i've been playing on and off for a few years NL5/10 but am currently grinding micro MTT's with a 30roi over 400 tourneys (tiny sample i know). my plan is to move up to 10ABI within a few months so want to make sure i'm making the correct plays. a few years back there was the one free icimizer every day but that doesn't appear to work now, and doesnt make sense at my current stakes to pay it. so here's one that has got me thinking..

this is a $400 bounty tourney and i've accumulated $6 in bounties, there's 13 players left and i'm in 7th nearing the final table. the big blind is all in pre and has a $1.50 bounty. i feel like my ICM game is quite good so feel strong at final tables. villain seems like a ok micro reg with about €20k to his name, hud stats are on the slightly aggressive side. the bounty on the bb's head seems to play quite a bit part in him opening 3.5x. bearing that in mind, what would you do here?

GG Poker - 3,000/6,000 Ante 750 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (CO): 15.49 BB
BTN: 45.57 BB (VPIP: 30.00, PFR: 13.48, 3Bet Preflop: 5.26, Hands: 91)
SB: 21.51 BB (VPIP: 24.29, PFR: 14.71, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 71)
BB: 0.11 BB (VPIP: 10.77, PFR: 4.84, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 66)
UTG: 26.82 BB (VPIP: 35.38, PFR: 28.57, 3Bet Preflop: 5.26, Hands: 66)
MP: 29.41 BB (VPIP: 22.45, PFR: 22.92, 3Bet Preflop: 9.52, Hands: 50)

5 players post ante of 0.13 BB, BB posts ante 0.11 BB and is all-in, SB posts SB 0.5 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.24 BB) Hero has Q A

fold, MP raises to 3.5 BB,


push or fold?

I would probably fold because he opened 3.5xBB with the BB allin, but it is close with this strong a hand.

I probably end up just shoving it between the strength of our hand and the increased likelihood the raiser is increasing open size to try to shut out other people from the bounty. It's a bit more high variance in the sense you get called more often for your bounty, but the flipside is that you'll get called more often with hands you dominate than you would in this spot in a standard tournament.

You haven't noticed any unusually large raises from this player before, I take it?

yeah this was the first time he'd opened 3.5x, had been opening standard 2.2x or whatever beforehand.

i was on a downswing that day and it felt like everything i was doing was a bit splashy and slightly on tilt, good to know it's not a big error. he snapped called me here and it just felt like in the one tourney i'd had some minor success in it would be have been good to fold, as i felt i had an edge on the field going into the FT. so would be interested to see what the GTO take is on this. i'd imagine icimizer is indifferent to the push or fold, maybe slightly +ev to shove

anyway this is how it played out:

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.24 BB) Hero has Q A

fold, MP raises to 3.5 BB, Hero raises to 15.36 BB and is all-in, fold, fold, MP calls 11.86 BB

Flop: (31.96 BB, 3 players) J 2 2

Turn: (31.96 BB, 3 players) 8

River: (31.96 BB, 3 players) 3

Hero shows Q A (One Pair, Twos)

Main Pot [0.67 BB]: (Pre 39%, Flop 29%, Turn 14%)
Side Pot#1 [31.29 BB]: (Pre 58%, Flop 29%, Turn 14%)

BB shows 5 T (One Pair, Twos)

Main Pot [0.67 BB]: (Pre 24%, Flop 1%, Turn 0%)

MP shows K J (Two Pair, Jacks and Twos)

Main Pot [0.67 BB]: (Pre 37%, Flop 70%, Turn 86%)
Side Pot#1 [31.29 BB]: (Pre 42%, Flop 71%, Turn 86%)

MP wins 31.96 BB

The proof is in the pudding. He called off with a hand that is worse than hands you dominate, KQ and AJ. Looking at results doesn’t always prove much, but here you can see this was clearly plus ev. GG.

it may be plus EV, but if we are 60/40 against these kinds of hands is it worth the push purely from an ICM point of view? also when we feel that we have a better grasp of final table dynamics than our opponents?

A lot of the time you're 70/30, though-- this time he just happened to have a Broadway hand you don't dominate.

And you have 15BB with 13 players left. You may not even get the opportunity to use or realize any edge you have in terms of final table dynamics if you don't get there or you're too short for it to matter once you do get there.

I think the jam is best because on a flop that you miss Villain has a lot of incentive to bluff all in and you would really have to fold. This way you have some fold equity here though because of the bounty and with your stack size its not clear how much you have (especially if he is calling with KJs) because its now two bounties to win...

I thought the 3.5x pre flop raise looked like JJ but really Villain just wanted to be HU vs BB.

I think so when you consider future play when bounties are involved. When you win this hand, not only does your equity in the prize pool increase, but your chance to pick up more bounties goes up quite a bit. I'm making some assumptions here about the likely chip distributions, but I think it's a fair assumption.

I would jam this as well it's unlikely we're in terrible shape only AK and QQ+ to be worried about, are we really that close enough to a big enough pay jump where it may make sense to fold this?

When would it make sense to fold AQ in a spot this? If it were the last 4?

It’s a jam all day.

You have 15BB, not 25 or 30. Ship to win some chips.