These smaller pocketpairs often give me trouble(shortstacked it´s easier to just shove ém). Don´t really know if this is a call fold or shove preflop? And what about on the flop when he goes overbet all in, is this a call?

Pre is fine imo (flat his 3b) vs unknown. If we knew that he is a maniac and 3betting light, we could’ve 4bet shove. With no info, I like to call and play postflop in position.

On Flop when he open shove, fold is best (again with no info). He probably shoves all his pre range including his bluffs but against his bluffs here I’m thinking we’re flipping at best and against his value probably we’re behind.

Overall with no info I like your play


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These small 3 bets where V could shove are very often nutted - do you have any read? - if V is aggressive or spewy I would shove - if usually tight / competent I would fold and tell no-one . In a vacuum it's maybe a shove in a 1$ and a fold in a slightly higher buy in. ( and possibly a shove again in higher stakes)

As played though you have to call - it's about as good a flop as you could get without flopping a set. calling the 3b and folding now makes no sense.

As a side note, considering you’ve also said you are more comfortable shoving when you have fewer BBs, open shove directly here I think is profitable as we’re playing 20bb effective .. and you sorted out your problem


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No he was unknown. Thats was what i thought, that this flop is the better ones to call his shove, because i dont think he would just shove big pocketpairs here. But then again if he shoves AK there, maybe AK of spades, then were in a terrible shape. Now when i think about it, i still should of have called...

I still stand by what I’ve said and think is better.

Indeed it is the best flop you can get with 99 except sets and without flush draw. But, this does not mean we should call blind-less just because is the best flop we can ask for, we should also consider what our opponents does - so in this case folding is fine because it is very unlikely that we’re ahead.

I also like the call of 3bet va unknown with 99 here and folding as described above I think is a mistake. If we open/fold to 3bet from an unknown with 21bbs in these late positions with 99 then what do we do? We loose a lot of money on long term .. is best to call, play postflop and if we are to fold on the flop because he opens shove so be it, we make a note and if we see him next time taking same line we thing again before folding or flatting his 3bet. (Or shoving directly vs him if we believe he is exploiting us when with 20bbs)

We still remain with a good stack ti continue on our tourney rather then risking it just because the flop is the best we can get


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I fold pre without any read on V. Looking at his stack we risk suffering precisely what he did with a board that could be much worse than this one.

As played this is one of the best boards we could hope for. His range could be : AJs + TT+?

So :

We are ahead of AJ AQ AK
I don't think he is playing TT in that way
So we worry about KK-JJ

I could call here. Yeah he can show KK-JJ or other kind of crap (78) who knows? Without info on villain i am just guessing....

Vs. an unknown, I just get in pre for 21bb. I prefer 4b jamming bc we can still occasionally get folds from some of his bluffs that have decent equity like A5s, KJo, etc. You are also ahead of a lot of his 3b-call range.

As played, call the flop. Most of his nutted hands don't need to protect much on this board, so I don't think he would overbet jam with overpairs, Tx+. Seems more like he has a vulnerable hand like 22-88 or a desperado jam with AK, AQ, etc.

I fold pre. This is micro stakes and villain 3b for about 30% of his stack out of the BB against an MP open. AK/AQ hands would shove pre, and so would middle pairs. So his range is pretty much only big pairs there. Since you can't call and set-mine due to effective stack sizes I would just let him have it.

If villain shoves pre, I call.

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I tend to agree with this, but I still think he can have raise-folds here since he should be more polarized. He should def. have some semi-bluffs if we are opening a lot (which I do). Also, we still have good equity against his 4b call range, since he can still raise for value sometimes with AT+, KQ, 88/77, etc. I still see people do this sizing with AK/AQ, mid pairs, etc. on 21/22bb in micros. I think we would need some specific 3b stats/3b steal stats before we just assume he's nutted to TT+ and fold.

He should be more polarized but most $1 villains aren't thinking this way. I just think it is highly unlikely you'll see hands 99 does well against here.

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Against some players this is definitely true. I would just want that read first. People can still show up with raise-folds here IMO and might not realize jamming is a better play with a lot of their range, etc.

I work in the opposite way: I treat opponents as "typical" based on the player pool unless I have info that gives me reason to treat them otherwise. Play by the rule, not the exception.

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Def. understandable and I approach a lot of spots this way, too. I don't mind playing 99 this way, really. I tend to look at it like this - If they aren't good enough to balance in this spot, then they probably don't realize that they should be shoving a lot here at 21bb. I think a lot of micro, rec fish think jamming 21bb is too much, so they can still make smaller 3b's with most of their range. I def do see this spot a lot where players show up with hands I thought they would have jammed pre, so I don't want to make a habit out of raise-folding 99 here...esp. when I am usually running a pretty high VPIP/PFR/F3b in my games.

Different experience I guess. I find that unthinking players will usually opt for the easiest play and just shove hands to avoid further tough decisions. And they have no concept of balance, so when AA/KK comes along they think, "I better not shove and scare him away, I'll 3b and see if I can get more chips out of him."

I quoted this in a different thread a while back and I can't even remember who said it: "Don't think more than one level above your opponent." At the risk of opening up the exploitative vs balanced play argument again, my approach is to play based on how my opponents are actually playing, not how they should be playing.

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