$360 multi-flight, multi-day tournament. 20K starting stacks.

Blinds: 250/500/50
Hand: AhJh
Position: UTG+3 (playing 10 handed)
Stack: 43K

UTG (22K) bets 1300
UTG+1, UTG+2 fold
Hero calls 1300
LJ, HJ, CO, BTN fold
SB (28K) calls 1300
BB folds

UTG was 20-something, seemed standard, straightforward and hadn't been out of line. SB was tricky older guy who liked to call a lot preflop and wasn't afraid to bluff.

Pot: 4900
Flop: Kh 9h 5c

UTG bets 3500
Hero ???

(Obviously most interested in flop decision but also interested to know if AJs is a mandatory call vs. UTG range and stack depth. Felt like it was near bottom of my range in-game.)

I think flatting pre is pretty standard. Yeah it’s near the bottom of our range. I’m probably folding AJo but probably also playing ATs

I think a flat on flop is pretty standard. Not sure what’s all that interesting about it.

Do we flat our whole range on the flop then? Do we ever have raises here and if so what are they?

Yeah I flat range on flop.

We could raise 99/55 and some bluffs but I’d rather flat and let Villain continue to barrel

Strategy advise: In a low/midstakes live MTT's do not worry about balancing the range so much. Do whatever maximizes your EV on this particular hand.

It is not a 5/10 NL cash game at a local casino, where you will see most of the same players over and over again and really need to be balanced.

Onto the hand: if we flat SPR is going to be less than 1.5 and we will have to fold to a turn bet/shove if we whiff. Let's put in a raise now and try to take it down right here or go on to the races. Our flat of an UTG raise seriously looks like AK/KQ and a lot of players will lay down hands that can not beat a K on that flop.

I didn't reallize how little we'd have behind after calling. Thought we were deeper for some reason. Yeah raise/gii seems better.

45k-1300-3500= 40.2k going ott on bb250/500
80biggs going ott seems far from "little" to me.
I would still preferer flatting vs raise/gii in that precise spot.
Dont get your reasoning leading you to rather raise/gii than flatting in that spot

You should consider effective stack rather than your stack

yes, you re right obvsly considering the eff stack over my own stack but the way the sentence was formulated put the emphasis on our stack more than on V stack
Eventhough V SPR isnt that big after his cb otf, cb'ing vs two oppos sitting on 40 ish bb on such a wet flop implies a connected hand most of the time (doubt V would frequently cb that flop when totally missed vs two oppos)
Therefore 22k-1.3k-3.5k=34.4bb left for V when we raise/gii vs the cb.
That wont be a mistake for sure but personnaly, in that precise spot, i d rather flat than raise/gii for 40 ish biggs eff.
If V was sitting on >30bb, i think that i would be more inclined to try and gii (hoping that we ve a bit more than 30% equity in worst case scenari)

I think it's just too hard to realize our equity when we flat. AALegend is right, we're not going to be able to continue on most turns.

For the record, I did raise to 10K. Partly because I felt AJhh was a good hand to balance out 99/55, partly because I felt if I flatted SB was going to flat a significant amount and I'd be in gross spots on brick turns at these stacks. If we get everything worse than Kx to fold that's a victory, and it's plausible some weak Kx would fold there.

Three guesses on what happened next.

He fixes the plumbing?

It's a pretty big flop bet. I mean, I think the play would be to flat the flop and it would be great if SB flats as well (SB flatting would probably discourage UTG from betting a lot of turns without AA/AK/KQ).

I think you also plan to flat the flop and shove most turns if UTG checks to you.

raising/gii is fine too (you could also try for a miniraise and see if he flats, then you can check back the turn unimproved, but your hand will be face up here, but at these limits people aren't that good at hand reading).

I'd just flat the flop here w the NFD vs this sizing...QJhh and JThh are better bruff-raises.

We dont need to fold the NFD ott either...UTG (esp if he's young) can still have QThh and 87hh. On a J turn for example we might have enuf equity* vs any reasonable bet-bet value range.

* gotta check/confirm this later...

Ran Sim using tight ranges for UTG (12%) and hero (7%)...can post ranges if anyone's interested.

Pio doesn't raise flop cbet at all (<1%)...prob b/c our ranges are almost identical, except we don't have the top portion (AK; JJ+.)

I gave UTG 2 sizings ott (with a 1.5 SPR) 45% and shove. 45% leaves exactly 1/2 pot back. Pio uses the shove ~65% freq and the 45% ~35% freq.

Vs the 45%, which is what I would expect to see live >>> shove, we continue on all turns, mixing shoving and calling. Tx is a pure shove and 9x; Jx; Qx and Ax are pure calls.

Vs the shove: we Call on 2x-5x, 9x ~45% of the time; Fold on 6x-8x,Tx and Qx; Call Jx, Kx and Ax.

Who knows how to adjust our range based on the ratio of bluffs/valuebets UTG might have but turn in never an auto-fold with the NFD and AK blocker.

Yeah i'd flat the the flop bet, don't forget about implied odds so we are realizing our equity and you might get both stacks.

Too early in the tournament to do half your stack on a semi bluff v UTG open.

This,

Thanks for your time. I d like to have a look at the ranges you ended up with.

ty gg

All makes sense.

Only question I have is did you give Villain option to check turn?

Some very good analysis here on both options. However, I didn't see any consideration of the third player - SB. As we DO NOT close out the action, I am more in favor of flatting the flop bet and seeing what happens wrt SB.

If SB gets froggy, then we might get to play for stacks 3 way where we cannot bust but can land a monster stack. At this stage of a live MTT, I believe this is the better accumulation plan.

I agree SB being in the hand makes me lean more towards flat

For the record, as noted I raised to 10K, SB did an annoyingly obvious speech and then shoved, UTG then tank called and I threw up in my mouth a little before calling.

SB had 55, UTG had AcKc. Board was no help.

Thanks for the insight, everyone.

^^^ wp, gg. Hopefully you ran it back up.

We still on the flop only put in 33% of the money and had 31% equity, so not that bad, and that ignores the money already in the pot preflop which would make it +cEV to call the shoves cold, much less after putting the 10k already.

Yes, this is a fist pump call. Have to have some equity, and vs 2 others, they often block redraws vs our flush, when we get there.

I actually got it back up to 30K but then ran AQ into KK at 600/1200 and that was it.