In hindsight, I really wish I called this hand, rather than folded. Usually I would call a raise with 89s in the SB, if my stack was a little bit deeper. There are two reasons I folded here.

1) My stack depth was only 13BBs, so I wouldn't get good implied odds on hitting the flush, or have enough to pay for bets on multiple streets.

2) This was on the bubble, so even if I had a good drawing situation, the bigger stack BTN player, could apply pressure to force me out just based on that. It didn't seem like a great situation to have a drawing hand out of position.

So in the long run what is the best play here? I would have loved to hit that flush on the turn and have a nice addition to my short stack. So should I still call if this situation comes up again?



PokerStars - 600/1200 Ante 150 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 7 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

MP: 16.1 BB
CO: 41.57 BB
BTN: 26.52 BB
Hero (SB): 12.98 BB
BB: 23.59 BB
UTG: 19.06 BB
UTG+1: 30.75 BB

7 players post ante of 0.13 BB, Hero posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.37 BB) Hero has 8 9

fold, fold, fold, CO raises to 2 BB, fold, fold, BB calls 1 BB

Flop: (5.37 BB, 2 players) J T 2
BB checks, CO checks

Turn: (5.37 BB, 2 players) K
BB bets 2.5 BB, CO raises to 6.11 BB, fold

CO wins 10.37 BB

Easy fold. The outcome (that you made a flush) is not important, the expected outcome (average number of chips or $EV won across all subsequent branches of the game tree) is. Avoid outcome bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome_bias

Yeah, folding is a no-brainer with this stack size; your chips are valuable and you can't call them off speculating. Especially not on the bubble.

Consulting my preflop resources and what they do with 98s SB vs. button open, one says fold always at 15BB and another says call half the time and fold half the time at 15BB. I would've thought sometimes you jam here with fold equity and decent equity if called, but I guess not-- maybe the calling range is too wide and you shouldn't be trying to get into 40/60s on purpose. Interestingly, I see them both opting for a small fraction of calls against raises from closer to MP, I guess hoping BB comes along and you spike something in a pot that is significant to your stack. If I had to guess, it would be that if you flat from SB against button at this stack with hands like this, you open yourself up to getting squeezed a lot by BB, whereas a squeeze is less likely against a raising range from an earlier position.

In any case, you don't even have 15BB, so I don't think I would flat anything in this situation, just jam or fold. And in this hand, the bubble situation is a very strong reason to take the cautious line and fold.

Probably close, I think at something like 18-20BB we can probably justify a call even with ICM, but at 13BB our hand isn't quite good enough to jam and we pretty much stop calling out of the SB.

Im fine with fold. Think you can rip pre if you wanna take a high variance line. Think I like jam>fold>call.

I think calling is kinda bad bc stack depth isn’t great at 12-13b. At that stack we still have FE so jam isn’t bad. We prolly get hands better than ours to fold. Fold is much better than call. You open up bb to calling and 89hh isn’t so great 3 way unless we flop a ton of equity where even then we don’t have a ton of FE post.

Thanks for the input guys. Ya it reinforces that the fold is a good play there based on the stack depth and position. But also gives me something new to think about in that calling creates a squeeze opportunity for the BB, but also to consider 3bet jamming if the BTN is raising with a weak range and can't call a shove.

Problem with jamming 98 at this stack depth is that we just get called by the big stack so often that we don't fold out enough of the hands we're trying to fold, which are offsuit broadway-type hands and maybe some bad A, especially if the villain isn't really that ICM aware.

Aside from the standard ICM considerations we don't want to waste any chips in situations like this. No speculative calls, not even IP. And we don't want to put ourselves in difficult spots.

Most likely outcome here:

1. We completely miss the flop or just have a marginal draw. We check, btn bets, we fold, having wasted 10% of our stack.
2. Flop comes something like K84 rainbow. We check, btn bets 65% of pot. And BB might be behind. Now what?

Don't think shoving is a very good idea in this spot given our hand and The stack depths.

Calling is not an option for me here. Because BB can raise and also because it gives us less FE in the future if we have to fold on the flop.

This hand is often in my 3-betting range but < 25 bb's I typically remove it. However in this spot I might just jam. It depends entirely on CO's prior activity. If CO has been raising a lot (wide) I prefer a jam to a fold. I think CO will fold a bit and we should be about 40% when he does call (though an overpair knocks it down to 20%).

Results oriented about call.

Call would be just awful. You really shouldn't call from the SB short, particularly when the opener can apply pressure on the bubble. However, I would might shove against a big stack on the bubble. Depends on how active he has been. He may have a lot of junk that can't call. He could be opening 70-100% of hands. Also, depends on how valuable the min cash is and if it is the direct bubble, etc. Would tend more to shove with low 15xBB. He is getting about 1.55-1 here to call so he should usually call.