Live mtt, table broke @16 left, now 15 left, 11 paid. New table, no reads. BB ante, 20min blinds, standard fairly quick live structure where most are starving for chips.

SB 18.5bb, standard old looking guy.
Us BB 12.2bb in stack after posting BB and BB ante.

SB limps, we K3o in BB and rip.

Is yes or no? Some thought process would help too.

In my mind seems fine but don't want to promote errors in my game, been away from tables for almost a year and it's my first events back. Thanks

I dunno how standard this is-- I'd rather have a higher kicker or a suited king-- but it pretty much entirely depends on whether or not you think SB is capable of trapping here.

Spot on, I think by taking the spot with no reads I was under estimating my opponent by default. Thanks for the input Nath ✌️

Lots of people trap in this spot. It's becoming more common. You have a playable hand IP, no need to go crazy here to grow your stack by less than 10%.

I don't know about growing your stack, but you have 12.2xBB and there is 2.5 BB in the pot. Your stack declines by 2xBB if you check and flop on the flop.

Without a read, I would shove. Your hand is too strong HU not to. He could shove, minraise or so, or fold. Unless his limping raise is trap heavy, it is a shove.

I think our image here matters. If you have been at showdown having raised or 3-bet with wide range mediocre hands then I would check back. Similarly if you have raised over limpers before with PP's < 99 and/or 2 broadways without an A or even SC's

But if we are considered solid raisers and somewhat tight I have no problem with the jam.

I also think that limpers range is somewhat polarized. He would be jamming with hands like 22-TT I think and probably A8+ and AXs and KQ/KJ. But limper could have hands like AJ+/ATs and JJ+.

Also if limper is young GTO/Solver then I will mostly always check back except if there is a tell or my image is strictly tight OMC.

These are good points and I think I've changed my opinion. Especially since the villain is said to be an "old looking guy", there's a lower chance that he's trappy, and even if he is, we have 40-60 against something like ATish. We're really only dead to a higher K.

SB isn't supposed to be limping very much if at all in the first place with how high the risk premium and risk advantage (advantage in risk premium) is. SB raise forces BB to fold a decent amount of hands while also forcing BB to give SBs value hands EV. Typically people limp too weak especially in live. You very likely can get away with shoving any2. If I get any sort of live tell that SB is weak I'm snap jamming with all my weak holdings. K3o/low Kx off are one of the first hands outside of offsuit Ax and low pairs. Definitely a good play.

I think I prefer to check here. We have 12bbs close to the bubble and can take better spots. If the guy is old and tight he may well check flop and we can choose to stab there if we want otherwise try to check down to K high

This is a really good spot because people overfold here massively. This is most likely the best natural spot you can get at 12b. You only get a few opportunities at a good upcoming spot assuming no one opens before on SB BU CO or HJ and they're hard to capitalize on as opposed to 20-25b+ stack other than SB.

Limping is a bit harder to play than shove because of postflop. Defending vs bets is the hard part. When checked to vs most opponents you can just bet unless you have a mediocre piece of the board. People will overfold and won't check raise you enough. Vs bet theres way too much to tackle via text in broad advice.

In general on short stack like 15-20b and under it's best most of the time to take any spot that is more than 0EV unless there is a very clear edge to exploit

Its slightly weird because due to the ICM pressure this is a spot where SB should not have limps. But if he does and you dont have some sort of additional info, you should play a range pretty similar to chip EV or slight ICM spot. Where the main hands we want to jam are smallest pairs, most of offsuit aces and K2o K3o K4o Q2o Q3o... types of hands.

This is 50 % field left ICM range (gotta use something with lower ICM pressure, otherwise SB has like 0,3 % limps)







Quite the opposite. Usually you want to lowest kicker, the deuce. You are not jamming for value, this is a jam with the purpose to force better kings to fold. Kicker won't be much relevant, but with a deuce we are not blocking his folds or missing the chance to dominate some weaker hands postflop. With some better kickers like K6 K7 its often better to check back because you dominate lot of worse sevens. With K2o you dominate almost nothing, so its great jam candidate.
Also small suited kings are usually a little bit too strong to jam here, just not neccessary. Although it is close and in some spots we can go for it. Typically K2s/K3s are great candidates for a 3b jam when SB openraises.

Interesting. That's good to know and makes sense. I was wondering how much the ICM of this particular point affects that, and I think that's why I suggested a bit of a stinger range. I understand the logic of the blocker at most phases, but I was thinking about how at this stage of the tournament with such ICM pressure you might have to tighten up from the bottom of your range in terms of what you're willing to jam vs. just resign yourself to whatever happens on the flop.

But you also do have the K blocker and ICM values those blockers to strong hands and calling hands, so it might not change anything.

Again, though, particularly in a live tournament where you really only have to observe the table you are at and the pace allows you to study every decision, I think it's opponent dependent to a great degree. If you've spent enough time with them hopefully you have an idea by now how trappy they are and thus how much risk there is in jamming.