Hi all,

Playing turbo tournament. Blinds 100/200. Everyone had around 15,000. Villain in CO raises to 1,000, dealer calls, I am dealt QsQh in small blind. I 3-bet to 3,500. BB folds. Villain calls. Dealer folds. Villain is newer player to the league and I think he bets for value most of the time.

Flop: JsJdKh.

I choose a super passive line and check. Villain checks back.

Turn: 6c.

I check again, villain bets 3,500. I call.

River: 2d.

I check, villain best 3,500, I fold.

I felt the king (even the jacks) hit his range pretty strongly, which is why I folded to his double-barrel. When he called my 3-bet, I put him on AK as a likely candidate, possibly 10-10 through J-J, A-Q, A-J, K-Q. I am only 50-50 on whether villain would have 4-bet shoved with AA or KK, so can't rule these out.

Of these combos, I am only beating A-Q and 10-10 and he'd have to be betting an outside straight draw and an overcard with A-Q, but like I said he usually bets for value and he had 7 outs (three As and four 10s), so I don't see him double-barreling. He doesn't seem like the type to bet twice with 10-10 either on that board, especially after I call the turn. That leaves A-J, JJ, AA, AK, and KK, all of which I am either drawing dead to or have 2 outs against.

Did I make a mistake by not c-betting? Did I make another mistake by checking the turn, showing too much weakness and giving villain the green light to bluff? Was my hand just a bluff catcher on this flop against villain's range?

Thanks,
DT

Re-raise bigger pre flop. Put him at risk for all his chips. Raise to 4750

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At this big a 3-bet, we're talking about 1/3 of my stack. Isn't it just better to ship it at that point? I heard if a raise is over 25% of your stack, all-in is the better play because it maximizes fold equity.

Plus, assuming villain calls pre-flop and we see the same flop, I have invested more chips in a tricky situation and have only a pot-sized bet behind, pretty terrible.

You're right man on reflection. But people lose value all the time not c-betting bigger pairs when over cards hit. Half pot c bet on flop and shut down on turn and river or else fold to a reraise might be a better shout.

Tough spot and way beyond my experience to offer advice if i'm honest boss.

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I don't play tourneys so can't really say for sure but I think PF raise is OK sizing.

Heads up into the flop, isn't that an automatic cbet? And IF NOT, then....how can you justify a turn call? I am way more interested in taking the $3500 stab myself on the flop than allowing villain the easy path to outplaying me.

Preflop, I'd play this two ways.
Option 1: just jam. You have less than 10x the pot size. No need to get fancy betting less. You will even get called by weaker hands more often than you think, especially in a turbo.

Option 2: bet for value. Bet 1/3 of your stack ( as someone else suggested) setting up a pot size bet on the flop. Follow thru regardless of the flop.

Option 2 wins more chips but Option 1 is safer.

3bet for 24% of your stack and folding is just bad poker.
...
As played, no, you did not make a mistake not cbetting. The fold was your mistake.

By cbetting, villian will never fold stronger hands, but will usually fold weaker hands, although he may call with weaker pairs on such a dry board.

By checking, you are inviting villian to bet with a wider range, which includes value, bluffs, and thin value bets. You are beating the bluffs and the thin value bets.

Villian is usually only drawing to 3 cards here if he has an Ace, 2 cards for a pair, 8 cards for QT, and 7 for AQ. However, there are only 2 remaining Queens so the last two are less likely, and QT may have even folded preflop to your raise.

If villian has a K, he probably bets the flop. If he has a J, well, you lose.

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id raise more pre or even ship it, as said before the gane is shallow now and you have no reason to raise that amount and the shut yourself down post flop. as played a cbet on the flop is ok, and as played id probably tilt call on the river.

...you guys wanna 3bet ship 75bbs with queens? really?

preflop is fine, checking flop is not "super passive", it's absolutely standard, you need very strong exploitative reasons (or the new "100% cbet 1/3" strategy) to NOT check this flop, and you don't have those

turn is very close between checking and betting, so it doesn't really matter which one you choose, you might wanna use some population read (are players in the league rather calling too much or bluffing too much?). As played, river is a VERY clear call, you beat all bluffs and possibly some valuebets when he bets less than 1/4 pot

also:

this is very bad, a random just called your 3bet in a low stakes game, you'd probably be better off giving him range of any two cards rather than this one. Building some ranges in your head (that are btw very incorrect, most of those hand should be shoving) and expecting some random players to play according to them is how you lose money. Furthermore, if for some reason you view calling ranges like this (which is obviously false), QQ is clearly just a flat pre.

It is a turbo and that 75 BBs might become 30 in the space of 20 mins unless you get your skates on.

I think the call is the right shout but the small bet on the river does scream weak King, K10 or maybe KQ. Both those hands may nit have called pre if he reraised bigger, but with the raise he made they may have called. Still a call on the end though.

it also might become 0,5bb later on, I don't see how that's relevant, bad play is a bad play

also, i feel like this needs some explanation:

going with op's range assumption, it means that villian is continuing with around 6% of his range (not top 6% for some reason, but w/e). Assuming standard CO opening range of around 30%, this means he's folding 80% to your 3bet - thus, you should literally 3bet all your garbage hands (mb with some selection, since btn might come along) since it makes autoprofit, and flat all of your good hands, with possible exception of exactly KK, since it unblocks some of the continuing range, but plays better vs shove than QQ. Obviously, vs such player you should NEVER 3bet AA.

However, this is clearly not the case, since most players in low stakes live tournaments will have fold to 3bet somewhere in 0-40% range, not absurd 80%. Quite frankly, folding 0% might be better here than folding 80%, especially if you add the value of not being a miserable nit.

What's your reasoning for that spot being an automatic cbet? Do we fold out better hands? Do we get called by worse? Are we protecting our equity against a lot of bad turn cards?

Let's say we cbet 3500 and get a call. What's our plan on what kind of turn card? At that point, we have roughly half pot left.

Looks well played, but the river is very close. Flop is a very clear check. (You have many more obvious value-bets and bluffs. QQ is slap-bang in the middle of your range).
River is close, but villain's sizing is small (same size as his turn bet?). If he can conceivably make that bet with TT/99, you have to call. The whole point of the flop check is so that villain still has hands you beat on the river.

Calling the river and losing would leave me with around 6BB and I'd be in fold/shove mode for the rest of the game. I do not think he would be double-barreling with lower pocket pairs. He does not strike me as the thin value bet type of villain. (That is a little too sophisticated and he is a newer player, like I said.) I didn't want to end up in the "danger zone" so early in the tournament, so I folded.

I perceived this villain's raising range as stronger than average because I have seen him limp with hands that many would raise with pre (probably due to the terrible "I'm afraid I'll miss the flop so I don't raise" mentality).

WA/WB Can we get to showdown cheaply OOP? I would love to get to showdown checking down. We win a bunch of these showdowns.... except the ones where villain caught his set on the turn (river) or filled his gutshot. Villain folds those hands to any aggression from us, will not bet into us as a bluff (or semi-b) even if we show weakness....so let's give him a chance to catch by not CBetting

WA/WB we bet, villain folds. Good result against someone that doesn't bluff much. If we are determined to check/call against a value-better (I am suggesting to NOT do this), isn't it better to bet first to eliminate his 10% bluffing rate?

Villain read is that he value bets. So ANY time he bets, he has us beat here. So let's just c/f on the first street he bets? Used to be a rule of thumb that villains will bluff a minimum 10% of the time. But if we are folding to ANY action, this seems like weak sauce to me. But this has to be what is being advocated ITT. Calling down against a value-better with our QQ on this board will put us out of the tourney.

Villain bluffing 10% and we call down is also leads to the rail. IMO, villain is not going to be bluffing this board often if our read is correct so...any bet by villain on this board is a fold, correct? Does this mean that villain will checkdown the hand and hope to hit his 2 outer (with TT)?

I dunno for sure but to me, I would like the opportunity to win without hoping the hand gets checked down.

So you want to invest 1/3 of your remaining stack to make villain fold his two outer? I don't think that's a good idea.

Against most players, the flop is a clear c/c. But if we really think this particular player only bets for value here and the bottom of his value range is TT, c/f has to be better than b/x.

Exactly. Betting to make him fold the 10% of his range that we crush makes very little sense. Checking is still better if he never bluffs, because his flop action will tell us whether we are ahead or behind. We can play perfectly, by check-folding if he bets (with no bluffing range), and we know we're ahead if he checks back. By betting (and making him fold all his air), all we find out is that we're dead when he calls, and we were ahead when he folds. We don't need to put money in the pot to find out we're behind if checking gets the same info.
Betting for (expensive) info = bad.
Checking for free info = good.

You guys are probably right. I've been outta NL for a while. I wouldn't lead for more than 2400-3000.

So we can't get any value from our hand ever as villain folds all the hands we are ahead.

We end up check folding here to any bet. Allowing villain to catch or bluff his 10% of the time. Are you EVER calling anything?

I also see an non-zero chance villain checks behind on the flop with Jx.... AJ being a likely candidate.

(I think my initial response to OP was IF he is going to call a bet on the turn, wouldn't it be better to lead the flop.)

Against a typical villain that will bluff with Broadway draws (many of which we block, unfortunately), we should at least call once. If we're behind on the flop, we also have about 10% equity (our 2-outer) that we'd rather not give up on.
Quite often the flop will check through but villain will pick up a flush draw on the turn. We can get value from that by either leading the turn, or by check-calling again. There's very little benefit to betting the flop if it folds out hands that might give us some value on the turn. Seeing a free turn (the best case scenario for us, as we're more likely to be winning if that happens) can only be accomplished by checking.

Op, I wouldn't forget that I(you) 3 bet preflop, showing a lot of strength. So villain might have KK as part of my range and be more scared of that flop than I am. The flop check is fine. But if I'm going to call 3500 on the turn, then I'm going to make that turn bet myself instead of checking and at least give myself a chance to win the pot cause he might've folded to it.