$400 buy-in live tourney late on Day 1. BB ante in play.

CO 75BB LAG and strong, raising a wide range.
BTN 40BB Seemed to be a “reg” as he knew everyone but seemed passive in general. Hadn’t played a lot of hands and always called preflop, never 3 bet.
Hero SB 55BB I wasn’t playing a lot of hands.

CO raises to 2.5bb, BTN calls and I squeeze 78hh in SB to 8BB. CO fold and BTN calls. Pot 20.5BB.

Flop QT7r I block 5.5bb BTN calls. Pot 31.5BB effective stacks around 27BB and I cover.

Turn offsuit 6.

We can check. If we check and BTN bets I feel we have to give up. If he checks back we can delay bluff the river or take show down.

We can block again and fold if he jams. This puts some pressure on his non nutted range.

We can jam with our set blocker and gutter. We could pressure his non nut range and try to get folds from 88, 99, Tx and possibly even QJ. I think folding out KQ is wishful.

Thoughts on the hand in general?

Would prefer to squeeze with some Arag Krag Qrag suited combo for blocker and a little larger 9BB

Imho as played jam turn. We don’t 3! pre and set up a pot size turn jam with pair plus draw and zero SDV to then give up

Yeh, standard to raise more, but not sure it makes a big difference. I prefer this hand to Axs or whatever. Reverse blockers, but better board coverage and playability. Yeh, have to push turn. You are occasionally ahead and have 9 outs to a big hand (which is not always good). You 3-bet, so shove represents QQ+, TT/ AQ/AK.

Yeah might be interesting to see how squeeze ranges stack up at this depth.

This should never be a 3b pre in this spot, especially against the V you described on BU who should have a tighter bu flat range than GTO since he is described as under 3betting. Sizing for sqz is also too small for OOP.

As played turn has to be a check unless you think BU is folding some Qx combos.

In a cash game I feel we definitely size up the squeeze to 11-12bb, my reasoning for the smaller squeeze size was the stack sizes in play. But I can see going bigger.

If stacks were 30bb or less then I would not squeeze this hand and would stick to bway blockers, but I felt like we were at the edge of being deep enough to squeeze this hand and use its playability and board coverage. I should note this tourney has 30 min. levels pushing me to 3bet more. But even 1hr levels i feel like this hands sub range has to be squeezed sometimes, possibly as much as 30%.

Given the spr, we could discount some 99, 88, Tx flop floats, but if he ever has those floats it could be worthwhile to try and fold them out with a turn jam. If we check, it is a pure giveup, which has merit.

Opponent is never folding a Q, but he can have all sorts of hands calling the 27% pot cbet. Your pair could be ahead. Because you have pair and gutshot, you have to push. I am not crazy about having the low end of the board. However, you can get better hands to fold and have 9 outs to improve.

I don't know how to make a range like 5%-20% hands. However, we are about even versus his preflop range OTT. He raises and folds some hands OTF, which will change how we are doing versus his range OTT. However, pushing is much better than giving up. CO will fold hands that are way ahead as well as those that are behind but have outs.

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

2,226,048 trials (Exhaustive)

board: Qt76

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
8d7d	49.03%	1,080,597	21,726
25%	50.97%	1,123,725	21,726

I think 78hh plays better as a call vs a raise. If we raise and are called, we play flop oop with a hand that isn’t going to make tpgk. I think I would lean call pre but if we think initial opener is open light enough, i can be behind popping it.

If you are going to raise, I feel your sizing needs to be bigger. I’m thinking like 8.5bbs at a minimum. I would like 9-10 more bc we want to find some folds. Also I don’t like flop sizing. Solid Villians should be peeling fairly wide on a 25-30% pot bet. I would prolly go like 35-50%.

I would make sure you size all 3bets in spots like this the same. No matter it’s value with AA/kk/ak or a light 3B range.

I think like oldsilver said.... Ax and Kx play much better as a 3B as you block some good cards. Suited Ax and Kx are great candidates. In spots like this, I feel like if you can get by the initial opener, generally it’s likely button flatter will call/fold and not put a 4bet in unless they are somehow flatting top of range like jj or 1010. I’m not a fan of blocker bets in spots like this also. It comes off kinda as weak and will be called more than you want especially with 78. Give Villians a reason to fold with bad hands.

87s doesn't play that badly as a 3-bet. For one thing, if you miss, you can cbet larger and/or barrel without going allin. You only have 8-high, so it is easy to bluff with.

I am leaning toward turn being a jam here.

Preflop I amend my earlier statement about 3 betting this hand class so long as we are at least 30bb deep. It needs to be closer to 50bb and we are right on the edge. I can see flatting being the better option to create a larger post flop spr but 3 betting could have merit based on pfr rng width.

I think on the flop given the spr and our rng and nut advantage a blocker bet can do 2 things for us: it folds out some of our opp rng that has decent eq now and it also sets up a turn jam on cards that are better or neutral ev for our rng. A block also keeps opp rng wide and less polar allowing a turn jam to work more often.

3b is fineish it’s another one of these spots that’s ok at a low freq but if you go crazy doing it too much than it can get out of hand quickly
Flop is a board where both players will have be splitting the pot share somewhat evenly and This hand is like pretty low ev part of your range and i think finding the x/f is probably fine (ott) fine with the flop bet for the small size with almost everything here

I still think if PIO did a grind through GTO solutions post on a 78s squeeze in this spot you'd come up short

Short as in the turn jam is a no go, or short as in if we used pio pre 78s in not a squeeze?

As in 78s is likely not a squeeze

In 40-50bb eff spots what hands do you like squeezing with to gain some board coverage?

Do you feel board coverage and playability are not as important at this depth? Where do you draw the line for those to matter? 70bb?

I feel like higher suited connectors leaves us in bad reverse IO spots but the 78s sub rng gives us board coverage and good rng assymetry. Not saying its a large freq 3bet, but in the neighborhood of 20-30% seems ok.

Fine sqz for the sizing u chose but its kinda moot because u choose a horrible sizing.

Gotta go at least 10bb, prob more, for 10bb this becomes more of a marginal squeeze and for anything >10bb u might as well just flat and if u feel like a nit then 3b some A2o, K8o instead of ur SCs