Sands PA 1/2 on a Sunday Afternoon

Villain: Early 20s Asian kid has been at the table since I sat down about 2 hours ago. It has been hard for me to get much of a good read on this player. He seems a little too lose pre flop and a little too tight post flop. I have seen him fold to a ton of C-bets. When he does call I see him reverting to what I would call ABC poker. He has about $225 and I cover

Hero is dealt red KK in late/middle position. 2 limps - I make it $20 to go for both value and to thin the field. Villain calls on the button, all other players fold.

Flop: 8J5 rainbow

I lead out for $20, Villain raises to $50 fairly quickly. Hero tanks for about 30 seconds then jams AI for about $155 on top. Thoughts?

Immediately following my action I was at the table thinking this was a horrible shove as I just folded out all worse hands and guaranteed a better hand could call me. Villain is in the tank and I really am just thinking what an awful shove. But what do you think?

Results:

I think the shove is perfectly fine. You betting half pot was going to look weak and like a probe/c-bet so a raise from a V is almost expected. Given how shallow you both are, its standard and i'd be happy to ship re-buy if needed. And also you arent getting called only by a hand that beats you, im sure AJ or even KJ is calling.

nice post good info,

against this villian i will c-bet more on flop for value and less with air so i would make it 31.(if i missed i would be 16-21) i would then be folding to a raise. when you shove you are never folding out hands you beat and getting folds by hands your getting value from.

I bet/f against this opponent but against 65%+ of the player field i shove

Is he really in the tank with a hand that beats yours?

This isn't very helpful but let's give it some thought. Villian could have called pre with a pocket pair - any set is calling and any pair under JJ is folding. AA and QQ probably 3-bet pre so chances are no PP that beats me in Villain's range.

Two pair hands: j8, 85, j5 - all VERY unlikely to have called me pre. MAYBE J8 could have hit 2 pair.

So you have a point BUT I did not have this info until after the shove so it really isnt helpful.

I already gave you my advice above and it was just a continuation question based on the next person that replied. The only question you really have to ask is can you/will you/should you give up the hand if V had been the one to go all in. If two more supposed blank cards come out are you going to continue to fire on the turn and river or are you going to check fold ott or otr? If the answer to all of these is no then youre better just shoving yourself. Youre not deep enough to worry. Even in a worse case scenario, you still have outs.

With these stack sizes it's almost doesn't matter what V range is here. Your stack is going in either OTF or leading the Turn.

I agree against this player you need to 'charge' more with your c-bet. Make it some funky number like 31 or 34. If he plays back at you know he has something since he is ABC post-Flop, eh?

Can you fold out to a raise here? Probably not.

You are OOP, so you 'have' to lead the Turn and that will make you pot committed .. unless you plan on folding to his shove on the Turn.

1) Shove is fine if you plan on leading the Turn anyway. It's a pot sized bet, no biggie. You will notice that if you make your c-bet larger then this shove is 'less' since his raise will probably be to 60 or 75.

2) Flat and lead Turn. Hard to believe he's not shoving most Turn cards if he plays ABC post-Flop. Not much gained here unless you spike a K.

3) Flat and fold to a shove. If your read is that good on him, then I guess this is an option if you miss your set on the Turn.

4) Fold Flop ... not really an option here unless you have extensive history with V. I have a few V I can do this to, but not more than 4 or 5!!

I think you are behind most often here, but he could be on AJ/QQ/9T and think you are c-betting AK here. Your image in his eyes is very important here as well. GL

If V has 88 for example, at our stack sizes are we ever folding the turn if it's a blank? No. We are getting our stacks in.

The only real question is if V ever makes this move with 9T or 67 which are the only draws out there. If you think he does some percent of the time, shoving is good.

If you think V only makes this move with AJ/KJ, QQ, 99-TT, two pair or better, then shoving is bad because we don't want to fold out AJ/KJ/QQ/TT/99 and nothing really changes if he has us beat.

I think shoving is proper here. After Villain's raise you have a pot sized bet left. Bet folding this flop seems pretty silly to me. He maybe has JJ/88 a small portion of the time - I really don't expect to see 55 a ton, although I guess certain villains are calling 10x with any pair (although obviously not this time). You see AJs-JTs/T9s/67s often here IMO.

The shove is for value.

If this were a more aggro villain I might advocate for flat and then call turn /call river or check/raise turn line, but based on your description of villain I don't think he barrels off with one pair enough to make this better than getting it in now. (I don't think you fold out AJ here by the way)

I would rather click it back to like $90 or $100, then shove turn. It drags along his Jx hands (which make up a big chunk of his range). Shoving for $205 total on the flop may get folds form a lot of the hands that you want value from.

You could make it $90 on the flop, then shove $115 on the turn. That is more likely to get action from the range that you want aciton from.

Ok thanks for the comments. Seems like most of you think the shove was ok, some tened to agree that a smaller raise and geting AI on the turn would be better. Either way it seems the shove was not as bad as I was thinking it was at the table.

Cant imagine this thread is going to stay popular much longer so here are the actual results.