We are deep in the money. 15 left, my position is 5th
I was recently moved to the table. No reads and no special image.
Villain is a small stakes breakeven player. He is playing 20/12/4.5af for 71 hands (from previous tournies)
I have a note on him that his standard preflop raise is at least 3x
In this hand he instantly raised when the others folded to him


NL Holdem $5,000(BB), ante $50
SB ($744,364)
Hero ($292,761)
UTG ($170,852)
UTG+1 ($98,870)
UTG+2 ($527,768)
MP1 ($114,251)
CO ($294,970)
BTN ($125,993)

Dealt to Hero A K

fold, fold, fold, fold, CO raises to $15,000, fold, fold,

Hero ?

What is the best action/sizing here?

I like calling and keeping the pot relatively small seeing a flop against an even chipstack while we are in good relative position in the tournament and bad position in the hand.

I also like raising with a good hand for value and with some fold equity.

I think there are arguments for both.

no arguments, 38,700/call

what tournament is this? sunday million or something?

usually it's a pretty easy 3b/call...

Is this thread for real? 44444/call wtf bros

This. But in OP's defence, the title does say STANDARDISH spot

little too small imo.

41,235/call.

flattings ****ing mindnumbing.

/thread

The problem is that we are 60bb deep and most of the small stakes villains are playing ridiculously tight so close to the final table. I cannot imagine that 3b to 8bb/call shove preflop (for 60bb) is the optimal move here, because I do not expect him to shove light at all at this stack depth. He is probably shoving KK and AA, and I guess sometimes he is shoving QQ and AK and sometimes he is flatting them. and probably he is flatting vs 3bet all other stuff - pocket pairs and good broadways.
so we are in a good shape on the flop when he flats our 3bet, however I do not think we can call a shove preflop really...

"thou shall 3bet AK always and stack off"

/sarcasm off
without dynamic 3bet getting it in with AK is never good here, but all options are still viable 60bb deep.

i think we have to 3bet,hes opening c/o to a size you say is his standard.so there no reason not too 3bet here.I 3BET TO 4255.
and if we flat oop,its so weak and we are giving him too much credit.ak plays so much better with the 3bet/cbet --3bet /get it in, stop worrying too much about having to get in 60bbs,when in reality hes proberly folding to our 3bet load anyway.

The fact that he will fold a ton to the 3bet cannot be a real reason to 3bet a hand like AK, because this means that we won't like the range with which he will shove. So basically we have to 3bet/fold AK?

I am wondering if 3b/fold AK can be a correct play?
Let us imagine that it is the first level of a tournament, we have 3k chips at 10/20 level, someone opens in MP to 60, we 3bet to 180 on Button and he shoves 3k over our 3bet. Most of the time we will fold here, won't we?
And I am not sure that the range with which the villain will shove in our case will be wider - the stack depth is smaller, but the big money are so much closer

Im gonna post smthg that I assume Im gonna get flamed ALOT but w/e. Without dynamic and being 60bbs deep here r/c here is in my opinion against SMALLstakes player total SPEW. At best you are flipping/freerolling with same hand basically, coz if he is atleast abit competent player he will like NEVER shove AQ even/maybe AQs but thats about it. Ive played these kind of situations way too many times to say r/c here is rather bad to not say the least awful.

We could flat and play post and even sometimes float 1 street/raise some flops profitable and own him hard postflop. Why would you on earth want to tangle with someone preflop being so deep when you could own him postflop and get max value out of his AJ/AQ type of hands all day long and get away cheaper if you miss/brick out. Im not saying we would be nits and always go for c/f on low boards, but against lowstakes players there is alot more merits in flatting and playing post better.

Dana Gordon

36599 / shove