2000 Live MTT, very early stages. Villain probably has 20k and we have like 22k. Villain is a competent but no great by any means reg who's splashy pre but pretty passive post. We probably have a relatively LAG image but nothing crazy so far. Villain opens button at 50/100 for 250, we 3 bet to 850 with Ac5c from the SB. Definitely mixing call/raise with the hand but BB is a very good player (GPI top 50, 5 million + earnings crusher) so knocking him out is nice and not getting squeeezed a decent portion of the time. Button flats, flop is 2c9cTs, we c-bet 1000 and he calls. Turn is the Tc. Even though this is obviously a great card for us it's terrible for our range, so I check and he bets 1800. We call, river is the Kh and he bets 3250. Do we just call here or put in a raise? And plan on folding if he shoves? What's our sizing?

clear call

A check-raise to 8750 is tempting. V can have QJ, Tx, and all worse flushes which he might pay off to a smallish river raise.

If he shoves I think he really only has TT, KT, or a weirdly played KK that didn't 4 bet pre. Lower boats probably just call a river check-raise.

^^^wat are you talking about yo he has every 99 22 in his range as well
Anyway pf is very std and >> flatting
Flop would be a better xc
Turn std
River just decide if you wanna xrai or xr small/fold. Not sure which option gives u more ev

99,T9, and 22 would not 3 bet shove river. Our hand looks like KK a lot given our line. Not even sure Villian should shove KT on this river, that would be close. Also there's a chance that somehow this bet turns into a sick merge where we can get value from QJ,Tx, lower flushes but maybe once in a blue moon Villian folds 22 or 99?

Interesting spot

1k pre, maybe 1.15, don't be shy

Lp2016, PIO says to defend all 22 200bb deep pre ante or its your own habits?

At this stage someone competent shouldn't defend ton of Tx off pre and suited ones don't look like a great catchers (if you c/jam) so I'm in small c/r camp.
But I'm just curious what kind of bluff c/r are we supposed to have otr.
K9s seems most realistic.

No one folds a boat here unless you're very multi level thinking. Don't assume you know the villain's thought process by basing it on your own.
I would raise / fold here. Raise enough so you get a call with Tx or random straights/ smaller flushes and enough for you to not be crippled if you get jammed on.
It also comes down to preference. Do you want to risk more chips to potentially earn a higher profit, but lose them if he jams? In poker it's hard to make big hands so I personally like to push edges like these.

By the river villain already put 7k of his 20k stack in. I would raise to 7k and fold to the jam.
If you raise to 7k and he ships for 9k more the pot is now 31k and you need 9k more to call. It's pretty gross to fold but I'd still fold because you don't beat anything.

lol: how often is villain calling the three-bet with 22? Hero's raise prices V at 2:1 and I'd imagine V folds 22 a fair amount of the time.

@nuclear: im skeptical that Tx and QJ pay off here. Assume worse flushes do. I don't think K8c and lower Kx suited are calling pre, so you've got kcqc, qcjc, 8c7c and maybe 7c6c. That's four combos you beat that we'll assume will call. At the same time, villain has 99, TT, T9s, KK, and KTs for eleven combos that beat you, most of which will likely raise.

Seems to me this is a pretty clear call....what am I missing?

Yeah, I agree, and I don't think 22 would fold to the river check raise either.

The villains turn sizing is also so small that I assume he might already have us drawing dead. It looks like a suck-bet intended to keep in any high-club hand.

Unless I had a good read that the villain would pay off with a wide range of worse hands, this seems like more of a call. It's still tempting to raise though because of how underrepped our hand is.

Results:

I raised to 8500 and Villian tank folded. He later claimed to have JT (not sure if offsuit or suited). But yes, for those talking about it, this Villian is 100% flatting 22 there, there is a 0% chance he folds pre with 22.

Enumerate likely value combos.

you lose to: 22 and 99 at 3 combos each, 1 for TT, 1 for T9s and KTs and 5 for KTo = 14

vs

you beat: 1 combo for KQs, QTs, QJs and JTs, 6 for ATo, 6 for QTo, 6 for JTo, and maybe, 1 for 67s and 78s, 2 for 8Ts, plus maaaybe the weighted equivalent of 1 or 2 combos of AK. = 25-30

Some are likely to fold pre and should be discounted, like KT/QT/JT off hands but it doesn't significantly change the proportions and you beat about 2/3rds of his value range going into the flop.

but he's much more likely to raise sets, two pair and to a lesser extent flush draws than he is top pair on the flop. so when he doesn't raise the Txs are looking way more likely. Hard to say by how much. But suppose sets, two pair and flush draws raise half the time - top pair never. That implies the proportions now swing closer towards you beating about 75% of his value range.


This is the part where the assumptions swing it from a call to a raise. Because if you're beating > 80% of his value range shoving is definitely optimal (and if you're not shoving for value it implies you should be shoving as a bluff with anything less than Tx). If you're beating < 70% of his value range though then it's not. It doesn't seem like a lot but if we were to flesh out the optimal call/bluff frequencies this would make a big difference.

Not sure it's so simple. I doubt xrai is much higher EV than xc. The question is really xc or small xr imo.

Given average V would have some Kx vbets otr, it seems unlikely K9s becomes a xr bluff? Can xc it and bluff a 9x.

Don't read these other comments ITT LOL. K10, 109s or 99 is most likely hand ranges he could call your 3B with. Considering how early it is, I'd take the safe play and just call the river. But he could be blocker/value betting river with a 10X hand. If you re raised the river and he shoved, you'd be in a really tough spot and probably have the worst hand almost everytime in this spot, indicating you should fold. And if you did re raise, only a better hand would call you.

There is little chance I'm folding OTR, so I likely just call his blocker. Personally don't think the risk of being forced to fold out if V shoves is merited (by the potential extra chips) this early in a MTT.

People saying it's an obvious call should construct what his likely bet range is on the river.

So KTs T9s but not QTs JTs ATs T8s? these are all in the same ballpark, they all play the hand the same way, and they outnumber KTs+T9s about 3:1. And if you want to include offsuit combos the proportions are the same. you'd then have to include 22, but also a bunch of lower flush combos that otherwise wouldn't be counted. The proportions before any weighting are always going to look close to around 2:1.

But the assumption that he raises sets/2p/flush draws all half the time is probably not that accurate. On draw heavy boards people are more inclined to raise sets/2p and less inclined to raise flush draws since there're so many draws out there that you can't raise them all. That skews his hands on the river even more towards Tx or smaller flushes.

Your combo BS is irrelevant, using logic is better here.
BTW, seems like you didn't read what I wrote.

+1. We're so early in the tournament here and I don't think it's necessary to play for a big chunk of our stack with a hand that isn't nearly the nuts.

id just call river, unless i have a read that this guy would sigh-call with trips to a small check-raise for like 6800 or something, but if believe he is good enough to not call me with anything other the the second nut flush, then just calling

Interesting spot. I think you are very under reped on the river. You are missing to much value not to raise. Your hand looks more like AA - JJ than a flush.

I think you should have barreled the turn and the river. But as played I would probably min-raise.

I mean if we want to be even remotely balanced we have to check this hand since so many of our hands like JJ-AA which make up a large porition of our range want to check. The top card pairing and bringing in a flush is so bad for our range and good for Villian's that is pretty imperative to have some strong hands so Villian can't just blast off when we check turn.

Aside from his possible range..looking at your line (especially OTT) his play is pretty std to try take away the pot with worse hands. So, c/c OTR is probably the only option cause we'r not getting any value from worse hands.

First we have to consider our range here (not just V´s), so what bluffs to we have otr?
What´s our x/c range ott?
We can prob turn AcKx into a bluff, AcAx, and others pp´s that we 3bet pre w/ a club, KcQx etc. (even tho not sure we x/c call AcKx,KcQx ott and we should prob barell turn w/ those combos)
Vs ´´good but not great/splashy´´ players, i´ll prob just stick it a raise to like 7,5K. (i doubt is folding a flush or a Tx)

Villains range is something like this not considering blockers assuming 25% bluffs (which makes sense with sizing):

25% bluff
15% boat
15% flush (50% blocked by Ac5c)
45% trips or straight

10,5k in the pot and we have 17k behind. If our only reraise size would be all-in villain needs to call ~38% including plenty of trips (straights don't block our potential value range). That strategy would make nutflush borderline check-shove for value if we did't have any other sizings but more importantly all boats would be clear valueshoves and also villains bet-call range seems so unrealistic that bluffing very wide is tempting. If villain calls only with boats and nutflushes (kind of "standard" I quess, but I would think people would like to be even tighter) bluff reshove makes 3,8k chips.

Question is if Hero should instead reraise smaller with all hands or use mixed ranges. Reraise to 8k with bluff would be very tempting. Villain would have to call 56% of the time meaning almost 50% of the calls made by hands weaker than flush. Again villains optimal strategy seems very loose and more standard ranges would have Hero winning heaps with bluffs.

In both cases Ac5c is part of balanced value range and in the case of small reraise it seems even good considering that many regulars refuse to leak seriously when facing river decision and after the fact you get reraised on that river many players can figure out they can't fold most QJ or Tx and opt to play somewhere between optimal and "feelgood" ranges.

Just doesn't seem correct to have 2 raise sizes when the shove is only ~5x...so we want a small size to expand our value range with no bluffs?

Not sure i believe what villain said he folded but if he's gonna fold hands that are auto-calls then i guess (having a small c/r size) is "fine."

Also... given your imo reasonable range - if raising to 8k doesn't show a profit it implies he's folding the large majority of his Tx's and something close to 2/3rds of his overall range.

So if you bluff to 8k you win 10,500 2/3rds of the time or lose 8k 1/3rd of the time. That's roughly a 4,000 chip gain.

10x is just so much of his range. Either he calls optimally and raising with nut flush is profitable or he folds suboptimally and bluffing crushes him. Would be interesting to see how often people advocating for a call pull the trigger on the bluff raise.