I'm not much of a tournament player so was unsure of this hand

Blinds 15k/30k with 5k ante

Hero (700k) BB
Villain (1mil) SB - fairly new to table but has been solid so far

1070 entrants and 34 left already in the money average a tack is 600k

Folds to villain
Villain limps (first sb vs bb confrontation with him)
Hero A8o checks

Flop Tc4d2d
Villain bets 30k
Hero calls

Turn 8s
Villain bets 60k
Hero calls

River Ah
Villain bets 130k
Hero shoves

Is flop call ok? Is river value shove fine? And preflop check fine? Thanks

I'd raise pre.. Shove seems pretty big on the river but overall your line seems fine.

i guess theres merit to r/f non ai otr but other than that nh.

shove pre, wp post

Raise fold on river seems really bad to me no? Putting in like over 50% of my stack ad leaving myself 10bb.

FYI I do not have any diamonds in my hands

I assume villain raises pocket pairs so I eliminate sets in his range... I also assume he raises AT at least some portion of the time and maybe even jams that hand.

Raise or probably shove pre against most players. I like river shove, a lot of worse good hands that probably won't fold the way it played out.

Grunch:

I feel like a lot of people will advocate raising preflop instead, but I think checking can be fine too. We don't want to raise with our aces all of the time, because then we never have aces in our range when we check, so mixing in some checks AND raises with a hand like A8o can be okay.

Given your preflop check, I think every street is played well. I don't think there are a lot of hands we are behind and in this spot, if we make a standard raise, we will often times get raised back by better hands but called by worse hands. Since that's the case, the shove is a good line, since it'll maximize value against the worse hands that won't fold.

Nh, don't mind a check preflop but would raise more often than check for sure. WP postflop.

If we were deeper I wouldn't mind raising to see how SB reacts to BB raises, but at ~30BB checking is fine. If we were a little shallower I could be down with a rejam here.

Flop float isn't bad. We may have better hands with at least some backdoor equity we can continue with, but I guess we'll have to call at least one street with Ax.

River is somewhat close. I think shoving is fine. Without reads on villain I think his range is likely capped at weaker two pair hands that went three streets that we crush. Yeah we'll be up against the occasional trapped set but if we're getting a 30BB stack in here with top-two (assuming our opponent almost never has AT) we should be thrilled.

Of course the problem with shoving OTR is that you're only getting called by better, I think I just call OTR, there's no way you're going to fold out a 2 if villain limped in with ATC. I think pre and flop are fine.

I mean this crossed my mind as well, but i mean if we assume villain raises his PP almost every time, and AT at least X% of the time, there are just soooo many combos of hands we beat here than lose to realistically. And I'm ok letting villain make the mistake of making a bad call with a worse 2p, or even make a hero with 1 pair hand.

during the hand i also noted that i have no diamonds and block no FDs. I assume many suited hands are a part of his SB limping range... so there are also a lot of hands that flopped FD and maybe picked up a pair along the way particular TdXd

also note that i am closer to 20bb deep than 30bb

and appreciating the feedback all

Mixed up your stack size and villain's. In that case, I think this is probably a rejam spot pre.

you mean jam pre right? no jam to re-jam over.

im also wondering in general, does a 20-25bb strategy change when the average stack is also 20bb vs. like a 30bb average stack?

Yes it does. We can 3bet/fold more with a 30bb avg stack, we can open a bit wider too.

@onehandatatime - but should i still be considering jamming a 20bb avg stack that is slightly above the average stack in the tournament with a wider range sb vs. bb? A8o still a jam from bb?

Shove pre. Well played post. Not enough behind to consider r/f river. Shove seems good.

Cool thread title...(and good runout imo.)

Live u don't have to ship this pre unless u think villain isn't capable of playing a limp strat with 20bbs eff.

I think this a good combo to check behind pre and not such a good combo to 3.5x/f or 3.5x/c...

If you think he'll never 3bet bluff (he probably won't) then there's no reason not to consider a r/f if you think a jam is too big. He'll just call when he's beat and ship when he wins. This isn't a spot like on the flop where you're folding some equity getting great pot odds, you probably have <5% chance of winning when he 3bet ships.

I have no idea why villain can't limp/jam pairs or AT preflop, but maybe you had a good sense of how he was playing.

Sorry I shouldn't have said never, but rather I think he raises those hands preflop at a decent frequency