Seminole Hardrock WPT Main Event, $3500. Insanely long alternate list, begin with 40k at 1k SB, 1,500 BB/A, level just moved to 1k SB and 2k BB/A.

Hero 29.5k, SB

Villain 34k, UTG

Villain opens 4k (45 year old, opened multiple hands over the course of my 45 mins at the table. Shut down after flop and did not c-bet too often, relatively tight post-flop). Folds to Hero in SB, options are shove 14.5BB or call, folding I do not think is an option but was concerned Villain was strong raising UTG and not shoving, however he did min raise multiple hands prior.

Hero calls. BB calls as well. 3 way to flop, pot is 14k. Flop is 578 rainbow. Hero checks, BB checks, Villain 5k. Hero?

Thoughts were hero can call, leaving himself with 20.5k, pot will be 24k. Can shove, which provides protection from any over card on turn, understanding better than 99 will not be folding though. Lastly, can fold.

Thoughts there for Hero?

Villian doesn't sound like a nit. Just shove pre

I'd have jammed preflop (nice tournament BTW, start a 3.5K with 25BB...)

Calling the flop looks bad. You don't have much in the way of implied odds, and Villain will mostly be strong to bet this flop multi way.

Jamming doesn't look great either. With little to no fold equity you just don't have the right odds when called. You need to have 40% equity on chip ev alone to make this profitable.

I guess this is a sigh fold. Kinda gross to hit one of the best flops in the deck and check fold to a 1/3 pot bet. Makes a good argument for just jamming preflop, especially given Villain's active image.

Wager all of the betting disks before the dealer puts out any community cards.

Shove pre, as played, check shove flop, but really shove pre.

Sometimes villain has overpair, it happens.

Please shove pre.

Also don’t play 3.5k’s if you play hands like manner you stated. Your chance of winning the tournament is going to be much smaller than most people playing. Letting bb peel here is just horrendous. Flatting 99 here, good luck playing the hand well on most flops against 2 villains.

This spot is my pre-flop albatross. I always shove here and I am always called by overpairs. Except one time deep in the WSOP senior event a guy raised UTG+2, I jammed with 13 BB's and 66, a guy 3-bet all in with 30 BB's and AJo and the original raiser open folded 77. Not that I won the hand or anything.

I was hoping there would be another way to do this. But I guess I am encouraged that my sample size is small and I will get calls from hands like AJ+ and hopefully folds from AT/KQ.

Don't play so nitty short stacked. Easy check/shove OTF as played. You even have 6 outs against an over pair or set. This is close to the best flop you could get without a 9 in it.

Everyone’s already said that we should be shoving and they are right lol

Turnout was wild for this thing. 2500 entries for a $3500. 1500 on Saturday. They didnt have enough tables with COVID protocols. I registered at 11:20am (started at 11) and was alternate 557 and didn't get seated until the end of 500/1k level. 40k starting stack. People who registered the night before still had to wait a few hours for a seat.


You could get a refund at any time between buying the ticket and getting seated but I drove 12hrs for this thing, I was firing my bullet.


As for the hand, easy shove preflop and easy shove on the flop.

Turnout must be COVID related -- Florida is open, most places are closed. I won a seat into this tourney in 2018 (when I still lived in South Florida) and we had half as many entries. And thre structure (at least when I played) was awesome, and worthy of a WPT main event -- so clearly it's the huge alternate list that's making H play so shallow on his first level. Was it around $1.2M or so up top? (Man I wish I was back there).

Yea $1.2m for 1st

I played it in 2019 and it had half the turnout as well.. People just really want to get out and play again.

I can say two things with basically 100% certainty:

1. IF 99 are a ship then almost surely that 99 are the absolute nadir of your shipping range;
2. It's not at all a trivial spot.

Even in an online event people are insanely and suboptimally tight with their opens here. Even if UTG in this case isnt really UTG, it's probably MP since these are not full-ring 9-man tables.

The pop may not--nay, likely does not--even have all KQo,AJo,A9s,77 here. Not even close--they shipping at least a modicum of these pre and folding another modicum. They likely have mere slivers or perhaps none at all of A5s,A4s. It's not even close to a trivial spot.

Flop, I mean folding is not unreasonable. At least considering it.

Think there will be humans who only have overpairs, 88, 77 here. But you need precisely that assumption to be true and I'd bet that the universe in which that assumption is true is the only universe where folding is max EV.

The key here is just being committal about what your risky assumption(s) is/are. I would not give a random 45yo (how you know his age is beyond me but w/e) credit for opening more than 10% of the time here and I'd play as though he's opening even tighter like closer to 7.5%. It's a flat pre and a fold flop if he really is that tight.

The resulting exploitation is a bunch of really stupid folds that are spewy and incredibly exploitable vs opener with an ounce of competence. Incompetent V's are erring on the side of being butthole-tight here. And I would default to an assumption of incompetence unless proven otherwise, even in a $3.5k, and especially in THIS event where a huge chunk of the field probably hasn't played a hand of poker in over a year.

OP says villain opened multiple hands in 45 minutes, whatever that means. With that information, you need to shove preflop and check/shove the great flop.

That means literally nothing--"LOL sample size" is not just a meme--and no you don't.

Human IP openers freak out on these low to mid connected textures

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...-fold-1787167/

It's exceedingly difficult for most people to find cbets here with a balanced range.

It's really not that great of a flop conditional on his finding a cbet. It titrates his range significantly towards overpairs+, someting preflop already did to a large degree.

The problem OTF is you have a straight draw. You have 1.8xpot left and you are 26% against AA, and maybe 25% against 77+. You could just call the flop, but you can't fold.

a. That sucks
b. 1.8x pot is significant--don't trivialize it; for example, you can easily string together triple barrels with SPR=1.8. Being "pot committed" has to be one of the most ******ed concepts promulgated over the years: it is simply just not a thing.
c. I promise you if he's only got overpairs and better then your gutshot doesn't mean anything and calling is losing chips. You certainly CAN fold; you can do whatever you want, GTO principles illuminate that there are few constraints and it all depends on your risky assumptions.

You read the OP and see a V who's opening wide; I severely disagree--I read the OP and see a V who, between a likely level change and losing some pots has over the course of 45mins slowly bled down from ~30bb to 17bb, has just opened form EP/MP off that 17bb stack (where most people open <10% of the time), and has now laid down a cbet (multiway, no less; and apparently his 1st cbet, too) on a flop texture that is notoriously misunderstood.

I think you're suboptimally trivializing basically everything about this spot.

You're not gonna realize anywhere close to 100% of your equity here when you flat.

Turn will peel a brick, he'll barrel--further filtering his range to combos that are smoking you, now having no more than half as much hot/cold equity as you did the previous street--If you're not entertaining the idea of folding flop, then in nodes where IP barrels bricks you're certainly gonna have to start folding turns.

Turn will peel overs that connect with his narrow bluffing range (if it even exists at all on this texture). You always stacking off on A,K,Q,J turns when IP barrels especially barrel all-in?

Good post, and point out how the UTG raise and c-bet 3-way on this flop imply an overpair.

If you think he has an overpair, it is sort of close whether you can call anyway and just try to hit OTT. Sometimes it will get checked through OTT and you see another card. Sometimes, the SB overcalls or checkraises. It might be interesting if you call, the SB checkraises and UTG folds.