$150 MTT

I´m on the FT bubble in a MTT that started out with around 30 players.

My stack 40 BB
Villain stack 55 BB

I´m in the bb with AQ and a player, one of the most active players at a fairly tight table in hi jack opens to 2,5X. I elect to three-bet to 6,5 bb.

Flop comes 558

I think this is a pretty good flop for my hand and I elect to bet 6bb in the pot of 14,5 BB. The villain calls fairly quickly making the pot 26,5 bb.

The turn is the 10, as this card should hit my opponents range more than me, and that I don´t want to big a build pot with my A high I decide to check.

Villain thinks for a little while and asks me how much I got left in a firm slightly unfriendly voice. I have 30 BB left and the pot is 26,5. Villain jams for a little over pot.

So what do you think I should do here? I don´t really understand what my opponent is repping here as quads, trips and boats I would assume would bet less, his other value hands like a low or medium pocket pair I would assume he would check behind. Therefore I think the hands that are most likely he would play this way is a 10 with clubs or just simply clubs. I didn´t really see why he would risk almost his entire stack with just a draw, especially as it looks kind of weird to shove there but as I checked and the pot is temting to steal he might just do that. Either way I´m in a tricky spot weither to hero call for my life here or just fold and look for a better spot. I decided to fold and wait for a better spot. What do you guys think?

Lean towards 3-bet pre bigger to 8.5-10BB, flatting sometimes is ok too.

I think I'd either bet smaller on this board (intending to bet my whole range) or just check with the intention of c-betting less often. Our opponent's pocket pairs are never folding to one bet and our opponent almost certainly has more 8x and 5x in his range than we do as we're less likely to 3-bet those pre and villain can certainly call as wide as 54s. I also think we have better hands in our range like club draws and backdoor spade draws that make better c-bets to go along with our overpairs.

So that makes our turn decision pretty easy - when we can't get his trash hands to fold and he rips turn, we have to fold. I know it sucks and his range will have a lot of club draws and 76s, but honestly, it'll also have a lot of JJ, Tx, 5x, and probably even some second pair hands like 99 or 8x that just decided to go with it. It is good that we don't have a club, but I just think we have better hands to call with in a $150 MTT than this one and if I'm making one exploit in a lower stakes tournament it's overfolding in these spots.

Larger 3b pre

As played fold turn

He gets to the turn with a lot of air which makes this a tricky spot.

But you did it to yourself. 3bet bigger and let him fold hands other than his goofiest off-suit opens.

With 40BB's effective stack size, 3-bet raising from BB means that 2 normal sized bets post flop will always be pot committing and the 2nd should generally be all-in.

So with that in mind I would offer two different approaches.

The first is to just call OOP in the BB. Because your AQ will be somewhat hidden when an A flops you will generally get to call a flop c-bet way ahead. Similarly with a Q. Then after the turn checks through you may get a call on the river if villain has a pair. Alternatively on a low flop that should hit your range harder than villain's you can either check/call flop and see what happens on the turn or you can lead out flop (which I do less frequently expecting a c-bet mostly).

The second would be to raise about 3.5x to compensate for being OOP post flop. You should get more folds pre-flop. And a c-bet on the flop (at the same size or slightly bigger) should take it down a large % of the time as you can expect villain to miss a lot.

Mostly this except make sure there are no ICM variables. I'm guessing the FT bubble is $$$-less as only the top 3-4 generally pay here. If we are actually closer to the $$$, I'd lean towards stack preservation by calling OOP and c/decide most flops. Also, what is an average stack here?