5.5$ MTT, 126 ITM, 126 left, first hand after the bubble. we are 7th in chips at the moment.


Winning Poker Network (Yatahay) - 750/1,500 NL - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

UTG+1: 6.59 BB (VPIP: 22.78, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 5.00, Hands: 159)
MP: 11.75 BB (VPIP: 18.52, PFR: 19.23, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 27)
MP+1: 19.56 BB (VPIP: 4.76, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 21)
MP+2: 46.94 BB (VPIP: 22.22, PFR: 22.22, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 9)
Hero (CO): 51.83 BB
BTN: 25.93 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 15)
SB: 30.51 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 5)
BB: 37.87 BB (VPIP: 38.60, PFR: 14.04, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 57)
UTG: 52.28 BB (VPIP: 38.46, PFR: 15.38, 3Bet Preflop: 9.09, Hands: 26)

9 players post ante of 0.1 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.4 BB) Hero has A Q

UTG calls 1 BB, fold, fold, fold, MP+2 raises to 2 BB, Hero calls 2 BB, fold, fold, fold, UTG calls 1 BB

Flop: (8.4 BB, 3 players) A 4 8
UTG checks, MP+2 checks, Hero bets 3.23 BB, UTG calls 3.23 BB, fold

Turn: (14.87 BB, 2 players) A
UTG bets 46.95 BB and is all-in, Hero?

Definitely 3b pre. AQo is not a hand you want to play multiway.

Strange line from villain. He has some aggression in his small sample of stats, so I doubt he's limping Ax utg. And the massive overbet shove would be idiotic with 44/88. Or a flush.

So why would he make that bet? Perhaps he has a hand he wants to protect and really doesn't want to see a river, but I can't figure out what hands would fit there. Or perhaps it's a semi-bluff trying to push you off a better hand (something like a small pair with a heart). Or maybe my assumptions are wrong and he has a monster and thinks he'll get full value from your hand.

Agree we shuould 3bet pre. At the moment I didnt noticed that utg limped, therefore against HJ opening range I will mix up flats and 3bets, this time I elected to flat. But definitely against UTG limp and HJ iso it's 3bet 100% of the time.

what would you do OTR with our specific hand? and how your calling range looks like on this spot?

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I’d prefer 3bet here but I prefer a mixed strategy against min-raise.
As for the hand, it’s a snap call. You see people do this with worse Ax so you can never fold here unless you got specific reads and even then I think this is just the top of your range and should never be folded.

I’m never folding a flush or better here. As for how many Ax you should call that always a tough question but I don’t think you go too wrong with AJ+. I might change this depending on a number of factors as I think it’s very important to consider villain when making a calling range.

Probably too many redraws and good blockers to fold

What's the question here and why is this tough? UTG can't have AA here and only has one combo of A4s/A8s and we block KQhh etc. I guess you could lose to 88/44 here but those are somewhat unlikely.

the made flush is there as well, but we have too many redraws to fold.

There aren't enough flush combos though and we still redraw.

It's a tough spot from icm point of view, we are risking our tournament life here. blocking KQs is irrelevant since he would raise it pre but he has almost all K2-KT flushes, and a lot of suited connectors and gappers flushes. 44 as well. 88 he would raise pre. he has some Ax as well, but it is less likely since we block some of them and another 2 are on the board .

we dont need to call here a lot becouse pot odds+icm. We have AA,44,88,A4s,A8s and flushes as obvious calls, but I guess having the Qh, and the equity we have make it leans towards call.

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Blocking most of his value range isn't irrelevant at all. He never has K2s-KTs to limp and 67s/9Ts/JTs are only 3 combos and that's if they even limp those. He also mega over jammed so we can discount even more of his nutted type hands. We don't have AA in our range since we would raise that pre over MP2 and yeah we have 44/88 and those are what 6 combos? Also again A4s/A8s can only have 4 total combos. I'm not worried about ICM at this point tbh. I'm still taking +cEV spots.

My bad, we have no AA here.
Giving villian 3 flush combos is ridiculous. He definitley has KT-K2 flushes as well as gappers ones.

No he doesn't, he limped utg. Even if you ignore the small sample of stats, you can't put many Kxs hands in his range at all. Or suited gappers.

technically AcKh is still there but 1 combo is not a likely range to fold against

Thanks for all comments, I called and he showed K 6

A really good 5/10 pro in a group chat once said this and it always stuck with me. "A lot of my opponents are passive fish so I spend a lot of time bluffing and b/f but once in a while I'm at the top of my range and lose and then I have to burn the casino down"

It shows the perils of small samples. Even though I knew rationally to take the stats with a grain of salt they did cause me to discount a utg limp with that kind of hand. It's almost better to exclude small samples altogether and treat players as unknowns so as to not inappropriately narrow ranges.

VPIP: 38.46 Have you seen his stats it's exactly what the stats indicate that he likes to see too many flops with bad hands and K6s fits perfectly into that. I mean your right we shouldn't read too much into low samples but his stats really does indicate he plays these hands.

Also it worth remembering that you can't really rely on guys like him playing a range. You often see these types of players make random 3bet calls or open hands from positions they have no business opening from just because they feel like it in this particular hand.

Even if he has these K6s hands then he'll show up with worse aces and esp AxXh that are worse and since we still have ok equity even when we're behind it makes it a call. Next time drill a full house on the river obvacado. But really tho his combo's of flushes aren't that many for UTG regardless even if has K6s.