Youngish player/dealer villain is known for some big scores with a slow, big betting style that sometimes means the nuts or very good hand, but more often a bluff. They've been fairly active and have won and lost some huge pots. He seems to tilt some players into dumping chips to him with ridiculously bad holdings but he doesn't tilt me at all. Clearly this player is luckier than I am, which is what pisses me off the most maybe. They are a 2+2er that practically lives on here. They may even read this and laugh. I don't really care, I just want feedback on the hand.

Blinds 1200/2400/400a
I have ~70K, villain has ~120K

Hero:AT

Villain raises to 5100 from hijack, SB (~140K) calls, I call from BB (pot 18,900)

Flop: T76

SB checks, I check, villain bets 7,100 (pot 26,000)

Our action?

Will return to update next steps and give results. We already know I lose the hand so whatever but let's focus on the plays.

Did SB fold to flop bet?

Tempted to just yam pre given description

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I would make it ~18k/call there.

If V is aware of ranges he knows this board hits more likely the callers range then his, so I dont expect him to be air bluffing very often there, so I wouldnt worry very much about taking him off a bluff if we raise. Our hand is very strong, but it still needs some protection, because there are many turns we are going to lose a lot of equity or that are going to kill the action.

Yes SB folded

Jam pre from description. As played 3b to 18k and obv call if he shoves

Updated:

Beat him in the pot. your odds to win exceed the odds offered to call.

I'm guessing 9c-8c, right?

Jam pre, snap call now

are you really asking if you should put in over 1/3 of your stack then fold with ATcc on T76cc?

to add something nonsnarky, once the flop comes down, our objective is to get the money in. I agree with the other posters that the best way to do that is to c/r/c the flop.

RESULT: I basically snap called all-in like everyone agrees is best so far.

Villain shows 6x6x for a set, turn J, river 7 gg me

Some thoughts:

1. I think I played it pretty std, but I think there should be no std-just like to think about these spots.

2. If villain has a set, calling off after being reshipped on puts you dumping 19bigs and your tourney life with only 27% chance to win. Do we always want to assume sets are not in their range here? Plus, add in other likely holdings with which villain would take this action (JJ-AA plus two pair combos) and you're just flipping. The only thing you're well ahead of are underpairs, straight draw cards, worse kicker Ts, inferior clubs, and air with all but the last two unlikely holdings given villain's action. Playing devil's advocate for the lost art of folding here obv.

3. A couple people said shove pre. I like this plan normally because the thinking is you're probably ahead of a late position, active raiser's range and should have
significant f/e since it's 29 BBs. I considered this but didn't because I've seen villain show a willingness in the past to make big hero calls/take flips and he had me pretty well-covered. I'd rather see a flop, and if I see a much improved chance to win drop it all in. We see how that worked out for me.

4. Another approach to the hand could be to smooth call the villain's flop bet (c/r/c instead of r/r) and then shove on nut flush turn. Villain maybe would've folded with only one card to come and me representing a flush. Of course they might just read that as a bluff because many would check an actual flush there (not me).

5. Just think it's interesting to see that after starting with 29BBs, which is certainly a workable stack in a non-turbo decent structure tourney like this (30 min levels day 1, 40 day 2), and thinking I played the hand well, all I really did was dump 29BBs with somewhere between only a 27% and 50% chance to win. I would've stood a better chance to double up by simply shoving a good pair or AK all in pre at the next opportunity with my 29 bigs.

shove pre, call flop as played, and plan would prolly be to check-shove all turns except for KQJ non-clubs, which we would call and then evaluate on river. This is not an HSMTT thread though, belongs in MSMTT.

These three comments highlighted above were fairly offensive, but I understand that was a tough hand to lose. I'm not sure what I've said or done to you to make you resent me so much, but yes I have had some lucky scores but I also take a lot of pride in my game and work very hard to constantly be improving.

With focus on the actual hand, I think you can never consider folding this hand vs me and checking and calling the flop probably shows a larger profit than check/raising just because I perceive you as a more conservative player. Yes my flop allin is weighted towards strong holdings and strong combo draws (which you have two large pieces of that blocked with NFD and TPFD removed) but there are definitely some other combo draws I would take a chance with here.

Ha, figured you'd show up here in pretty short order. For the record: None of your bolded comments were meant to be sleights, rather included for purposes of description only. Believe it or not, my comments about luck (which you are wise enough to acknowledge) come from my seeing you play over several years. I don't doubt that you put a lot of thought into your game as well though. On the three points:

1. Would you rather be young than youngish? (I kid).
2. Slow betting meant not overly slow-just that slow, deliberate thing that some players like to do to create drama, which can be effective in psyching out some players it seems. I did notice that, to your credit, you act the same each time in order not to telegraph info.
3. The time from my post to when you show up here makes my point rather well tbh but that's all good (+post count?)

Most of all, I truly appreciate you weighing in with your thoughts on the hand in question.

Since you said you think c/r/c is preferable on flop let me ask you--do you think you call there with your hand if I shove turn? Or if you prefer not to answer that, how about unknown player X, do you think they call there given your holding?

Also, when you say more profitable, I assume you mean because of what happened in this case? Or because hands I beat (or will beat) are more likely to fold to my flop r/r and only strong holdings that are already beating me call?

Ok so he's offended by you saying youngIsh.. Just keep it short and say guy in his mid 30s... :0

Someone text me about this thread asking if it was me. I 100% never would have seen this otherwise. Most of my forum activity is in the fantasy sports section or the MTTc - Live forum.

At 28, it's hard to admit I'm going from the "young" to "youngish", that is all.

I'm easily one of the quickest acting players in the game at any given time. I don't take more than a couple seconds for any decision before the turn and certainly don't do it for drama.

The point to calling the flop would be to check the turn and not jam into me. I can't sure for sure if I call or fold but id generally not fold a set to that line. And yes, check raising that flop does the opposite of what you should be trying to accomplish. I fold out bad hands and continue with good hands.

c/r flop or c/shove flop or if you're feeling frisky call and c/r shove most turns as you probably could with sets, straights, etc. This line has the added value of possibly getting villain to bet/fold hands like JJ-AA sometimes, but the problem is villain might check those hands back, in which case you have a dicey spot where you may have to overbet bluff river if your draws brick. In metagame you can pretty much c/r flop to 18-20k with a really unbalanced bluffy range and get folds vs good players but with 26k in pot and roughly 65k in stack I think you should be trying to get it in since you're out of position which means V can get to showdown cheaply or get a free crack at hitting turn-riv.

The fact that V bet flop means it's likely he's on hands like sets, JJ+, 99-88 maybe, straights (4 combos probably), AT-JT, KQc KJc QJc J9c (98c), and probably some small amount of air like back door flush draws on this board texture. Of this whole range you probably won't see a ton of turn bets unless he's got the more nutted part of range or air range depending on the turn. Since you're out of position the lower variance line is to just get it in quick instead of having to guess ranges and do a lot of combinatorics in your head that might end up making a mistake on rivers because of positional disadvantage.

There seems to be no agreement on the best play on flop between check/raise vs. check/call, although most seem to prefer check/raise which is what I did. Player B (villain now upgraded to Player B since they're participating in the thread) seems to think that check/call is the definite preference here but that's not what the others think.

Since the two plays are very different, especially in terms of how committed we are to the hand, which one is optimal?

i am interested to learn more about what has caused OP to be so tilted

postflop is trivial btw, but i dislike jamming pre. you're not ripping 29bb with the top of your value range and this player is competent enough to know it.

I was also thinking on this - at what point does it make sense to jam pre? Hero has 29bbs after posting I assume. when it is his turn to act, he needs to call 2,700 more into a pot of 16,200 which I would do all day with AT sooted and closing the action pf.

That is 6.75 bigs, though. If it were say 10 bigs and we have 29 behind do we shove instead? Where is the tipping point?

Is Masque available?

well, it's nearly impossible to quantify when we have almost no idea what sb's image or defending tendencies are...we can make assumptions about how wide a typical competent, winning reg is going to open from the hijack, but even then we can't say with any real certainty. it complicates things somewhat with two villains still to act rather than 1, but whatever, we should be able to do enough to convey some basic points about general profitability. the antes are ridiculously large in the OP, so that's one thing to at least take note of.

so let's see how often a villain needs to fold to make our resteal +cEV (breakeven threshold) when he opens to 2.1x and we jam 10bb, 15bb, 20bb, 25bb, 30bb, etc against reasonable calling ranges.

roughly,

top 15%= 55+,A2s+,A8+,KQ,KJs+,QJs
top 11%= 55+,A8s+,AT+,KQ
top 7.5%= 88+,ATs+,AJ+,KQs
top 5%= 99+,AQ+

10bb vs top 15% calling range: unexploitable
15bb vs top 11% calling range: 16.8% villain fold
20bb vs top 11% calling range: 26.0% villain fold
25bb vs top 7.5% calling range: 55.4% villain fold
30bb vs top 5% calling range: 65.5% villain fold

so with a 3-fold increase in stack size, we go from unexploitable shoving to needing our villain(s) to fold 2/3 of the time. obviously this means that the marginal value of restealing decreases in a heavily disproportionate manner as your stack size increases. we can see the big jump in what we need in terms of FE occurs between 20-25bb, and we can debate exact calling ranges but i think it's modeled more or less correctly here.

the value of flatting, on the other hand, depends on a myriad of factors (your actual hand, position, villain's opening range, relative skill levels, comparative stack depths, etc) and can increase or decrease as stack size increases. think of how much juicier it is to call 98s in pos with 100bb compared to 20bb. think about how much more disastrous it is to defend QJo vs utg raise with 100bb compared to 20bb. the reason for all this extra complication is obviously that when we flat, we still have more decisions to make in the hand, unlike shipping pre which closes the action.

so i mean, i wouldn't be surprised to see a winning villain open 30% in the hijack at these depths, and i wouldn't be surprised if sb was flatting 20% of available combos (think 22-99, broadways, suited Ax, connectors and 1gappers). if you're the type of player that just can't help yourself from squeezing in spots like these and sb is competent, you can expect it to end in disaster some amount of the time when he's trapping you with a premium. but whatever, the point is i think shoving will def show a small profit, but it's probably only the best option if you really suck at playing poker after the flop.

i don't know how to model the relative strength of ATs vs X% of hands on all potential flops, that's def something that's more up masque's alley, but let's look at it this way- the one drawback we have here to flatting is that we'll have to see a flop out of position. this is balanced by the fact that we usually make it a 2 street game at this depth, our hand will be underrepresented, ATs is obv ahead of and dominates a decent portion of HJ open (and sb defend) range, plus our range is wide and we can rep all kinds of stuff with good equity to fall back on when the flop/board is low and janky. if we have solid reads on HJ, we also might know that he does silly live pro stuff like cbet too much, check back for pot control on too many turns, not vbet thinly enough otr, etc

i don't believe that a jam would show more profit than just calling pre, with all these things going for us in a live $500 mtt.

oh and i'm still waiting to find out what has OP so tilted. i think i'm owed an honest explanation now

one thing that should be pointed out which i only really glossed over initially, is that if sb anticipates you to squeeze a high frequency in spots like these, there's a chance he tightens his sb calling range so much and balances it with premiums that your shove will not actually be profitable at all.

True but rarely happening in practice. If hero is shoving ATs AJs AQs AJo AQo TT-JJ in this spot and flatting everything else except bluff 3b squeezes and AK QQ+ 3bets that's 2.8% of hands he's shoving and if villain is opening 30% I'd be shocked if he's calling off any more than 5% which would be 99+ AQo+, so you're getting a fold 83% of the time. Even if villain is only opening 20% the shove should show a profit as hero is 31.6% vs a top 5% range when called and it's the absolute bottom of his shove range.

OF course you have to worry about the SB a little but he should be really exploitable with a range of 22-99 broadways Axs suited connectors etc. He may have some traps in here but ATs does OK vs non AA traps and in practice SB doesn't show up with these QQ-AA AK hands too often. AQ-AJ
are certainly possible but hero shouldn't worry about it if his range is TT JJ AJ AQ since that range is 46.4% vs AQo.

So i wouldn't say it's "bad" to flat or anything so extreme, but a shove should just show a pretty good profit vs. average-good human opponents even if it's not really balanced.