$180 buy in tournament at Canterbury Park. $7K up top, ~150 runners, 50 left. Top 15 paid.

Blinds: 500/1K with 1K BB ante
Stack: 50K
Position: UTG+1
Hand: Ac6c

Hero opens to 2.1K (standard open at the table), folds to SB and BB who both call.

SB (30K) is tight 20/30-something player, played very few hands, although he'd been short most of the way and could've just been in shove-fold mode. Had recently doubled with AK, only other hands he'd shown down were premiums JJ+/AQ+.

BB (60K) is aggro older guy, did some really strange things like called a 15BB 3-bet shove with K5s with a player yet to act, also led twice with K4o into a four-way hand on a Kxxx rainbow board. Plays a ton of hands and can be sticky post-flop.

Hero's image is probably somewhat aggressive, although I hadn't shown down too many crazy hands.

Flop: (7.3K) As Tc 6s
SB checks, BB leads for 4K, Hero raises to 13K, SB folds, BB calls.

Turn: (33.3K) 5s
BB donk jams for roughly 35K effective.

First off, I get that Ac6c is marginal from EP at these stack depths. I generally start dropping hands like this from my EP open ranges at 50BB, but will sometimes play them based on table dynamics. I'm not all that interested in a deep discussion about EP open ranges here.

What I am interested in are two things:

1. On the flop, is raising A6 mandatory? It seemed like it in game as I obviously want to get value from flush draws and villain seemed like someone who would absolutely call with any A and maybe even some Tx here.

2. On the turn, even considering the image of the villain, is A6 a call there? Keep in mind what our flop raise range should likely be.

You shouldn't be in there preflop if this is a FR table.

Vs this specific player I like to just call the flop and keep his range as wide as possible going into turn play. Lets let this guy keep barreling and we can easily just call down 3 streets no matter the run out. This is a great hand to include in your call down range.. if he has a hand like QsJs,KsQs,9s7s,9s8s,8s7s he has decent equity vs us anyways

ok, give it to him, he deserved it.
Spades got there, you don`t have spades - you prolly shouldn`t go deeper than this in theory playing 180 liveament.
I won`t be folding sets.
I played with ranges a bit but hey I mean you`re in MTT with bunch of dolts and even w/ your reads its pointless to try to build some solid theory behind guy`s action.

Against flush heavy turn donk shove range of {flushes;some_2p} worst hand worth calling is AxTs.

Even if you`re keeping in mind what your flop range should likely be it doesn`t mean he thinks about it either.
It requires some technical capacity but you need even less capacity to understand you shouldn`t lead A-high boards defending bb.

I think its our arrogance which makes us think its much tougher situation for us than for him when flush gets there ott.
Guys who cold-call 15bb 3bet shove w K5s would have no fckn clue how your flop raise range distribution will look ott when the board changes. His context is "flush got there I`m folding, I`m not a fish".

edit - flop seems an easy raise w/ your reads.

Yup fold pre. There got that out of the way.

Dig flop but dig wowsoooted line as well. As long as you don't fold can't go bad. Not folding turn. Is it me or are the players at Canterbury exceptionally bad?

Generally agree with user12345 - I think this is generally a raise on the flop although calling versus better players is ok.

And this should generally be a fold to the jam on the turn, most of my flop-raise range is going to be sets and flushes so stuff like A6/AT are really at the bottom of my range. Maybe sometimes I have 98cc or 87cc but even then I think a strategy where we call with our sets and flushes and fold everything else is fine.

I'm sigh-calling turn. This guy sounds like the exact kind of guy that is basically never going to fold a pair of aces. So he is calling all Ax to your flop raise, and then this same type of guy will jam turn because OMG can't let the 4th spade peel off.

If you're like me, villain will show something like Ah4s and another spade rivers ha.

I think the problem is two-fold:

1. If always call with A6 here, I'm probably calling too much. I do need to fold sometimes, even against spewy players. If my flop raising range is A6/AT/AA/TT/66 and spade draws, then A6 and AT are now my worst hands on the turn. And since I think it's unlikely my opponent has AA/TT anyway, removal isn't that big of a deal. If my flop raising range had more hands like AK and AQ in it (which I'm not sure it should) then it's probably closer.

2. Because this guy is likely to defend the BB really wide, his range is going to have a ton of spade combos and he'd almost certainly lead the majority of them here. Even if I assume he sometimes checks his best flushes and will sometimes lead jam Ax with a spade or even nut flush draw hands, it's really hard to get my opponent to a range of hands where I can justify the call.

What was his bet sizing like with K4o? If it similar then lean towards calling.

I would mostly likely call the flop in position and let this guy just keep betting into us we dont want to scare him off. Also we dont want to bloat the pot when a scary card comes on the turn as in this case. At this stack depth dont think we need to raise the flop as we could still get the money in on the turn and river. By just calling the flop we can decide whether we want to play a large pot or keep it small so the decisions are alot easier for us.

Flop is too small for a $180 tourney. You could almost argue shoving is viable.

What shoving over the top of his 4k bet when our stack is 48k? Good way to get him to fold everything we beat except for flush draws where he has a lot of outs. Against a mediocre player like this guy personally I dont want to put myself in a spot like that.

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I see your arguments, and I don't think folding is bad here, but I think you are overthinking the play a bit against a player like this, where we are worried about constructing our range and being at the bottom of it. I think it is reasonable against guys like this to only be raising hands on the flop that we are comfortable getting in.

I also think guys like this donk out flush draws less often, but you played with this specific guy, so if you think he would donk out spades frequently, that impacts what we do of course.

I think its a fold. I reckon quite of number of players donk FD's here, especially someone like this.

I like the 3bet on the flop, maybe even a little larger. You're in front going into the turn so when the spade doesn't hit the turn you can shove and make him think about it.

Just for the record, I tank-called and the villain turned up 7s3s for the flush and we didn't improve.

Fits well his line. He has a small flush and he doesn't want to give you the opportunity to improve to a better flush or a FH and at the same time he wants you to call your best Aces and your sets...