Agree that pre/flop are super standard, hard to make a case for playing either differently.

I don’t like check-raising this turn. Despite picking up equity, villain’s bet-call range is crushing you, and you don’t really benefit from protection. You have a strong blocker to flush and straight draws, and a K is the only overcard that doesn’t improve your hand (although a J is not exactly pretty). The one possible benefit of check-raising against conservative villains is that you might get some Aces to fold but, without very specific history against villain, I think it is unwise to base a strategy around getting folds from top pair. I think this hand is an ideal candidate for a check-call.

Once villain checks back turn we can narrow their range significantly. I agree with Kardi that we can mostly rule out monster hands, as at ~2 SPR they will be highly motivated to build a pot, and won’t want to give free cards on such a dynamic board. 

Villain may occasionally check back turn with some two pair hands. A hand like Ax8s or 98 might fit into villain’s check-back strategy. If villain doesn’t expect to get stacks in against enough worse hands, I think it is sometimes wise to play two-pair a bit conservatively on boards that are this dynamic. Although betting to charge all of the straight draws and 1pair hands is standard, waiting to see the river in position before investing more chips seems reasonable (if likely a bit sub-optimal). Villains are more likely to take this approach if they over-value not busting (despite being the shortest stack).

Under different circumstances I would think that we can rule out most flush draws, but at this stack depth villain is fairly likely to check them, especially with this being the final table. Betting and facing a shove would be a disaster, and K flush draws have some showdown value when the river checks through.

After the river we are holding a somewhat weak bluff-catcher. Our J blocks the nuts, but we don’t expect that to check the turn, so the fact that it blocks a lot of villain’s busted draws is much more relevant. We do block AJ but a lot of players would be barreling that on the turn, so it is not a huge factor. Although a second A means villain is less likely to be holding one, I think a sizable portion of villains IP bet/checkback range is weak Ax that want to pot control and/or may be planning to check twice if given the opportunity.

For this price we only need to win 28.3% of the time to break even on a river call. However, due to the nature of tournaments, I think we should be looking for a decent edge before calling 1/4 of our stack, so without considering ICM I’d want my calls to win at least 33% of the time. With all stacks being relatively close in size, conserving chips is pretty important here, so I think we want to be winning about 40% of the time to call when considering the final table dynamics. Better players than me differ in how they approach river calls when expecting to win <50% of the time, and I really can’t say if my approach is very good. River calls is an area of my game that still needs a lot of work.

It is hard to give villain enough bluffs that we are winning 33% of the time, let alone 40%. That being said, I think we are very near the top of our check-call/check/check range, which begs the question: If we are folding JT here, what are we calling with? We can’t really have JJ-KK because we’d 3bet preflop. We could have some weak Ax but we likely bet those once turn checks through. I don’t expect us to check turn and river with many 2pair+ hands OOP on this texture (and most 2pairs just got counterfeited), so we really only have KT and QT to call with if we are folding JT. I think that we should at least consider value betting KT on the river, which further weakens our checking range. One possible approach is to call with our KT-JT that do not contain a spade, and fold the hands with a spade in them. 

If villain is thinking in terms of range advantage he may decide to bluff this river at a very high frequency, as you are pretty much capped at Tx once you check, and villain can have a lot of trips. However, I think that way of thinking is relatively rare at micros, and villain is likely bluffing less aggressively than someone with a more robust understanding of ranges.

I think folding this river is probably best as a default. If you have strong reasons to believe villain is over-bluffing and/or exploiting capped ranges it becomes a pretty easy call.

I’d like to hear from others on this, because I think it’s a pretty close spot, but I’m not sure if it’s actually pretty close or just seems that way because I’m missing something.

I’ve added some Flopzilla work below, look for the TLDR at the bottom if you don’t want to wade through it all.

I’ll work with a button range of 45.1% – 22,Ax,K2s,K7,Q7s,Q9,J7s,J9,T7s,T8,96s,98,86s,87,75s,76,64s,54s,43s

Total preflop combos (considering dead cards): 447

Flop C-bet Range: 5 sets (AA discounted), 21 two pairs, 117 top pairs, 1 OESD+FD, 18 flush draws, 30 OESDs, 4 gutshot+FDs, 51 gutshots, 8 backdoor diamond combos, 6 backdoor nut spade combos, 6 middle pairs +K/Q kicker(discounted), 11 bottom pairs w/ backdoor SD(discounted), 8 Low suited connectors (air), 12 low pocket pairs (air).

I’m making a lot of assumptions about what air/weak pair hands villain chooses to bet, but for our purposes it is not too important to know which combos, but rather to roughly estimate how many total combos are betting other than value bets and strong draws. This will vary a ton from player to player, but hopefully this example is a decent starting point.

Total combos c-betting flop: 298 (66.7%)

Turn Betting Range: 31 straights, 5 sets, 30 two pairs (slight discount), 33 AJ+ top pairs, 10 draws/air (~15% of air).

Turn betting combos: 112/286 (39.2% – some flop combos not possible after 8c turn)

I have villain checking back 174 combos which is likely too many, but not uncommon at this stack depth. 72 Ax weaker than AJ, 8 two pairs (all 98 combos), all 1 pair < top, and most draws/air.

River Range Breakdown: 48 trips (32%), 8 counter-fitted two pairs(5.3%), 6 middle pairs (4%), 43 pairs < middle (28.7%), 45 busted draws/air (30%)

According to my analysis, villain reaches the river with more combos of trips than any other category of hand. That being said, there are a significant number of combos that may decide to bluff this river. We can investigate some different sets of assumptions about villains river betting frequencies to decide how valuable our hand is here.

Scenario 1: Villain never turns weak pairs into bluffs, does not value bet KT/QT, and bluffs with 100% of his air.

We beat 45/93 or 48.4% of his betting range. If villain is bluffing this often we have a very profitable call.

Scenario 2: Same as above but villain value bets KT/QT

We beat 45/99 or 45.45% of his betting range. Still a very profitable call

Scenario 3: Villain bluffs 1/2 of air combos and does not value bet KT/QT

We beat 23/71 or 32.4% of villain’s betting range. Our call is +chip EV but very likely to be -$ EV

Scenario 4: Villain bluffs 1/2 of air combos and value bets KT/QT

We beat 23/77 or 29.9% of villain’s betting range. Our call is barely +chip EV and pretty disastrous in terms of $ EV

If I had to pick one of the above I’d say that scenario 3 is the most likely, and I think we should be folding if this is villain’s actual betting strategy. It is important to note that I’ve made a ton of assumptions throughout this analysis, and villain may reach the river with a very different range of hands than what I’ve detailed here. For example, I assumed villain never cbets JJ-KK, which many players will. This type of analysis is at best a rough model, and without a pretty deep understanding of villain’s tendencies we can only venture educated guesses as to actual ranges. Still, I hope this proves helpful, and is at least a good springboard for further analysis of different ranges and/or other hands.

TLDR: I think villain reaches the river with more than enough hands that want to bluff to warrant a call, but I don’t believe we can safely assume an average micro player is bluffing 1/3 of their stack with enough hands to make calling profitable. I think a lot of players will take a ‘1 and done’ approach to most of their bluffs in high pressure FT situations. Since I don’t believe villain should ever value bet worse hands, I think this is a relatively close spot, but a fold without strong reads. Against particularly tough and aggressive players, especially those who are savvy enough to turn some weak pairs into bluffs, I think we want to be calling here.