[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

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