I was going to trip up pre-flop and then fold to two bets on a double flushed board with a gutter possibility on the turn, I would not play the hand. I think that our blocker is significant and if villain has the last A then so be it.

Maybe my take on online play is wrong and I haven't played online in quite some time, but I give a lot more credit to balanced play and strong two barrel bluffs online than I would a live player. I would expect a draw to continue in the hopes of getting me to fold a somewhat weak hand that has a pair in it.

Live I would expect a check on the river if he doesn't have me beat. I have called down triple barrel bluffs with Ax on a flopped top pair for all of my chips essentially, and I have folded on other occasions to the turn bet. But that is based on live reads and a substantial amount of history with the players in question. And it isn't trips...

kinda funny that you didnt even bother answering the question that was asked. also theres a difference between not wanting to fold a hand and ripping it in at some point for no apparent reason.

I explained twice that it is a dripping wet board. Whether or not it is the best play, c/s 1/2 pot can't be a big mistake. You want to gii way ahead and you don't want to give draws a free card. You could be semibluffing a combo draw or something, figuring he is often FOS representing the ace. Not sure he always barrels the river with air.

I agree with all of this, but doesn't the fact that we start with 20 BBs massivly change this scenario? I mean, calling the turn leaves hero with 11BBs ... 1/2 pot. You'd still fold (sometimes) on the river?

Betgo, you need hands that are capable of x/c 3 times regardless of the SPR here. If you x/jam A2o, what hands are you telling me you call down with?

Yeah. You're going to have to fold some hands to a bet. If you called every Ax, you'd call too frequently. I'd advocate playing tight on the turn so that we don't have to fold that often on the river.

On this board, I am not sure there is anything weaker or stronger I would call preflop with and flat call 3 streets with. Not much I would call 2 streets with and fold the river either.

Not sure we need to be balanced on every board in a $30 MTT. This isn't Isildur versus Jungleman. Also, not sure we should be flat calling leaving a half pot behind with many hands on a dripping wet board.

Flat calling may be better though if you induce enough bluffs by the bigger stack on the high board.

Every now and then there is such a thread appearing in this forum: hero has Ax in the BB and appr. 20BB deep. Hero calls pre. An ace comes on the flop (here two aces, but it doesn't change that much - yeah I know about the odds of villain having the last ace). Hero obviously calls the flop cbet. But then villain continues on the turn and then again on the river for our whole stack.

In these threads, there is never a consensus.

To me, resolving any kind of math and balanced strategy here is not what is going to help us in the midstakes mtts.
Basically, we need to know at what "level" villain is playing: either he is playing it honest and we need to fold river at the latest (and probably on the turn on most runouts). Or villain is thinking about our range and how there are many good aces out of this range and he is capable of bullying it, then we need to call down to the river (or raise turn - that's another discussion, albeit an interesting one).
So it is about reading what kind of opponent we are up against. To be honest, I don't see another way of thinking about this.

I think if our opponent is barreling two streets on this board, we're pretty much toast against their range. In readless situations, I honestly don't think folding turn is that bad - when I run equities in Flopzilla, in most scenarios it's marginal at best to have the direct odds to call and it's not as if our hand has much chance of improving.

However, if we think our opponent is capable of overplaying a hand like KQ/KJ or overbluffing, then calling turn with the intention of calling most rivers is fine.

Check/raising turn is a disaster because you simply won't get enough folds to make your shove profitable, because when you get called you're almost always behind.