$2,000 buy-in - misakes or jsut poker?

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Appreciate any feedback on the following hand as it's been bugging me. Biggest buy-in I've done without satelliting in.

$2,000 buy-in

Level 9

Blinds:800/1600
Hero Stack: $64,000
Villain 1 Stack: $75,000
Viallin 2 Stack: $44,000

Only played 2 levels at this table but Villain 1 has been fairly active - opening 1-2 times per orbit. Villain 2 seems generic LAG internet kid.

Villain 1 UTG+2 raises to 3500
Hero on button with Qh9h - calls 3500
Villain 2 in Big Blind calls

Flop: Qc8h3h

BB checks
Villain 2 bets 4,000
Hero raises 11,000
Villain 2 folds
Villain 2 goes all-in

I ended up calling all-in. He showed AhQs and the turn and river bricked and I was out.

I'm ok with the call on the button as he was failry loose but I'm rethinking the flop raise and call. Should I just call the flop and see what develops.

At the time I thought a re-raise might get him off a few better hands like Q10, Q9 and possibly KQ.

After he went all-in my thinking was that if he had AA or KK I was priced in as I had 13 or 14 outs (depending on whether he had a heart). If he had AQ I still had 12 outs. A set was possibl though I obviously have the blocker for the queens. Possibly this is a situation where it may be mathematically correct to call in a cash game but in a tournament situation should just fold and wait for a better spot?

Any thoughts and feedback welcome.

Thanks

Fold pre. Call otf. 2b/f otf would be really bad

3bet of fold pre generally
Call or raise is fine vs lag otf.
With BB in hand raising is higher ev but higher variance as well.
Snap as played

Mistake: Preflop. Fold.

Just Poker: The flop is a bit of a cooler.

Still, you busted out of the tournament with a pair of queens without a strong kicker while drawing to a flush that wasn't the 1st or 2nd nuts....just on face value that should tell you that you usually did something wrong.

move up to where they respect your flop raises

I like your line. 27 BB with a hand that flops well is a marginal speculative call. And you flopped great; top pair and a flush draw. Your hand has good equity, even against his jamming range.

You are only getting the wrong odds to call the jam vs the set. You are a small favorite against the overpairs without a heart. You are a small dog against the overpairs with a heart. Also against AKhh. Against AQ you are 47-53. AhQ was only 40-60, but I assume Villain would have jammed with all AQ

You didn't mention the antes; assuming 200 there is 13K in dead money out there. You only need 43% equity to get it in.

So, it is marginally +Cev. I don't think the tournament considerations are enough to get you to fold here.

If you aren't willing to get it in when you flop top pair and a flush draw, you shouldn't be playing hands like this. This was a great flop for you. Unlucky he was ahead AND held on.

I think you played it fine and it's just an unlucky break. I don't mind you calling V1 and seeing a flop with position. You have enough BBs where you can play poker with the guy.

Fold or 3bet pre, flatting is terrible

Call flop, raising is terrible

As played, the part where you called the all-in was not a mistake.

I don't understand why you think flatting pre is terrible. You have 40BB, are in position and a hand that can flop well. Sure, you can 3 bet fold here, but at these stack sizes, I'd rather see a flop in position than turn my hand into a bluff.

If you call flop, what are you doing on blank turns when the villain fires again? Bluff raise all in? You are doing terrible against his value 2 barrels, and will likely face a tough decision on the river if you flat.

Having trouble finding a good reason to wanna raise flop. Most preflop strategies will be tighter with ur stack but tighter or looser, you will end up with a lot of combos that just want to call on this texture.

It's probably closeish in EV between calling and raising flop but I don't think we want to fold out anything that BB might have and we don't get it in very good vs OR when > $ goes in.

You can call a lot of combos and still raise some, no contradiction there.

The wider range utg cbet the better raising becomes obv.
I don't it's that close vs "fairly active player" and with bb in hand especially if we don't gii very good.

I assigned utg+2 -- 18% opening range and 42% cbet freq
bb -- 3bet top 5% and overcall 50%
checked down after flop

Assuming reasonable ranges raising is 0.5bb better than calling.
If we slightly extend UTG opening range and will set ~60% cbet freq raising becomes ~1bb better than calling. but barely more than that tbh.

We`re basically flipping gii vs UTG range otf.
Folding out KQ-QT out of (tight) BB range is good.

Making previous replies I must admit I overestimated amount of protection we need vs BB overcalling range with our specific holding.
Range BB c/c 3way would barely have 15% equity.

Finally I think calling is better vs spazzy or extremely stationy BB and more "in line" UTG.

You should probably do some work on preflop ranges in general if you think this is even remotely close to being a preflop flat against basically any competition. The "turn my hand into a bluff" part is all complete bs as well you have Q9s mate it's not like you have a hand that is anything other than random air here (that works somewhat well as a 3bet bluff vs spastic opening ranges -- I think hands like KTs QTs Q9s are pretty good 3b bluffs here if they open enough). Absolutely nothing wrong with just folding though. The decision between fold and 3b depends on their frequencies (fold as standard) and both are light years ahead of call which is the only really bad option.

Also wtf at this "bluff raise allin" on blank turns mate you have top pair and a flush draw. Unless a dog attacks you and eats your cards between the flop and the turn you have an amazing call flop, call turn hand on any runout vs any sizing that will get to see all 5 cards, has amazing stackoff possibilities, yet can still fold on horrid turn+river runouts. Raise getting in flop is like a zomg I don't know how to hand read but SO MANY OUTS WHAT IF THE TURN IS THE ACE OF CLUBS AND HE HITS HIS AK ZOMG PALMS SWEATING ALLIN ALLIN ALLIN move.

(To be fair, it's not a disaster to raise gii flop by any means because, well, you do have a ****load of outs and a great hand. I don't hate it by any means, as opposed to pf which is an actual disaster. But as played, obviously it's going to be quite +EV to raise GII there. But it's just a bit of a nonsensical play imo and not the best option.)

Ok...and how do we determine the combos we want to raise? An rng?

Imo its more complicated than this ^...if we flat (and BB folds) we need to consider variables relating to OR's barelling tendencies and turn and river aggression etc...we obviously don't want to raise vs monkeys who will semibluff heart turns for example...

Yeah I agree EV diff between our flop options is inelastic to villains' tendencies with this specific hand which makes it one of best candidates to take safe route on vague spots.

At 40bb stack it's fine to have a flatting range, but in a vacuum Q9s would likely not fall into that range. I'd probably elect to 3-bet or fold.

For preflop ranges in tournaments, however, it's impossible to have set-in-stone ranges for a particular stack size. Other players + table dynamics factor greatly into your overall pre-flop range decisions, which change constantly. For example, if blinds are incredibly tight, rarely defending and almost never 3-betting, and RFI villain is an incredibly loose recreational player (you see them raise 84s from EP), this would improve the potential to profitably flat Q9s. Sure, 3-betting Q9s might be more profitable, but that doesn't make flatting Q9s in this scenario not at all profitable. I think taking a flop in position with a hand that flops reasonably well against bad players is far from "terrible."

I guess flatting vs somewhat loose opp/weak player its not that bad, and is not like is the end of the world , i mean is a hand that flops well and we're IP , but really depends on your image here , I personally will 3bet it but either way is fine imo.
Otf we have an easy call, UTG did bet into 2 players (which looks strong ) and also we wanna let BB in there w/ worse FD's.
As played is a snap call, unlucky ....


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I would tend to agree. How is that a decent hand with these stack sizes? I prefer 3 betting pre and then obviously you're still GII on that flop but by 3 betting pre you can get him off a lot of hands when he misses the flop.

As played, calling on button (with respect to his flop bet) is probably better because when is he folding a better hand than Q9?

Yeah same as everyone else, fold pre, call flop.
One of the best Queens to flat.

For those of you flatting the flop: Do you ever raise the flop on this board texture? Raising sets plus combo draws (JT,T9hh)? Assuming you don't have QQ as a flat, that still leaves you 12 sets to balance. Flatting sets makes it too easy for the BB to peel, with as little as a gut shot.

All this. Raising the flop accomplishes very little for your hand and Q9s is a bad hand to call pre with.

what hands am I allowed to call preflop in this spot
was thinking maybe i can call QTs but after reading the comments here maybe thats to lose....

most definitely this

i think KTs is the bare min to call if that's the question

why would u ever fold q9s pre on the button given that the two players are aggro but y would u flat to setting up ur self for a disaster

Q9s is somewhat close pre. Against an aggressive player on the button QTs vs. UTG+2 open is probably ok so Q9 can't be that bad. I do think stack sizes are a consideration and if I lean fold it's because of that. As to bluffs, I think weak suited Ax (A5s-A2s) make much better 3-bet bluffs, and if we need more bluffs I'd look more to weaker suited connectors or one gaps (i.e., T8s or 76s) for board coverage if we do get called.

As played, I think the flop raise isn't great. If my math is right the villain's SPR is ~4, which is close to a automatic call-off with a good Q. So when we raise, villain is unlikely to fold AQ or KQ, maybe not QJ. Plus our opponent can have lots of Ahxh/Khxh combos which have tons of equity against us. Just feels like a weird merge.

(That being said, I wouldn't mind calling this and then turning the hand into a bluff on a later street on certain runouts because of its removal effects.)

The other problem with raising this board is that you likely don't have QQ, so you're really saying you have 88, 33, *maybe* some AQ. This can be a spot where we can easily overbluff if we start picking too many non-nut flush draws.