Hello all,

I have a final table ICM spot against a fun-player/button-clicker chip leader that put me all-in for 70% chips in play with multiple super shorties yet to be blinded out. Also has bounties on the line and game-changing implications on my finishing placement!

FULL HAND:

https://play.globalpoker.com/hand/62...31cd000150c645

Global Poker $4k GTD 9-max Bounty [Super Deep] Final Table

Blinds 5,000/10,000 [1,000]

Hero (UTG): 47 BB [$70 Bounty]
V (CO): 83 BB [$251 Bounty]
Shorty (D): 6 BB
SB: 18 BB
Super Shorty (BB): 4.5 BB [ $10 Bounty]

Payout Structure: 1st and 2nd have the same payout, plus the final bounty



Context: The Villian chip-leader has VPIP 90% of hands, seen limping UTG with 73o and showing down many suited hands like K2s, Q5s. He seems to be mostly button clicking, limping 1BB or Raising 2BB in 90% of hands. Very straight forward besides the wide range, little bluffing, very little pressure as a big stack just playing every hand.

SB posts .5 BB, BB posts 1 BB

Pre Flop:

Hero opens JJ to 3 BB, V min raises to 5 BB

Folds around. Super Shorty in BB calls all-in [$10 Bounty]. Hero completes.

Flop (Pot: 15 BB) [Hero eff: 42 BB] - 2KJ

Hero checks. V bets 8 BB. Hero calls.

Turn (Pot: 31 BB) [Hero eff: 34 BB] - 6

Hero checks. V bets 31 BB. Hero folds.

Cards are turned up.

Villain shows J2
Super Shorty shows Ace high

Villain scoops pot and bounty.


Notes:

My initial reasoning to fold turn was due to being solidly in 2nd place. The last pay jump to reach was 2nd place, so being over 2x the stack of 3rd I played it safe and let go of a monster. I saw losing here to flushes as an ICM punt and thought he could have almost every diamond suited combo in his range. I did not want to get 5th or 4th when I believed I could get to heads-up by folding here and beat the chip-leader with his relatively simple strategy.

I was very cautious of ICM suicide that I failed to factor in the value of winning the 90BB in the middle and the small bounty. If I win the hand I have 3x chip lead on 2nd. I also incorrectly perceived Villain's min 3-bet as strength, thinking it tightens his range, when in reality he just wanted to cover the BB and should be treated like a call.

If I could play this hand again, I would check-jam flop over Villain's bet. Once the flush comes in, my evaluation became too close, and I potentially became too cautious.

Let me know what you guys think, thank you very much!

Yes you played this hand to passively on the early streets. If he is this kind of maniac player, why not 4-bet jam preflop, when he makes his silly undersized 3-bet? In that way you isolate the all-in player and increase your chance of winning his bounty, and you also shut down this kind of action for future hands. You are extremely far ahead of a 3-betting range, that contain J2 offsuit, so there is no reason to be afraid and hold back. You will have fold equity, and if he calls if off badly and suck out on you, then so be it. More commonly you will take over the chiplead and be able to play much more freely after that. And yes as played also check-jam flop. Just check-calling with middle set is criminally passive, especially against a maniac. He will call with a lot of worse hands, and if he happen to have exactly KK or sucks out on you with a flushdraw or whatever, then again good for him. Yes it sucks to bust in 4. place with 2 much shorter stacks at the table, but you cant ONLY focus on surviving with a player like this to your direct left.

Preflop I think calling or jamming is fine against someone this crazy. I actually prefer calling - we should be able to navigate quite well post flop against someone 'straight forward' and this kind of player will be happy to call off preflop with hands like KQ which isn't particularly attractive for us (even getting called by A5s or something isn't amazing). If you think he will call like 65s and stuff jamming is probably superior.

Flop I think calling is far superior to jamming. He has likely cbet his whole range and you have most of it drawing dead with a stack to pot ratio of 1 on the turn. You have to let this guy punt off when your hand is this strong. It may feel more comfortable to jam the flop, but you're really not protecting against anything because he will never fold a flush draw and other than that your hand is very invulnerable. If he has a value hand like Kx AA he will stack off every turn so you're not missing anything there.

Turn is where you go wrong. You have become way too tunnel visioned on the flush, given the opponent's profile. You said 'he could have every diamond combo' - if you think his range is this wide then flushes will make up a tiny % of his range (in that case he could have every spade combo etc). You also have equity against a flush, and have many of his value hands drawing dead such as Kx or AA. ICM means you need additional equity to put your stack at risk, not that you never want to put your stack in, and here your hand is more than happily strong enough.

'I also incorrectly perceived Villain's min 3-bet as strength' - yes, far too assumptive against someone with 90% VPIP. It seems like overall your leak is to range extremely pessimistically. You are seeing all the potential nuts in the range, but not bluffs, value hands you beat, or randomness from a crazy player.

On second thoughts I can get on board with this, if we dont jam pre, which is still my preferred line out of position. But the plan then has to be to call all turns including those, that complete draws. As you say, a set has equity against a a flush, so its not like, OP would be drawing dead. There is also some ingruent thought proces here. "I perceived Villains min 3-bet as strenght" does not match "he could have every diamond combo". If he is not 3-betting weak suited hands preflop, then he cant suddenly have them on the turn, when a flush has become possible.

As a final comment my read on a min 3-bet from a maniac player is, that it is usually a play designed to take over control and freeze action. When OP just call, like he did, it allow the maniac to use his initiative and position to determine, how many chips goes into the pot, and to often bluff Hero out of the pot. And this is why, I prefer 4-betting strong hands like JJ. Not only is the 4-bet +EV in itself, but it also tends to shut down this kind of action. And yes sometimes the maniac will call with AK/AQ/KQ, and thats not ideal, but hands with two overcards to JJ is a small part of his range, when he play like this.

Ok I kind of missed this, when I first wrote your post, and I do think, this makes your preflop decision a lot better. If he is very straight forward and rarely bluff, it will be much easier for you to get to showdown even on a board with overcards, and if he does bet, and you fold, he has to show down against BB, so you will get to see, if you made a correct fold or not. And maybe there is also more merit to read his min 3-bet as strong, if he had mostly been passive preflop. Maybe he was intending to call or fold and simply misclicked. That happens in online poker.

But then fast forward to the turn you need to continue to go with that read. If his 3-betting range is strong, there are very few flushes, he can have, when Kd is on the board. Maybe we can give him AQ and AJ of it, but thats probably about it. And in that case a lot of his range will be hands like AA and AK, which might jam the turn, because they dont want to let yet another diamond roll off. And sure KK would also play that way, but thats only 5 combos, you lose to, and 18 combos you crush. So as SteelBreeze say, you just cant play preflop and flop like this and then bail out on the turn.

With ICM, if I think I'm going to fold to a diamond on the turn, I just jam the flop. Calling flop is fine too if you plan to get it in on any turn.

I don't mind the minimal-variance line against a guy this crazy and with the big ICM pressure. But "minimal variance" also means "jam it in with your nutted hands to shut down the possibly of drawouts," not "fold a set to any scare card vs. a villain playing 90% VPIP."

I think 4-bet jamming pre has some merits too, although I understand the riskiness of doing so with JJ considering a proper calling range has you in pretty poor shape.

Too late to edit, but also-- jamming flop, even if villain folds, gets it in with you picking up a nice side pot and isolating the bounty where villain is almost certainly drawing very thin.

And if you said he almost never bluffs, that honestly makes me more inclined to jam flop. By your assessment, he must have something pretty good to be betting the flop that big, and you don't want a scare card to put him off putting the money in in a spot you're far ahead.