Hi guys,

this is a hand with ~20 Player left in a $215 buy-in 1000+ players field. I was doing well with 60bb and chip lead at my table.
I would appreciate your thoughts on this hand:
a) overplayed by calling the SB 3-bet? Is my perception of "deep" wrong?
b) should I have called the flop bet?

Not much info, villain is new player at the table. We had only played 13 hands.
My reasons for calling the preflop 3-bet:
1) we are relatively (!?) deep for such a tournament
2) I have position
3) I cant call just with my best hands. I feel (please correct me here!) that suited connectors with this relatively deep stacks are worth a call, as
it is more unlikely that they are dominated. Also: The odds were 1:2.27 {~ 30% equity needed}. I just ran it through an equity calculator and it
says that I would have 34% against a top 7% range {TT+,ATo+;ATs+}.I actually expect him to 3-bet wider.
Clear (!?) conclusion: call

My reason for folding at the flop:
1) chickened out
2) chickened out (my wounderful stack! 10% of it in the flop, just for a "speculative" play, see below)
What I am thinking now
1) Flop texture not the best for his range (unless of course he had a monster JJ+)
2) I got a little bit of the flop: gut-shot + back door flush
3) I have position! Maybe it is just a c-bet and I can float him?
4) Good price, 1:3.8 ~20%

I am torn between stack protection and chance of chip accumulation. Please advise


Here comes the hand:

PokerStars - 20000/40000 Ante 4000 NL - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

UTG+1: 23.29 BB (VPIP: 14.41, PFR: 10.62, 3Bet Preflop: 5.00, Hands: 229)
MP: 24.85 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 12)
MP+1: 19.84 BB (VPIP: 19.15, PFR: 16.48, 3Bet Preflop: 11.76, Hands: 96)
MP+2: 31.08 BB (VPIP: 25.97, PFR: 16.20, 3Bet Preflop: 2.67, Hands: 185)
Hero (CO): 59.92 BB
BTN: 45.82 BB (VPIP: 25.71, PFR: 22.86, 3Bet Preflop: 8.33, Hands: 37)
SB: 41.33 BB (VPIP: 15.38, PFR: 15.38, 3Bet Preflop: 16.67, Hands: 13)
BB: 8.7 BB (VPIP: 28.79, PFR: 20.42, 3Bet Preflop: 4.17, Hands: 199)
UTG: 7.16 BB (VPIP: 25.68, PFR: 18.31, 3Bet Preflop: 13.79, Hands: 74)

9 players post ante of 0.1 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.4 BB) Hero has 9 8

fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 2.5 BB, fold, SB raises to 9 BB, fold, Hero calls 6.5 BB

Flop: (19.9 BB, 2 players) J 2 7
SB bets 7 BB, fold

SB wins 19.9 BB

Preflop this is a muck after such a large 3 bet. You aren't deep enough to call this. If he raised to 6BB or 6.5BB, maybe I would, but his 3 bet is too large.

Now you get into spots like this flop, where you all options suck. If you float the flop hoping to hit a gutter, and the turn is a brick, are you just jamming any turn if you get to checked to?

To make a play like this, it helps if you think you understand his tendencies very well. Will he bet the flop and c/f most turns if he has nothing? Do you think there is anyway you get them off QQ?

+1. Too shallow to call this 3bet. You need something like 10:1 or 15:1 in impled odds to call suited connectors in this spot. Gotta treat these hands like small pairs looking to setmine.

OK, you say preflop fold. Why is that? I would argue that
a) I have the right odds for my equity
and because of
b) position
c) stack sizes
d) type of had (SC)

I will realize my equity quite well (of course not, if I chicken out and fold the flop to often . So not convinced yet. Or are there other considerations in play like ICM?


Concerning the turn: I do not need shove, I can bet/call the turn with up to ~5-10bb, if any of the following card comes, which will keep my equity alive (or give me a monster):
1) any club, any 8, any 9, any 10 this will happen about one third of the time.

Hopefully somebody will be able to give you a good technical answer on how optimal the flat is this shallow (you're not deep).

The way I see it, if you flat pre with this hand you have to take your bluff spots or at least be actively looking for spots. A relatively range neutral J-high flop, a gutshot and a bdfd. It's buckle up time I'm afraid. I like both raise/fold or call with the intention of bluffing if checked to and/or you hit an advantageous turn. Making straights is a bonus.

Btw 16% 3b after 13 hands. He's shaping up to be an out-of-line type. Folk will scream "sample size!" but I believe in pre-emptive action. We don't need to wait to get raped.

This, mostly.

The fact that he's 3bet 2/13 hands tells you at least he's very likely not a nit. Folding to the 3bet seems bad, if we're folding 98cc CO vs SB then we have a massive fold to 3 bet %.

Fold pre to the large 3 bet sizing. It’s super spewy to call and you are going to check fold/ put yourself into tough spots by flatting this. Only way I would say call is right is if you both were super deep (think like 100+ bbs deep) and villian is terrible aka will stack off incorrectly. Flop is a super easy fold here. Not sure why you are even pondering call. Even a bluff Cbet has you beat. Find better spots and just fold this pre.

Fold pre against large sizing IMO - he's only 40bbs eff

I could get behind 4b jamming if we think he's 3b too much but I'm not convinced he is.

Even though his 3b is 15% yes lol sample size. It's possible for people to get really good hands in a short period of time.

As played I think we have to peel one on or just stick it in on the flop. Solver is peeling and looks to call a lot on club turns and call always on 8/9 turns.

I think the best way to play back exploitatively wide with 98 IP is by calling not 4betting.

Group-thought has been in a clicking war pre the guy who is all-in first wins or that overflatting 3bets is a fish play and lets them over-realise.... but imagine a scenario where he 3bet with A8s, if he suspects you are 4betting light he can find reasons to call, if he suspects you have JJ-KK he can find reasons to call. A tighter player can always delude themselves into calling all ins pre, its easy, just click one button and never have less than ~30% equity.

On the other hand if we 2bet jam flop or turn on nice neutral J-high boards, Tighty is not only folding A8 after putting in more light cbet money, but also AK, AQ, AT. 100%. Hero calling for your stack with no pair is out of fashion. Some may even find folds with 2p then brag about it on internet forums.

Ok, the majority says pre flop fold putting one argument forward: large 3-bet size. Acknowledged! Although not really understood:What size would be ok to call and why?


I checked his data: I have in total 71 hands with him and he 3-bets preflop still around 17%. I think that most of the hands are hands on the finale table.

Thx, Interesting. This kinda confirms my after game analysis. I just dont see me folding here for another 7bb... I am wondering if this should be reconsidered taken into account that the final table is rather close. I assume the solver doesnt know anything about this...

We have 39% hot/cold equity against a really wide linear 3bet range with some tota air mixed in:

{66+,33,A2s+,KJs+,QJs,Q8s,T5s,94s,ATo+,A4o,KQo}=15 .84%


I don't think there's any agreed-upon heuristic about how to translate that into a strategy vs certain 3bet sizings, but surely our decision is mostly about equity realization and reverse implied odds.

Even on pretty good flops like [J73x] where V has a lot of whiffed bwys and we have a lot of made hands and our exact hand still has upwards of effectively 11 outs (pairs+gs+bdfd) and we're IP, yet we're still confused about what to do vs a standard cbet. So suffice to say we definitely DO NOT realize all our equity.

As for RIO, vs this type of 3bet range we’re up against essentially all better clubs, all overpairs, and even better 9x and 8x, so RIO are still very much a thing at this point.

With that in mind, you definitely want to be getting a good premium on your hot/cold equity here, so I don’t think you should continue vs more than 6bb. At that size you get 3:1 immediately and 13:1 implied.

It's not just his large 3b size but it's also that he's only 42bbs deep. If you were both 75+ I'd be more inclined to call the 3b.

With this stack size I would probably start folding > 7/7.5bbs 3b sizing

I think if we were 50+ BB effective calling the 3-bet being ok, but once we get down to this effective stack size the value of weaker suited connectors drops significantly.

As played, ugh, this is a gross spot. 98 isn't the best hand in that if we intend to float flop/bluff turn or raise flop, 99 and 88 are exactly the types of hands we're trying to fold out along with overcard combos. However, if we starting folding out our backdoor flush/straight draw hands to a single 35%-pot bet we're very likely overfolding, especially since we can't have the overpairs here very often. I think it's a hand we need to probably call flop/decide turn with, maybe planning to jam blank rivers if villain checks to us.

Seems to me 98cc in position should do an amazing job of realizing (or over-realizing) equity. Just because we happened to get one of our more awkward flops doesn't change that in principle.

Put it this way, if you think 98s in position can't realize equity in position, which hands do you think overrealize their equity?

Struggling to imagine a better flop where we don't flop a joint.

We have a rare air hand that has enough clean, nut equity to call the flop but not so much equity that we can't bet/fold turn small on a brick setting up a jam on tons of rivers including all diamonds (because who's cbetting flop, checking turn with diamonds unless he binks a pair). Diamonds should be added as actual outs.

I don't know what overrealize equity means. Does that mean we have a hand that sets up well to bluff future streets? "Overrealizing" equity sounds like the same thing as being too handsome, to rich, and too smart.

We have hole cards that really need to at least make it to the river to pay off for us. We're not gonna turn a profit w/ 9-high suitedd connectors unless we have a really high likelihood of maximizing all our pair and draw and bluff equity and just look at this hand in particular--unbelievably, OP actually folding on a really really good flop after V makes a totally standard cbet so most players are definitely NOT realizing all their equity, because if there's any inclination to fold here in this exact spot than imagine the 75% or so worse flops where we also face a cbet. We're talking about almost every single A-high, K-high, Q-high, J-high flop--the ones w/o GSs or FDs or anything else that helps us--instafolding to standard cbets. No good. If we use getting to river %-age proxy for equity realization, just trying to put some numbers to this problem, would you say that happens more or less than 50% taking into account all possible FTR permutations and all possible action sequences? I'd say no, it's less than 50%--that sucks when we're this shallow.

Hands that realize equity better than 98s? Pick any SC better than 9-high, for one.


And I didn't say 98s can't realize equity, I said not realize enough equity to justify continuing vs 3bet sizings greater than 6bb.

BTW as played we have to be crazy to fold flop here. His range is combinatorically mostly whiffed bwys and we have tons of Jx as well as other hands that want to go for value/protection OTT thus we can definitely take this one down with a bluff often, not to mention we have really good hot/cold equity.

I may be butchering the accepted terminology here, but by "Overrealize" I mean our hand has more opportunities to bluff/bet out equity when behind, or gets more value than our opponents' hand when ahead. By definition, if one hand is underrealizing equity in a spot, then another must be overrealizing. Or, put another way, our hand has higher EV than it would if it simply got all in with 39% equity vs the range previously mentioned.

As a simple example, let's say a nitty fish 5x's from UTG and it folds to us on the button with 44, 100 BBs effective. We almost certainly do not have direct pot odds to call, but we still probably should, because when we flop a set we have a great chance of stacking the fish's overpair and when we don't, we only lose 5 BBs.

We generally overrealize when we have suited cards, connected cards, position, and a skill advantage over our opponents. Here we win on the first 3, and I assume the fourth is a draw.

Also we don't have to worry about folding a flop this good, I'm pretty sure no one reasonable has suggested that so far.

Those who draw to the straight or the flush
travel home on the Greyhound bus.

But being the caller and not the reraiser, we also very rarely have a range advantage which should negate all those factors. Being suited and/or connected only matters insofar as you can maximize the likelihood you see all 5 cards, or picking up enough equity prior to the river to justify semibluffing. Otherwise, we just have 9-high and a range disadvantage.

Also what you call overrealize equity in that example sounds like much the same thing as IO/RIO, in which case we're at a DISADVANTAGE because V has all better clubs, all overpairs, and even many better 9x, even a rare better 8x, and that's not exactly the case for worse clubs or underpairs.

If anything, V has the equity realization advantage. Who's in better shape here: the guy who goes reraise-bet, or the guy who goes call-call? A psb in the tank going to the turn makes things even worse--V jams T a good chunk of the time, we can almost never call because we've been deprived of an entire street of opportunity to make a hand. Again, we have cards that desperately need to at least get to the river unless we wanna be sticking in entire stacks w/ total air on a regular basis.

I disagree with almost all of the previous post. I may type up a more lengthy response later if I get off work at a reasonable hour, but one thing that sticks out is, I don't see why the aggressor has IO? I thought most (maybe all?) of the advantage of being the aggressor is that your range is uncapped. You've already accounted for this in your 39% calculation-- villain can have AA/KK, we obviously can't.

Can someone explain why a premium pair would have IO vs 98cc OOP? Sure, it has a ton of equity, but does it outperform its equity vs hot-and-cold? Seems doubtful to me.

+ When we flop TP, being V's range is uncapped there's a not insignificant chance we still have only 5 outs + whatever backdoor equity may be out there. V has too few underpairs for this relationship to be in our favor.

When make a flush, there's a not insignificant chance V has us outflushed, especially on low club boards where Tc+ is unblocked. V doesn't have enough worse club combos for his relationship to be in our favor

Hell, even our straights are discounted bc on [TJQ] when the money goes in a significant chunk of time V has {AK} and we're boned. He has all {AK}, we should have almost none.

If one player is overrealizing, then the other is underrealizing, right? If one player is subject to IO, the other is being subject to RIO.

You don't agree that an aggressor can effectively shut us out of most of our equity when boards get wet by just jamming fat value hands for value and protection, or picking and choosing smaller sizings to extract max value on dry boards? If V is good, he can make it so that we never outdraw him when we have a draw (he just sizes up to deny us the price needed to draw, our entire stack is being leveraged in these cases), but we almost always pay him off when we have some "strong" made hand like a naked 8 or 9 (we can't just go folding those too often because then V can abuse us w/ his bwy combos). That's RIO (for us) and IO (for him). We don't flop or turn flushes or straights or trips or 2pr often enough IMO . That's why we the hero REALLY need the river AND/OR a range advantage--V can play his hand in such a way that we infrequently have either of those.

What is your threshold for calling vs folding pre here anyway? What is the max sizing you're continuing against?

Eh nevermind, I thought for another minute and realized why this is wrong.

I still contest the point that AA OOP has IO vs 98cc IP, and that the advantage of aggression makes up for the advantages we have in position/suited/connectedness.

I'm worried you might be seeing monsters under the bed with some of these examples, for example QJT. That's an amazing flop for us. For every time we get stacked by AK or K9s, we will have far more instances of getting it in way ahead vs his 1 pair/2 pair/sets.

I would probably defend 76s and fold 65s.

Max sizing I'd defend against is interesting. The weird part is that if he makes it too big, it's kind of a spazzy and weird play, and that will take me out of theoretical mode and make me start thinking how to play exploitatively against villain. I think anything above like 12 BBs is weird and I'll just give up. Something like 11 BBs probably puts 98s at the bottom of my calling range but it's still a call.

FWIW villains raise size is totally standard for good players in 2018 yeah? You have to make it at least that big to have any decent fold equity. Someone earlier said something like "if it's 6 or 6.5 BBs we can call", well yeah, if someone makes it 6.5 BBs OOP over my 2.5 BB open, I'll peel one with two cocktail napkins, unless I have a read that they're a nit or splitting sizing.

I think the problem isn't the size of the 3-bet but the size of the 3-bet in proportion to the effective stack size.

Villain's 3.5x 3-bet is fairly standard given he is in the SB and with an effective stack size of >75 BB's its an auto call for me. However given the remaining 32 BB effective stack size after the pre-flop call I just don't like it. There's not a lot of room to maneuver post flop. And this flop is a case in point as to why we need more chips. With larger implied odds the flop is an easy call especially considering we have position and can float and see what villain does on a neutral turn.