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Home Forum MTT Poker Strategy Bottom pair in Position on the flop…

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Bottom pair in Position on the flop. Kinda lost on the turn here and river.

swhitelex

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October 9, 2018 - 3:48 pm

I have a bottom pair here on the flop. The big blind defends with only 11bb stack which puts him on some hands that I feel would be Ace High hands, A7+, could be QJ or Qx, Jx hands. Pocket pairs like -55. I elect to throw out a small bet on the flop with bottom pair and a backdoor flush and also representing the range of Jx, Qx. Then i face a re raise to my bet. this got a bit dicey and confusing at this point.

GAME #346149780 Texas Hold’em NL Tournament 2018-10-07 03:39:36/GMT
Table 1000GTD244984749, 244984749, 244984749
Seat 10: r1ooo 89,998 15BB
Seat 2: dcweld55 95,956 15.99 BB
Seat 3: UbuntuKid 47,640 7.94 BB
Seat 4: POORPLAY 26,050 4.34 BB
Seat 5: weee3eee DEALER 189,420 31.57 BB
Seat 6: silox299 176,237 29.37 BB
Seat 8: jade6 64,196 10.7 BB
Seat 9: chipmaker 176,313 29.30 BB
r1ooo: Post Ante $600.00
dcweld55: Post Ante $600.00
UbuntuKid: Post Ante $600.00
POORPLAY: Post Ante $600.00
weee3eee: Post Ante $600.00
silox299: Post Ante $600.00
jade6: Post Ante $600.00
chipmaker: Post Ante $600.00
silox299: Post SB $3,000.00
jade6: Post BB $6,000.00

HOLE CARDS

Dealt to weee3eee 5 6

chipmaker: Fold
r1ooo: Fold
dcweld55: Fold
UbuntuKid: Fold
POORPLAY: Fold
weee3eee: Raise (NF) $12,999.00
silox299: Fold
jade6: Call $6,999.00

FLOP:

6 club Q diamond J diamond

jade6: Check
weee3eee: Bet $19,532.00
jade6: Raise (NF) $39,064.00
weee3eee: Call $19,532.00

TURN:
A club
jade6: Bet $11,533.00
weee3eee: ????

DuckinDaDeck

Hunting Max EV

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October 10, 2018 - 1:03 am

I think you want to be really careful betting bottom pairs on any flop that has 2 cards Q – 8. Middling cards hit calling ranges very frequently, so you’re going to be running into more pairs and more draws (that aren’t folding at this stack depth) which have surprisingly good equity against bottom pair (gutshots have at least 37% equity if they have 2 overcards to your pair).

In general, you’re committing yourself to the pot any time you make a cbet at this stack depth. I would absolutely never fold any pair after cbetting here… never, ever, ever. You really don’t need much equity to be getting the right price after you’ve bet > 1/3rd of villains stack.

At 10bb effective it’s never going to be terrible to get it in with bottom pair, but it’s probably more profitable to get closer to showdown for free. It’s very tempting to protect your vulnerable pair when the pot is already so large (relative to effective stacks), but you really want the villain to fold a bit more often than they’re likely to on this board.

Foucault

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October 10, 2018 - 7:52 am

Very good response from DDD. I’ll just add that with such shallow stacks, I wouldn’t typically open this on the button, either. It can be good if you think the blinds will fold very often, but small cards don’t play well when you’re 11bb effective.

ScotFish

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October 10, 2018 - 3:31 pm

I just wanted to echo both Duck and Andrew here, as I think they make good points.

I recently did a bit of database analysis as I’ve got close to 500,000 hands saved now, and noticed that a big leak of mine was opening too weak holdings in to shove stacks in the blinds. As Andrew says, connectors like this, even suited, don’t play great against 10bb stacks because a lot of their equity is found in providing profitable bluffing spots when you flop a draw. I think my leak came from when I started playing poker, where raising any 2 cards from the button in to any stacks was profitable in the micros because people played so tight, but sadly advice is filtering through that this is not sustainable!

As played once you flop a pair you usually would be looking to go with it. While QJ are dangerous cards as they hit the BB range hard they can also put a lot of draws out there, where folding your equity is a big mistake for the small stack size. Consider 9T, KT, and any hands with 2 diamonds in as prime examples.

A final thing to consider when you think of folding flop/turn is that they could be pulling a weird stop and go? I’ve seen people use strange bet sizing like this when they’re looking to generate extra fold equity by taking a strange line. Equally some players will do this with AA and nothing else, so addicted are they to the trapping lifestyle.

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