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Home Forum MTT Poker Strategy Late in Live tourney, hit top pair …

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Late in Live tourney, hit top pair from BB with 40BB

tazzjazz

Midstakes Master

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June 3, 2015 - 11:15 am

Hey, there were 15 players left in tourney with 160K up top. I started the hand with just over 2 million chips at 25,000/50,000 with a 5,000 ante. the villain has around 1.7 million. there are a little over 21 million chips in play, i am over the average. The villain is a very good, very aggressive younger asian kid. we have not been at the same table for very long. we have mixed it up in just one hand where i floated him in position with nothing and i folded to his second barrel.

villain raises from button to 125K, small blind folds, and i decide to defend with J10off. there is now 310K in the pot. the flop is J83 rainbow. i check and the villain bets 165K. i call. the pot is now 640K. the turn is a 2. i check and the villain checks behind. the river is an ace. i check and the villain bets 360k. i call. villain shows A6 off and drags a big pot (i lose about a third of my chips). spent a long time talking with Carlos about this hand. quickly, each street…

pre-flop: i think calling is pretty standard. folding is out of the question. the villain could be opening very wide so three betting is certainly an option but i thought calling was best.

flop: Carlos really likes the donk lead here, i prefer to either call or check raise. the question of the willingness to get almost all the chips in the middle with 40 bb with top pair was the center of our discussion. i felt if i check raised and the villain shoved i was likely beat (although i wasnt sure if he was the sort to shove his AK, Q9 suited, etc) but i might have to call it if i already had, after a check raise, a lot of my chips in the pot. Carlos's rational for the donk lead (hopefully he'll chime in on this discussion so i'm getting his arguments straight) was that generally villains here are very predictable: if they raise your donk bet they have nothing and you can re-raise them, but if they flat they have some sort of hand). personally i do raise donk betters when i am at the top of my range but more often i have nothing so i think Carlos is largely right here. but then, when we broke down the number of big blinds and i asked Carlos if he was going to 3 bet shove if the villain raised the donk bet he was unsure (“yeah, that would be a tough decision”). i like just calling but my instinct was that the villain might keep barreling away with nothing which means i would get more value from his bluffs but also might have to make a decision for my tourney life with just one pair. i still think flatting was best but, being results oriented, i hate that i let this hand get to the river.

turn: any thought in leading after flatting the flop? again, same decision…what do i do if he raises. i think i'm good 75%+ of the time but it's not a fist pump call if he shoves certainly

river: don't think i can really fold to this particular villain. the Ace is obviously a good bluffing card and I think he just happened to have it here. although i admit i called very quickly, didnt think too deeply about it, and i might be overestimating the amount of times the villain will be trying to buy the pot on the river in this situation on a pretty dry board where he might think(rightly) he's just not getting me off a pair. anyway, im curious if people think i played the hand okay and just got unlucky with A river or if my early street passivity cost me a big pot?

SonicNY

Grinding Micros

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June 3, 2015 - 11:28 am

I think I play that hand exactly as you did. Call preflop. You enjoy the flop and are happy to check call. Since he is aggressive he can be c-betting here with any two. Turn is a blank so you check again to see if he is going to give up or if he does have some sort of showdown value with a two barrel. He checks behind and now you know you’re ahead most of the time. The river is ugly but as a quality aggressive player he can try repping that ace to throw a passive player off a hand just like yours. I can’t fold to that bet most of the time because he is bluffing that quite often. As for the donk lead, I like to implement that in to my game against players who open a lot and cbet any two which would work here but I don’t do it every time. I switch it up between the two to prevent being predictable. Which in this case means I don’t think you can go wrong with either move and without game flow couldn’t say whether one is better than the other.

Foucault

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June 3, 2015 - 11:39 am

I like your line.

The donking strategy Carlos is advocating is a highly exploitive one and I don't think you should expect it to work against someone you describe as a very good player. You're also correct that you shouldn't be too excited about check-raising and getting it in.

There's no sense in donking turn, either, for the same reasons.

On the river you have to play a bluff-catching game. Villain is betting a little over half pot, so you should aim to call/raise with something like 60% of your range. You should have some Ax in your range, as well as some slowplayed monsters (I'd take this line with sets and rivered two pair) and some hands that check-raise bluff (T9 comes to mind). Still, I think you need to call some non-Aces. It doesn't matter terribly much which you choose, but I think you might as well call JT but not 43, just in case Villain turns a hand like 55 into a bluff.

The one misconception you may have is that you should call the river with all of your bluff-catchers. The fact that this is a good bluffing card for Villain doesn't imply that. In fact, it's possible that he expects you to see it as a good bluffing card and therefore will never bluff it. Against a very good opponent, better just to try to bluff-catch and check-raise in a balanced manner rather than guess whether he will bluff too much or not enough.

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