After an awesome May, I'm on a 12 buy-in downswing in June, which has led me to second guess everything I do. I understand that this is almost certainly regular variance, and I'm probably a perfectly mediocre tournament player. Please yell at me if I need to stop posting.

$230 tournament. 25k starting. 200/300/300. Late registration is still open.

Table is 8-handed.

Hero (43k) on button has been fairly tight. Has 3-bet 3 or 4 times in about two hours but has not shown down any weak holdings. Won a big pot recently with a boat versus trips.

Villain (~32k) in BB. Friendly ~35ish dude with a thick Eastern European accent. He has been mixing it up with a lot of 3-bets.

The hand:
folded to hero on button
Hero opens A5 to 700
SB folds
BB 3-bets to 2100.
Hero calls. pot=4700

Flop=4510
Villain checks
Hero checks

Turn=A
Villain bets 2500
Hero raises to 9200
Villain calls. pot=23,100

River=J
Villain leads all-in for about 21k.
Hero??

I'm interested in any thoughts.
Is a 4-bet bluff better than the flat pre-flop?
I'm happy to hear about flop or turn. Turn raise feels pretty mandatory with two flush draws and all the possible broadway gutshots.
After raising turn to leave a pot size bet on the river, what do we do when the opponent jams into us? Of the obvious draws, only KQ or gets there, and I'd imagine this dude has a ton more peels than those on the turn. But how often does he just blast those into me on a dry-ish river?

You mean you've played 12 mtts without cashing? My god, the horror? I actually assumed you were talking about cash and posted in the wrong section.

You really need to read a thousand shawn deebs before you continue playing mtts. http://www.nsdpoker.com/2011/01/mtt-pros/ just to fully understand and embrace that you can be an mtt beast and still having losing years a good portion of the time.

I think the flat is reasonable pre. I am definitely mixing in some 4bets though since you have a hand that both blocks the top stuff a little and has some decent equity if he calls.

I also like 4b! here for hand control, image control and hoping that it gets to showdown (or can be shown) to help you better GII next time you have AA. I think a big factor in tournament play that isn't given enough attention is maximizing value when you get the big hands. Quite often, the chip leader is the beneficiary of one or two massive pots and getting people to call or jam to your 4! light is a high variance way to help put yourself in that position when the right hands come. I don't think there is proper math to account for this so it gets overlooked.

I'm not sure about checking back on the flop. I think here you'd call a bet, but I'm honestly unsure if I would want to give him a free card while likely ahead or try to improve for free if he has a PP. I'd lean towards checking because if he x/r you then you have to fold.

I don't like the raise on the turn. I think it would have made more sense to use this aggression on the flop. Here, he doesn't see A5 coming, but he definitely has an ace in your range. Him checking the low flop yet betting the A turn doesn't seem to me like this is how someone would play KK-JJ. It feels like a bluff, a flopped set or he paired his Ax. You calling already says "I have an A" so raising here, I'm just not sure here what calls your raise that you still beat.

I see you just calling any single pair Ax, you may even float a draw or PP or even something like JT here. I only see you raising here with draw or something very, very strong like 2pair or a set.

His lead on the turn is him telling you he beats your two pair. If he thinks you had a draw, he's going to let you bluff at it. If he just has top pair then he still has a lot of showdown equity as a bluff catcher but doesn't come close to beating the strength you repped on the turn.

I only see him doing that with a very strong hand. I could see him easily showing up with something like KQdd or AJdd infrequently and expect to see KQss and TT far more often.

Ideally, you flat the turn and spite call on the river. I don't think you can call here with a pot sized bet for what's essentially your tourney life unless you think he missed a flush draw or just so horrible at poker he'd play AK this way.

Do you mind telling us why you decided to raise the turn? What was the goal of raising there?

Edit: Just read again and saw you wanted to blast him off a draw. I don't like that mentality. On the turn you have 88% equity vs ATC. If we narrow range to just KQ of diamonds or spades then you still have 75% equity. That's a lot of equity. Yes by just calling you're giving him a 25% freeroll, but isn't it better to let him keep barreling when he misses and control the pot when he's beat? NOt sure how to phrase it properly but I don't think it's correct to play scared against a very unlikely draw.

Thanks for the thorough response rick.

I'm not trying to blast him off a draw per se; the raise was intended as both value and protection. I think I'm far enough up with 2-pairs that I can get value from a lot of the villain's continuing range, both combo draws and decent Ax that don't want to fold when there are two flush draws out there (as I could have a fair amount of semi-bluffs). In the OP, I was suggesting that I also get protection against crappy flush draws and gutshots that are taking a stab but won't put in any more money.

This might've been crappy logic, and I lose out on value by not just calling, but I wanted villain to call when I raised the turn.

Assuming the late registration also allows a reentry, I call every 35 year old Eastern European accented guy that regularly plays in my room. I kick myself in the nuts if i let him see a free card on the flop with kq soooted and the call off on river and lose.

I accidentally wrote turn once where I meant river and thanks for realizing what I meant.

I get what you mean by upping the stakes while you are likely ahead, but you gotta also factor in how that changes the dynamics of the play.

If you had A9 there do you still do that?

If he misses his draw, do you think he'll try to bluff at it on the river?

If he has AK here and would barrell off again on the river, does he still do that now? Does he even check call your bet on the river?

I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but if you're going to do a move like that, you should have jammed. Otherwise, all you really did is put in what he'd likely have put in himself anyway on the river. On the river, he could have easily bet again with AK and then called your jam, assuming you were bluffing a missed flush. But once you play back at him on the turn, he's likely check calling a value bet and check folding a jam.

I could be wrong, but I think your action narrows his range to mostly hands that beat you when he puts it in and basically removes as the free equity you'd get when he bluffs.

Either way, that's a sick spot. I don't know if I could fold it. Like the other guy said, that's a spot where I'm calling 100% if it's a rebuy - especially if it's an eastern european guy - more so because he's going to blast off much lighter if he can buy back in.

If it's a freezeout, I'm way too worried about TT or KQss because he's playing it exactly as if he has either hand. But then he's eastern European, he could have AK or 28

I think I would fold here. Your turn line is super strong and not sure what Villian would bluff here. Hmm pre. I might get some hate here but I’m not against folding pre here.

People 3 bet so tight live that I see nothing wrong taking a lower variance play and just folding a5s here. Meh even when we flop a single ace, we have to pot control bc Villians aren’t putting money in with worse hands really. As played I like flop check.

Haven’t cashed in 12 mtts live? This is normal if you run bad for a bit. I would
Just make sure you are playing fine and not getting it in way behind too many times. Mtts can be brutal. Just running bad in coin flip/ cooler situations can be really soul crushing so I wouldn’t worry too much. This might be wrong but if you study and are reading these forums, I would assume you are better than a majority of the live muppets playing $200 bi live mtts. Just my thought process. I feel in 200bi, like mayb 6-7 out of 10 don’t read forums or even really study the game at all.

I would 4b pre versus this morher****er. As played bet flop. Call turn. Calling river.

This is prime position to 4 bet shove with A5s.

As played I'd call the turn.

River is close but I'd call with the "lot of 3 bets" read.

NH, now fold river.

His line makes no sense for any hand except AJ and it won't take very much underbluffing from V to make river a hugely bad call.

KQ makes sense too.

Do you think he would go bonkers with AK? ... or less than 2p otr?

No reason not to cbet KQ.
Do you think KK-JJ play like this? I dont think he b/f turn but would he bluff donk KK,QQ otr in 230 liveament?

Stopped reading at 12 buy in downer. Lol. That made my day

There is no reason to check KQ on the flop but this is live poker where the belief that "I just have King-high" is enough to induce many people to check.

So I guess implicit in that assumption is my belief that he's gonna be way stronger here than he ought to be at equilibrium (he's gonna have more broadway combos).

Bluff donk KK, QQ? I don't think there's a chance he's doing that, in fact I was just thinking the other day how turning pairs into bluffs is pretty tough, I need to do it more, and I just can only imagine how suboptimally infrequently the population is doing it.

Like I don't think your typical live villain is even remotely thinking about bluffing KK, QQ here. If they have KK or QQ they're hoping OP bluffed the turn and whiffed on like spades or something and they just want OP to chicken out of bluffing river too.

I think AJ is his highest freq value hand, his range can also contain some freqs of AA,JJ. Im unsure about his bluff range and not thrilled about calling, but people here are mostly in call river camp which makes me wonder.

Spoilers if anyone's interested: I tanked, said I'm not good enough to fold, and then called.

Eggs and user12345 were entirely right. He had AJhh. I have no idea what if any bluffs he shows up with. I was hoping there would be some random broadway/flush draw 1-pair hands that he could turn into bluffs, but they might not exist and the call was bad.

I somehow missed most kk-jj cbet flop as well.
Makes it even closer to fold.

I need to know more about villain. Is he generally cbetting his 3 bets? Have you seen him check when he has missed? Have you seen him check and fold to a bet?

In general I am going to bet this flop in position a lot of the time. It looks like our raise is a PP if we bet. We could even have a set. Unless villain has shown a tendency to c/r OOP after 3-betting in which case I have no problem checking back.

Notice how much easier it is on the turn when the A comes, when villain leads out. We get to shove when we are ahead. It would be a mistake for villain to call and when he does and we get knocked out it will be good for your psyche. You got it in good and forced villain to err. That you got screwed is just how it goes. When you cash you will be on the winning side of these and you will be glad you made the pots bigger when you were ahead.