Today I bust out on the first hand of an online MTT (with KK). I've been watching a lot of coaching / hand review videos and tried to put some of that into practice but might have messed up on this very unusual flop. I'd appreciate any feedback on my decisions and thought process.

(I'm new to the forum so apologies in advance if this is in the wrong place, not appropriate, badly presented etc.)

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£2.20 buy-in MTT online, 40 players. Starting stacks 100 BB. First hand, 9-handed. All-player ante (0.1 BB).

Hero (LJ): KhKs

UTG limps, Hero (LJ) raises 4 BB, HJ calls, BTN calls, SB raises 16 BB, BB folds, Hero calls, CO/BTN call.

Flop (66.9 BB, SPR 1.25): 8d 7d 4d
SB checks, Hero jams 83.9 BB, HJ calls 83.9 BB, others fold.

HJ shows 7h7s for a set (c. 88% equity against Hero post-flop) and wins when turn and river are blanks.

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This is the first hand of the tournament and I have no prior information on any opponent.

My thought process was something like this:

Pre-flop: Once SB 3-bets (pot now 30.9 BB), my rough options are call another 12 BB, min 4-bet or 4-bet all-in:

(i) If I min 4-bet, HJ and BTN may expect SB to call so may call with suited connectors or set-mines owing to pot odds, leading to a very bloated 3-way or 4-way pot, not great for KK. They may also assume a very tight 4-bet range (standard at low stakes) and decide to fold e.g. JJ or KJo which would be a disaster.

(ii) If I 4-bet all-in into three players I am more or less announcing that I have KK or AA, so this would allow my opponents to play perfectly and possibly fold everything but AA.

(iii) So I called, aiming to keep my opponents in with worse and dominated hands (especially AT-AK, KJ-KQ and strong pairs 88-QQ) and planning (with such a small SPR) to fold to aggression if an ace comes on the flop but commit otherwise.

The flop (despite no ace) is terrible for me, but when the SB checks I think he has probably missed (e.g. two broadway cards without a diamond). If I am facing a random diamond somewhere (with no other draw), I have around 57% equity against that player, and with SPR = 1.25 I probably have to call a shove. I think I have some fold equity against low diamonds (and low pairs and gutshots), so I shove myself but lose to HJ's flopped set.

In hindsight I think the shove was perhaps an error (even if planning to call a shove). If I check, I allow myself to get away when someone jams and another player calls. It may also check through (though unlikely) in which case I can bet a turn other than an ace or diamond.

Obviously losing to a set in such a small SPR pot is just unfortunate, even with three opponents. But on the flop there are several hands that already beat me (two pair, set, straight, flush, even straight flush!) and probably no-one is folding a flush draw (or straight flush draw) here with 5d or better, so in a four-way pot maybe I just have to give up and check-fold?

In summary:

1) Pre-flop, was I right to call the 3-bet or would a 4-bet (all-in?) have been better despite turning my hand "face up"?

2) Post-flop, should I have checked? Can I ever check-fold here to (say) a HJ bet and two folds?

Thanks in advance for any comments.

When you play like the way you did, you're just trying to get people who get too married to their 99-QQ to call off, and even some of those people might get scared away by that monotone flop texture. At micro-low stakes MTTs, if you 4b all-in preflop (or at least to a respectable size like 2.5x the 3bet when you're 100bb+ deep in the first few blind levels), people will call/rejam with all sorts of crap. I play $5-10s and have a good amount of hands in my database where people regularly stack off with absolutely dominated hands like AJ, AQ, TT, etc when I 4bet AA/KK. I think you're overestimating into how many people actually interpret your 4bet and how often you would run into AA. If you run KK into AA in a preflop shove war when you're well out of the money with no ICM considerations, then that's just variance and you load up another MTT.

So yeah in short, I hate the 3b call and I hate having to play an overpair multiway on a board where I do not have the nut advantage whatsoever.

if I was playing as SB, I would do precisely what he did and check back nearly my entire range. It's not necessarily indicative that he missed the flop at all. I would never bet that big in your shoes as played on a monotone board into two people and you shouldn't want to stack off with an overpair here with next to no redraws except the two kings in the deck, one of which may not even be a clean out. You're only ever getting looked up by worse as I've said.

You absolutely can and should check-fold this spot. You'd have the SB acting behind you when you check it to the HJ, and calling a HJ donk bet just leaves you in an absolutely awkward spot if SB decides to raise it. It sucks to have to c/f this, but you have to remind yourself that all you really have is a pair (a good overpair, but still just a pair) on a draw heavy board. if you folded, you'd still have 84BB and you only lost 16BB at one of the first few blind levels. that's plenty deep to fight with on another hand, why get it in such a bad spot?

4-bet pre so that the others behind you don't come along.

It's a $2.20; you don't need to be nearly that worried about being face-up, because a lot of players aren't thinking that deeply and still might decide their hand is good enough to play all-in. And so what if everyone folds; you just added 20% to your stack with 0 chance of getting outdrawn.

In general, don't shove flops on a hunch the other guy missed. But especially not on a hunch for only one of the players when there are three opponents in the hand.

Preflop
If it was just you and SB still in the hand, you could consider to slowplay KK and use your position to play postflop with him. Such a line is especially good against people, who are to aggressive for their own good postflop. But when two players in between have called your initial raise, this is a mandatory 4-bet. There is already nearly 30BB in the pot, so you are getting a great risk-reward ratio on jamming, and you dont need to be worried, that people will only call you with AA or KK. And even if SB does fold, thats fine, because you deny his equity and discourage future light 3-betting.

Flop
As played I would check this flop. Checking allow you more options, and with an SPR of just over 1, its easy to get the chips in on the turn and river, if you want to. Checking allow the players behind you a chance to bluff or value own themselfes with a worst hand, and if it checks through, your decision will become much either on the turn. If the turn is a non-diamond, your equity has gone up a lot, and you likely have the best hand, so you start to bet it for value and protection. If on the other hand the turn is a diamond, then you are almost certainly drawing dead to at least one player now, and you can just check-fold.