I don't think villain is great, but I've seen his name around before. He called my 4b preflop very quickly. The 3 bettor is an unknown/rando and insta folded.

Flop check seems standard, as played what's your plan here for turn/river?


Full Tilt Poker $1K Monday No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t10/t20 Blinds - 9 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

MP1: t3500 M = 116.67
MP2: t4960 M = 165.33
CO: t4970 M = 165.67
BTN: t4970 M = 165.67
SB: t6750 M = 225
BB: t5000 M = 166.67
UTG: t4820 M = 160.67
UTG+1: t5000 M = 166.67
Hero (UTG+2): t5030 M = 167.67

Pre Flop: (t30) Hero is UTG+2 with A A
2 folds, Hero raises to t70, 2 folds, CO raises to t240, 2 folds, BB calls t220, Hero requests TIME, Hero raises to t820, 1 fold, BB calls t580

Flop: (t1890) 9 Q 5 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: (t1890) J (2 players)
BB bets t1050, Hero ???

how is the flop check in any way standard?

This. Why the hell would you 4 bet pre then check this flop?

Perhaps it is not standard, but still. What range do we give the villain here? Is JJ-KK and maybe AK a fair range? If we bet are we getting it in to a c/r or shoving turn if he flats? Just seems like checking is the optimal play here but I'm interested in hearing reasons for cbetting.

I'd bet the flop and call the turn as played

reraise a little more preflop, and wtf why would you ever check this flop no no no no no no onn o nonononononononononoNONONO

Thirded

You have pocket aces in a fourbet pot LOL

Clayton: Although you seem like a nice guy from talking to you online and briefly in person, your comments always seem to lack a reason. So while I always appreciate and respect your opinion, I fail to see how "why would u ever check this flop no no no no" with no actual reason as to why, could provide any help here.

You have like 2 psb's left on the flop... Just bet and get it in

Get it in against what though? If I bet he just folds out the bottom parts of his range and gets it in with QQ/KK. Why would I not try to extract value from anything else I possibly can by checking?

As soon as you 4 bet pre you should try to get stacks in on a dry board like this one against a random. The bigger the pot pre, the less strong your hand needs to be to play for stacks postflop. The easiest way to get stacks in is by betting the flop. Checking the flop and raising a deuce turn looks like a more transparent AA than just c-betting. The villain has already shown willingness to call a 4 bet pre oop, so he could easily be willing to call a c-bet with much worse than AA.

CLIFF NOTES: When you 4 bet pre you can't turn down the aggression on this flop.

AA + 4bet pot + tournament = I dunno what else to say. I applaud the fact you are trying things out but when you say the flop check is "standard" when any means of practical NLHE theory dictates a flop bet I cant help but turn up my 2p2 troll ranking.

And before anyone says "prove it", I say hero doesn't know villain well enough to ever justify a check as being optimal. I won't go so far as to say this is a case where hero is looking in the mirror instead of looking at his opponent (assigning ranges more consistent with himself compared to tournament randos), but it sure looks like it.

Yeah, what everybody else said. Flop check seems pretty abusrd, he cold called a 3bet and snap cold called a 4bet, his range is going to be way wider than whatever you're giving him and even if it's not you still have aces with 2psb left.

It really seems like you're thinking too hard about what his range is, what you can get value from when all you should be thinking about is how quickly you can get your chips into the pot. It's a tourney bro, dumb it down.

i looked at this thread before anyone had responded, read the "flop check is std part" and thought i was officially out of touch with tournaments.

Anyway i'm with everyone else on this

Yeah man u gotta bet the flop... as played call the turn and re-eval river...

I mean, if villain is bad and his range is wide enough to include Qx hands seems like a simple flop bet.

If villain is "good" and his range is tight and includes QQ KK and AA as the only hands to continue on this flop seems like a simple flop bet given the much higher likelihood of KK.

Whats the debate?

Really? WTF do you think his range is?

He isn't a tourney reg but hes a SNG reg.

Your pre flop 4 bet sizing is worth a thread by itself and it goes against your idea of extracting max. value, but somehow you got lucky and it worked...

And now that you have your dreamed scenario you check behind? A dry flop vs someone you don't know well enough to assume he is folding to your c/bet?

This is such a simple hand that I am surprised with all the drama. You over bet preflop, get called, build a nice pot, and now that you have the chance to play for stacks you decide to level yourself? So far this hand was played as if this was the Daily Dollar, don't turn it into a level 25 thinking when there is no need to.

Bet big, fast, and pray for a shove, ez game.

I kind of get why you feel like you should be checking here since if his range is JJ+/AK, you're only getting value from QQ/KK, and QQ is already ahead, so you're trying to get more value from stuff you beat.

One thought on that range, is that I don't think that it will be evenly distributed across all of the hands in that range, like SCT basically said. KK should be the hand that shows up most often, or at least more often than QQ (even more so now that a Q is on board). So, vs. the range that you should be getting value from, you're probably getting value more often than not due to the fact that he should show up with a hand you beat, more often than not.

I'm sure if he's bad enough to show up with JJ in this spot, he will be bad enough to call a flop bet also. I think rather than checking, under-betting a bit like 800 or something and hoping he interprets it as weakness and tools out a bit could be decent. If he's not ahead, he has few outs, and it's not like we should have a difficult time getting the money in on any street anyways.

Right or wrong, many players are going to 4bet KK here rather than cold-calling a 3bet out of the blinds. So I think QQ is as likely or more likely than KK after the flop comes out (meaning I think it's twice or more as likely before the flop comes out). Seriously, isn't it pretty much always QQ when someone in the blinds coldcalls a 3bet?

Also, in the nitfests that are online 1K's, many players in OP's spot have a preflop range of AA exactly. So in addition to discounting KK somewhat due to pre, we have to factor in that Villain is going to assign a very high probability of OP having AA and isn't stacking off with KK here (I'm not saying KK is c/f'ing the flop, but I think getting more chips after the flop out of KK is going to be difficult).

Cliff's Notes: Check the flop.

As played, call the turn but you are behind a lot, since JJ is also a fairly common holding for someone coldcalling a 3bet of an UTG raise out of the blinds.

not many will agree with me but I dont think folding the turn is totally out of the question.

I kind of agree with Todd, as the flop is dealt I'd be saying to myself "Come on, no queen no queen no queen."

Why reraise more? It seems like a spot to reraise less and we can still get stacks in by river with 3bets on a smaller raise? As it is it is 40BB+ to go. I guess we can hope to rep AK with a big overbet? Everyone keeps talking about bet/get it in on flop - are tournaments really only being played on one street this deep? I can't think of a single hand that would call preflop then get it in on this flop that we don't beat?

I think if we check the flop, we in fact SHOULD be folding on this specific turn.