I stacked off so bad here. I was sitting at about 20th out of 100 players left and in the money. I think I was getting a bit wreckless and was tired at this point.

This hand is a blunder. I could have possibly gotten away preflop when I was 3bet from the SB, but I called in position. I then hit top pair on the flop. SB leads out small and I call. SB then bets bigger on the turn, and this is another opportunity to get away, but I am also sitting with top pair, to a low board in a 3bet pot.

The hand was just a huge blunder but how do I stop this from happening in the future? Is it the big turn bet from half of villain's stack that is the main red flag that lets me know that I need to get away? He is basically pot commiting himself with that bet. I wish I let the hand go at this point.

I essentially jeopardized more than 2/3 of my stack here. Maybe mindset that I need to have is that I am not the one pushing the action and that it is ok to fold the best hand if it isn't the best spot for me.

Villain did have a $50 bounty at the time as well, which he likely used as bait to draw me in.

Does anyone have any input/suggestions/thoughts I can take away from this situation?

Being 22/100 I had a chance to make a decent run, but I just busted in 90th place. I just want to know what I should be looking at/focusing on/thinking about, the next time this situation arises so this doesn't happen. It kind of stings right now, but I'll go to bed soon and move on from it.

PokerStars - 800/1600 Ante 240 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 81.14 BB
Hero (BTN): 62.3 BB
SB: 41.48 BB
BB: 35.27 BB
UTG: 33.64 BB
UTG+1: 68.06 BB
MP: 69.56 BB
MP+1: 39.72 BB

8 players post ante of 0.15 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.7 BB) Hero has T A

fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 2 BB, SB raises to 5.5 BB, fold, Hero calls 3.5 BB

Flop: (13.2 BB, 2 players) T 7 2
SB bets 4.22 BB, Hero calls 4.22 BB

Turn: (21.65 BB, 2 players) 9
SB bets 16.24 BB, Hero raises to 32.47 BB, SB calls 15.37 BB and is all-in

River: (84.85 BB, 2 players) 3

SB shows A A (One Pair, Aces)
(Pre 92%, Flop 91%, Turn 95%)
Hero shows T A (One Pair, Tens)
(Pre 8%, Flop 9%, Turn 5%)
SB wins 84.85 BB

Hmm. Tricky spot, especially with the bounty incentivizing you to stay in. Some broad advice I could give...

In general, if I'm not sure if I'm getting 3-bet light or not / not sure if my kicker will be good, I'd rather 4-bet the offsuit hands and flat the suited ones.

If I was really on top of my game, I'd be thinking why the preflop 3-bet OOP was so small and then the raiser bombs the turn when a card that puts a lot of draws out hits-- because now it seems like a really likely line for an overpair. (It could be an AcXc hand, but I think all of them would 3-bet larger preflop, except maybe top of range, but unpaired I'm not even sure then.)

I don't think any of your decisions are bad in a vacuum, but when I think about this hand in terms of how I might avoid this spot, those are the two things that come to mind. The fact that it's a PKO distorts things a bit too since the bounty is a big incentive for you to try to draw out even when you think you might be beaten.

Thanks for the feedback Nath. Ya the bounty distorted my thinking since it was one of the bigger amounts at the time. It was probably wishful thinking that I had a chance of being ahead.

Ya the smaller size 3bet drew me in and then the large turn bet were signalling a strong hand like an overpair.

I was thinking the biggest mistake made by me was to not fold on the turn. I had a discussion where the option of calling the turn and then folding on a river jam could be a line to take, but that line would probably would have made it diffucult for me to make the river fold. In that moment, I'm not sure I would have been good enough to fold, but maybe with more thought and insight, I could hopefully make those folds in the future.

It was a tilting hand to end my session. Left a bad taste in my mouth, even though the day was good on the whole.

Yeah I mean it's a really tough spot and I don't think anyone would blame you for playing the way you did, especially if your opponent is well-balanced. But knowing what villain had, the combination of the preflop small sizing from OOP and the turn sizing would be the best indicators he's really strong. I agree that folding the turn was the biggest decision point, but again, hard to do unless you really can piece those two pieces of information together and also be confident in what they mean.

The turn bet is basically a shove though given the SB 3 bet sizing Villain may not have a decent bet sizing strategy. If we were deep stacked then the sizing would be reasonable (and I have to admit there are times I bet like 67% pot on the turn when it is over 40% effective stack size because I have lost track of the pot size).

In general as was said if somebody in the SB or BB 3 bets less than 3x it is always either an inducement with a huge hand (like AA) or a strange bluff with like 54s (which happens very infrequently because they are OOP and increasing pot size with no FE). It is especially important to compare it to the sizing of other 3-bets they are making especially OOP. It is also possible that they are scared of playing a hand like AK OOP in a huge pot.

I have bounced from tournaments making decisions like this (including last years WSOP Main Event with AA) but typically there are draws out there that make bluffing more plausible.

Given the turn bet size indicating that its really a shove I would have to believe that Villain was bluffing at least 40% of the time and I just don't think that's the case here. There just aren't enough 3 bet type hands from the SB that missed that would commit here given there are very few draws out there. It would have to be hands like AK and AQs which we block. And villain would have to basically be bluffing all the time.

Ya in this case, from what I can recall from the villain's stats, there was nothing to indicate he was a maniac or super LAG.

After some discussion, it looks like the only hands I am hoping Villain to have here are KT, QT and JT, which he is unlikely to be 3 betting for that small size, and also my AT hand blocks those hands. So basically I am just hoping he is donking off with air (like AK and AQ, which we block) and hoping I can collect that bounty. It was basically just wishful thinking on my part, as opposed to being more realistic and analzying the spot properly.

My process during hands really needs to improve. I just need to take more time and be less distracted and muli-table less. During an online hand, you only have a limited amount of time to focus and think about a few key things, so I just need to be more efficient with that.

After the fact, I am now just looking at the SPRs and seeing if there is something there that I can use going forward to avoid this situation. Possibly the fact that we are 41BBs deep is an indicator that top pair 10s is not strong enough. Maybe I need to be at say 25 or 20 bigs or less to go with it.

The SPR is around 2.7 (35/13) which is not too high, but at the same time it is a 3bet pot by the villain out of the small blind, so some caution is needed as well. Maybe I should be targetting an SPR of less than 2 in this spot to commit? I'm not really sure...just brainstorming right now.

If someone is good with target SPRs or how big of a stack I would need to commit with one pair, please let me know.

For me alarm bells always go off when villain sizes smaller than population norm OOP (usually indicative of strength). I don’t think the call pre is terrible, but considering people are barely polar with this smaller 3b sizing OOP we can start to deviate and fold out some of these somewhat top end Ax hands that may be pure continues vs opp who’s 3b’ing polar (bigger i.e 4x).

As played, flop is standard - the turn is tricky for sure. When villain chucks in this many chips on a turn card that hits your range more than his, we can dismiss broadway type hands (these will often give up or size smaller to fold out random backdoor floats/broadway overs + small pairs that can’t continue) and start to pretty much narrow his range to over pairs. Shoving accomplishes nothing - you get worse to fold out and only get snapped by better (which was the case). If villains a spazzy whale id peel turn and call off on blank rivers but generally population rarely find bluffs in this spot especially off of this stack size.


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Good postflop advice has already been given, but I just want to add that I don't think it's at all reasonable to fold this pre (in general...the sizing tell in this specific spot might be an indication...but it also might mean your opponent just doesn't know how to play or is tired and thought he was IP). Good SBs will 3 bet KTs, QTs, JTs, T9s, maybe even A9s, suited ace-low, all hands we dominate. Folding this to a 3 bet, unless your opponent is a known rock, is just too exploitable for me. Not sure how I feel about 4 betting, but I don't think it's necessary given we are IP and have a hand with good playability. That being said I don't use solvers so if they recommend 4 betting this at some frequency, forget I said anything.

I understand that you're beating yourself up about this hand, and I totally get it, but calling the 3 bet shouldn't be included in that IMO.

Never fold pre. The turn shove/call is pretty close to neutral, so it's not a horribly -EV play. You probably have close to 40% equity vs his range, so it's narrow and when you factor in the bounty, probably a slightly +EV play.