hi,

please leave comments on following situation.

50 ppl tournament, 25 left
buyin €20, rather soft game.
blinds SB 0.8k BB 1.6k BB ante 1.6k

I was just moved to a new table.
HJ raises to 4.5k (54k effective). I played this player on an earlier table and he was rather tight.
I don't do live tells all too often, but the HJ gets upstraight and is oozing self confidence.

I have QsQh in the SB (95k). due to the live tell I decide to play slow and just call.
I believe reraising to 14k is just going to get me into difficult flop situations.
Nor does shoving feel right if a player shifts his attitude towards self confidence.
BB folds.

Flop 2c7c9c. I check, HJ bets 9k (85 % ish), I call.
I set his range as
- A or K high flushdraws
- overpairs
- made flushes
- sets
- A9, T8
- random hands continuation betting
HJ is just full of confidence, I do not like it one bit.

Turn 3s. Nothing really changed. I check, HJ bets 12k (40 % ish), I call.
I was a bit confused about this bet. Player can easily bet his stack of 40k into the 30k pot, or make it larger to scare the flushdraws, but decides to make it a lot smaller, inticing a call from the flushdraw?
I think it is more likely that the hand is either made, or doesn't mind the 4 to a flush coming in. These come to mind
- overpairs like KK AA with a club
- made flushes
All other hands are still possible, but the bet does depolarize his range a bit, as the weaker hands and flushdraws will probably not play like this, leaving only stronger hands.
- sets
- overpairs (AA KK, JJ seems a bit low to play this slow)
- A9? not so much, think this would shove?
Player is still oozing confidence.

River 5d. 4 to a flush does not come in. I check, HJ goes all in for 27.5k.
As the turn bet depolarized his range, I believe I am facing a value bet.
I under repped my hand severely. thinking my perceived range should be
- Flushdraws
- hands containing a 9
- 88, TT, possibly JJ? I would probably reraise the rest preflop, but I might be doing some funky stuff with AcAx?
- straight draws, baby flush, sets ... little less likely though.
Therefore he will verly likely target a hand like TT, 88 ... as the rest will not pay him off. So, I set his range on
- AA KK
- flushes
- sets
But very likely AA or KK as he was just oozing confidence throughout the hand.
My QQ is not winning any of those, so I muck the overpair.

Later he tells me he had A9, no clubs. I believe that it is a weird turn play and a thin river bet. But nevertheless I folded the winning hand.
It does make sense that he was a bit happy preflop and like the 9-high board.
Other players were very confused I folded the overpair.

I would very much appreciate any input on how I played this hand.

This is kinda hard to read and way too much information imo.

So this player seemed tight and you've only played with them today right? So you've prob not seen that much from them in reality. That being said you're 35 blinds effective with QQ in the SB. Your optic and goal should be to isolate and not let the blind come for free when you have a premium.

The flop is a jam since it's 9k into 16k~ and effective pot is like 40k. Your call makes it effectively a pot size left on the turn. You don't block their QsX combos that b/f too but get to realize their equity perfectly. I personally don't really flat the SB but I guess if I did we could use the combos which have a spade to flat instead since our set will be live.

So the turn 12k bet could be a spade draw in your opinion? interesting, I was kind of ruling that out.

I meant to put a c for club there and not spade, sorry. That was a typo.

o no, i was with you all the way. I just didn't feel like flush drawhands would be betting small on the turn.

I don't hate my fold on the river so far, and like you said, preflop aggression is in order 95 % of the time. I just got carried away by the tell. More often than not live tells are correct. I just didn't know how to adjust to it in this specific case. I believe I adjusted correctly, and just got stuck with the very bottom of his range. But I was very interested in other opinions to learn.

What I really learned is the person I indeed haven't played much liked A9o preflop more than expected

Yeah, it's possible they go bigger with a FD but it's like a 20 dollar live mtt, just that someone picking random sizes likely isn't thinking of that. The large flop size on a monotone board would indicate a poor player to me since they should be betting small in general.

Honestly I think live tells are great and all but I certainly wouldn't use them to not 3b a premium hand or something. Spots I'd want to use live tells would be in much more crucial spots like a big river bet perhaps. I admittedly don't play much live but I think sometimes people overvalue their live reads and also their ability to properly assess the tells.

Live tells should not be the reason to severely deviate your strategy. And I mean live only "soul read" type of tells, not normal player tendency tells like this guy is only 5 bet jamming with AA+ so I can snap fold QQ here.

Live reads can be used to sway close spot, but most punts are also based on an incorrect live read.

In this hand, a live read would maybe be a reason to just call with TT or AQ, the weaker part of your value 3 bet range. But this is still QQ for 34bb eff, we want to get it in.

Postflop, check/calling down is fine but you have to follow thru and call a blank river card.

Also as you see, players dont always have the best sense of when to be confident with their hand or not. This guy looked down at an ace and basically a paint card and thinks he has a really strong hand, when actually A9o is one of the HJ's weaker opens. Then he flop top pair top kicker and plays it like the nuts despite the 3 flush flop.