Broke with 83s for 31bb deep in tournament

[Dennis]

I just busted the 22$ 8 max turbo on Pokerstars in 213th place out of 3500 entrants.
I was around 40th in stack when this hand came up (please see the hand in the replayer, link below).
I do not have any reads on the villian to start the hand with.

http://www.sharemypair.com/smpweb/smpviewdetails/feed_id/45384/newhand/1

I think preflop there is nothing wrong with defending a suited hand against a CO minraise.
Then on that K54 flop, I check/raise turn thinking that he doesn’t hit the board that hard except if he has a K or a pocket. Therefore I decided on C/R the flop, because picking up this pot with 8 high would be a perfect outcome, and of course planning on barreling all diamonds and a 6 or 7 as those hit my range better as his as well.

Then the interesting 8 comes at the turn, giving me second pair along with my flush draw and this is the point where I get very confused. I feel like if I check to him my hand looks quite weak after C/R flop, and he will bet almost all his Kings if i check it to him (which he has a lot after check/calling flop). I decided to bet kinda small, planning on checking back river if I don’t improve. However, when he shoves over my turn bet, I only need around 25% equity which I definitely have against his Kx, and his range on the turn in general, which made me decide to call. No luck on the river and I am out unfortunately against a hand which would never have folded of course on the turn.

Should I maybe have overshoved turn making it very difficult for him to call with his Kx? Or should I just check/call turn and hope to improve on river and if not, fold to most bets with my pair of eights? Or could I have made better plays in general in this hand? One thing for example is I think my C/R size on the flop should have been somewhat larger.. which made it maybe a bit easier to shove turn myself.

Thanks in advance for all your thoughts, much appreciated, cheers! 🙂

Dennis

[PBrazz]

Hey Dennis,

I’m no pro but here’s my two cents… I personally don’t mind defending with a hand like 83s against a min-raise heads up but it’s not an ideal hand to defend out of position. The problem here is that you have to be prepared to get away from this hand and/or catch your flush draw as cheaply as possible. Although, when I’m in the BB with a hand like this or any other hand for that matter, and I’m up against a late position who’s clearly just hoping I have nothing and trying to steal my blind, I love to put the pressure back on them sometimes. If you’re deciding to defend 83s, raise to something like 40k-50k and try to take it down preflop with the intentions of folding to any 4-bets or check-folding on the flop if they call your 3-bet preflop (if you can stomach the loss if they are really strong).

However, as played, the pot is 42k heading to the flop and you still have 233k behind. You check and the CO throws out a c-bet of 16k. I would prefer a check-call here instead of a raise because this could have enabled your opponent to jam and put you in an even more tight situation with an 8-high flush draw on the flop.

I do like your aggressiveness because you’re clearly repping a strong king, two-pair, flush draw, or set on the flop. It’s worth noting that it was a pretty risky call from your opponent once you raised their c-bet. I typically wouldn’t call a larger raise just being open-ended, so I think your sizing could have been bigger without even going all-in, I think a raise to 75k-90k would have done the trick. However, your opponent could have easily had a hand like AdKx based on their pre-flop action/c-bet, and if that were the case, they could easily put you on a flush draw and exploited that by shoving all-in to your raise. Either way, I would have preferred a check-call on the flop for pot control with an unmade hand and you would have still had 217k heading to the turn.

Based on the flop, your opponent bet 38% of the pot. Had you check-called the flop, the pot would have only been ~74k on the turn (compared to the 138k in your situation). This would have at least put you in a better situation to see the river before sacrificing your entire stack. For example, if you check-called the flop and decided to check-call again on the turn. Your opponent would have probably thrown out another c-bet around 30k-50k on the turn because they had the nuts and would have probably wanted to get max value from you. That’s an easy call for you because you could still get away from the hand on the river with 167k-187k left behind or potentially even take down a massive pot if another diamond came on the river. Or in this real situation, you might have even been able to get them to fold their straight if you repped a full-house on the river with that King pairing the board. (Might is a strong word here LOL but it would have given you a better chance to win… if you were to call, check-call, check-call, lead 3/4-full pot or all-in on the river… that usually reps a pretty strong hand and could have been a believable story to your opponent but honestly I don’t think this specific opponent would have folded. They clearly were in this hand to steal your blinds or catch a straight and they did, so I don’t think they were going anywhere).

As played on the turn, given that your opponent raised pre-flop, c-bet flop, called your 3x raise on flop, and jammed all-in when you bet the turn…it’s pretty safe to assume they were very strong. You could have easily gotten away from this hand on the turn with 129k left behind. While not fun or ideal to fold and lose a big pot, I think you should have folded when they shoved all-in. 129k would have still been right below your table’s average and you would have still had 16 BB left to make moves with better hands.

In summary, pot control was key. It would have at least given you a chance to get away from the hand with a pretty sizable stack left behind, get to your flush by the river without sacrificing your entire stack on a draw, and given you the chance to potentially bluff/rep a boat on the river if you were willing to go for it! Also, you could have taken down a smaller win preflop by raising. Putting myself in your opponent’s shoes, I would never call a re-raise preflop with a hand like 67o (from any position). It’s just really hard to make moves like these with a hand like 83o because if you get re-re-raised, well… it just sucks LOL

Here’s how I would have probably played this hand (if I didn’t fold to the min-raise preflop):

Pre-flop: Call CO min-raise for another 8k (233k chips).
Flop: Check-call for 16k (217k chips).
Turn: Check-call for 30k-50k (167k-187k chips).
River: Check-fold (167k-187k chips left to play better hands).

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Pat

[Dennis]

Wow, thanks a lot for your detailed thoughts Pat, that defenitely helps a lot!
I agree on most points, I would have played it the same as you suggest in hindsight I think.

3betting 83s pre flop is not my favorite move honestly, I think I can choose many better hands to do that with and even balance with hands that are better than this one. So I prefer the call there.

Jamming river would have been insane if it worked out, but like you said yourself, I don’t think this opponent was going anywhere with his straight. However, I think in this case we should look more to his range (with a lot of Kx) then this specific 76o, which he would not very often have in this spot.

Thanks again for you analysis, much appreciated!

Cheers!

[Cher Scarlett]

Hey Dennis! The interesting thing here is that your hand was slightly better than his pre-flop and your hand’s strength increased on the flop. I think the main issue here is that you didn’t get enough information to figure what he did have, and had he had what you did put him on, he wouldn’t have played the hand the way he did. Here’s my thoughts, sorry it’s so lengthy:

I don’t particularly mind defending of the BB here, since everyone else folded, but given that you weren’t short stacked, I wouldn’t have played this hand. That being said, I think a re-raise here would have given you both a stronger position knowing you would be acting first, and a better read on what he was holding if he calls or re-raises, or even a fold from him, which I think when you’ve got 83dd getting the blinds and pre-flop bets is a pretty good aim. You don’t have to play every hand. There’s certainly better BB hands to play than this one. 🙂

But, we’ve decided to play this hand, so let’s see what really happened here.

I like the check on the flop. Letting him continue to be the aggressor is wise. You’ve not really given any information away at this point, so your range is huge at this point. Even though you’re first to act, you’re at a bit of an advantage here.

If we consider that he 1-bet pre-flop, sure, we’re looking at possibly a K with a low kicker, but you’ve only got an 8d high, so it’s entirely possible that he’s the one with the nut flush draw, 96dd and 97dd are easily in his range here, and plenty of hands in his range are a straight draw. Fewer of his hands are worse than yours here with his pre-flop raise. I think best case scenario here with the information at hand is that he has 23xx or a face card with a low kicker with one or neither of those being diamonds.

When you compare the best case scenario with the whole range, you really don’t have enough information to think your hand can win this pot. You should be looking at his hand equity being greater than yours, mainly because you don’t block anything that would be the best hand at this point and his range is wider than yours, regardless of what you’ve represented. Our only option at this point is to tell a better story than the one we’ve got and to be consistent with it.

Our villain responds to your check with the minimum bet here. You should be very suspicious that he’s fishing for information and that his hand is no better than yours. His bet doesn’t give any information away about what he has other than the fact that he wants to know what you have. This pretty much eliminates that he has two pair or a set on the board. It likely also eliminates that he has a K. If he’s got a K here, he doesn’t want to see the turn or the river. Why would you give your opponent a 30-50% chance to a win? The only reasons he’d be okay with seeing another card here are if he’s basically certain he’s going to win and value betting, or if his hand improves with more cards.

Your raise here is simply too low for this wet of a board and his stack size. Unfortunately the only thing it really does is tell him is that you don’t realize he’s on a draw, and that you probably don’t have a K because you think he does.

He calls here because for him, worst case scenario is that you have pocket Ks, and another 50k on 30% odds with his stack size is fantastic equity. He’s not calling your bluff, he’s investing in catching his draw. A shove here is the only way he’s going to fold, because you’re asking if he’s willing to stake his entire tournament life on a draw vs a very strong hand. If you’re trying to give yourself the least amount of risk to catch your flush, I’d simply call here.

Here comes the turn. It’s an 8s. This is the worst you can hope for. You didn’t catch your diamond, and leaves a wide open space for connectors to make a straight, which are definitely in his range.

At this point, the only way out of this is checking. If for some reason you still think he has a pair of Kings, your odds of catching your diamond have only gotten worse, meanwhile, your story from the flop of a set or two pair may have gotten worse. K8 is surely in his range if you’re thinking he was representing a K, so you’d have to commit to representing a set, which would absolutely start with a check, just like it did on the flop. Best outcome here is that he’s put you on 54 and he value bets into you. This is definitely a possibility given that from his perspective, you’ve already completely missed that he was drawing to a straight, and if that’s still the case, he’s simply following the same thing he did in the flop, and can get some more chips out of you for cheap. Your small bet into him broke your flop story. When the 8 turned, you changed the way you were playing.

If I’m villain, I know you don’t have a K from the flop action, and now I don’t think you have any 5s or 4s either. I think you have 88 or diamonds because you’re either value betting because you think I have KX and you’ve won with 3 of a kind, or you’re trying to get to the river. Even though this might not be how you play, it’s certainly how villain played on the flop, so this is exactly what I’m thinking here if I’m in his position. I’m not going to give you another card unless you’re willing to stake your tournament life on it, because more or less, you’ve told me exactly what your hand is, and you clearly have no idea what mine is.

I think the biggest mistake you made here was putting villain on the K, and wearing blinders to all the signs that he was drawing to a straight.

🍒

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Cher Scarlett.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Cher Scarlett.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Cher Scarlett.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Cher Scarlett.

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