€5 MTT Final Table ITM

I don't mind defending though I doubt it's bad to fold either versus 3bb open.

Flop just x-c. Top pair, no kicker is not hand you want to stack off. Overall with this line you make it quite tough for villain to do much of mistake.

If we called flop and villain bet big on turn as well we would be in nasty spot but with fd would kind of have to call.

You are right I could avoid going broke on the hand even though I feel like villain played it worse. At the time it felt like such a steal as i've seen him do it multiple times before. I was hoping my X/R OTF would have make him fold his junk but in that case i probably should have just shoved which i considered too. I guess it depends on what the goal is. Playing safe to get as much value as possible or go for the win.

I have moved your hand to our tournament hand discussion board. This is a final table of a tournament and not a SNG.

Pre-flop I would fold most of the time. Especially against a 3x raise.

As played I don't know why you min raising the flop. If I would raise I would make it around 3x. Especially without position. Standard play would be a call with top pair weak kicker. Turn seems like a blank, but not sure which hands villain would shove what you beat here. After villains shove I would fold.

Cheers,
SDK1987

I thought it was tournament section my bad.

I should have folded but the blinds are high and cant let me run down too easily especially vs big stack bully.

Min raise was bad i realise now. Reason why i didnt bet more was because spr not much behind and also my check raise would look very strong anyway.

I called turn because i figured to have best hand some portion and if behind i still had decent amount of odds.

The complicated thing was we both where deep. It would never end up like this withbdifferent stack sizes. But maybe that was my thinking error.

Personally I’d fold pre to a 3bb open when your OOP. I think there are better spots.

As played, I agree with G completely. X/c flop, x/c turn if he shoves although you don’t love it

Thank you for your replies. I can see what you guys are saying. I don't want to lose big pots on such a junk hand, there are sure better ways to lose your stack on Still I feel like my check raise was pretty strong and I can see lots of players fold it there. We can agree that Villain made a decent steal attempt but calling my 3-bet is very loose, handing over a lot of his EV. But I guess that doesn't really matter when the board runs out like that.

Another reason not to bet too big is I can still get away from the hand in case a non diamond A, K, or Q comes OTT and he bets big. But then the X/C strategy would probably make more sense.

But the most important reason for playing the hand the way I did is I always learned it's always better to be the aggressor? Especially since we would call his bets anyway. This way we show strength and give him opportunity to fold which would be the right play for him OTF. By checking we basically inviting him to bet and we have to call. And after all we flop a premium hand heads up. So this is kinda confusing me.

On the other hand I totally agree with what you are saying and playing more passive would have kept the pot smaller allowing us not to go broke on this hand. If I had fewer chips however, something around 12-20 bb I would almost always fold pre, but remember the blinds and antes are eating you alive at that stage so occasionally I must defend BB wider and it would end in a shove OTF most likely when I do.

I don't want to sound ignorant but I believe we learn more from each other with different views then by just agreeing.

For me, it comes back to a simple context of why are we betting. Value, a bluff, to deny equity? If he’s never folding better, or calling with worse, is it still better to be the aggressor.

Surely inviting him to get when we have a bluff catching hand, or beating thin value bets is good, but we can’t beat any of his value read so us being the aggressor in this spot we’re only actually getting value from his bluff catching range. I’d rather take a passive line, play a smaller pot and allow him to make mistakes

Hard to judge if he's never folding better or calling worse but what I need to remember myself is not to abuse blind aggression especially in marginal spots. Pretty simple but easy to forget.

One note about villain call versus min x-r. It's not really even mistake from opponent if he assumes hitting K or 3 is good almost always and that hero will often stack off.

We can x-r flop with top pair sometimes but we would need better like KJ or AJ so that we beat most of Jx in villain range. Still I would use bigger sizing to not give as good pot odds.

Absolutely and normally I would raise larger (3-4x his raise) but I only had about 22 BB left after my min raise so betting larger would essentially mean an allin situation and I didn't want to do that. Maybe I should've either shove or call like all of you suggest. I start to understand better how that was probably my best option after all. But can we assume for a moment I had AJs instead, maybe a check/shove would be easier and more preferable as to calling then? I feel calling in that situation and let him draw for free is not good?

One last question I have been experimenting with ICM trainer and simplenash but they only suggest to push AJs 100% preflop. Being deep stacked that's not really helpful. That software is very limited but might be because I'm using the free version, I'm not sure? Can you suggest any affordable tools that are useful for learning more about these situations?

Effective stack depth is over 40bb so even versus 3bb open going for 3bet shove is not that great. Probably reasonable with some hands but I probably wouldnt have much if any shove range. So question is if AJs is strong enough to 3bet-call preflop? With ICM we cant really 3bet-call wide at all which could be reason to go for some 3bet shoves. But because of high ICM I would likely just call AJs as well and 3bet more polarized.

For preflop tool I would recommend HRC or ICMizer. They will have option to do non allin 3bets and what to do versus 4bet. If we want to have postflop analysis we would need to go for solvers.