WSOP Paradise Mini-ME a few preflop spots
Hand1
Hero has 110K (50K starting stack) in SB with a tightish image
Villain 77K (Australian, has a decent tournament results, we can see this on the WSOP+ App)
blinds 500/1K/1K
Preflop: Hero has AQo
UTG1 raises to 2.1K, CO calls, Hero raises to 9.1K in sb, UTG1 raises to 20K, CO folds, Hero? (very awkward sizing). It's a small raise, but it will suck being out of position here. Not sure if I am being too tight folding for such a small raise.
Hand 2
2K/4k/4K
Hero 96K in bb
Villain 1 100k old man (we think he is tight because he is old but has played a few hands)
CO 50K
Btn 120K
Preflop: Hero has 88 in bb
UTG1 (villain) raises to 8K, CO calls, Btn calls, Hero shoves (GTO says this is a shove) Not sure if this is too wide against a player who might be tighter. There is a lot of money in the pot already and maybe one of the other players will call with a smaller pair if UTG1 folds?
Comments please
1 Reply
My ABI is a little lower, but I will try to weigh in. Since this event was one of the lower buy ins of the series, I'm guessing the field was mainly high stakes players so YMMV.
Hand 1 is a pretty disgusting spot, but in a vacuum I like the fold. You've got to ask yourself how wide UTG+1 is 4-betting? But he opened in early position and you've got 77 BB effective. It's not really worth going to war with this hand in my opinion. If you call you'll pretty much just have to get it in if you flop top pair, and I wouldn't be thrilled with that proposition. If villain has been battling and you think he will have a lot of 4-bet folds then jamming as a 5-bet bluff could have some merit. But in most cases I think his range will just be too strong and I like the fold.
In hand 2, given your description I would have preferred that you just called and defended. I would have liked the jam better if you were like 18-20 BB effective rather than 24 BB. I think it's optimistic to think that you would get called with worse pairs by the initial callers. Really those flat callers shouldn't even call the open with many if any pairs worse than 88, and they can definitely have some traps in their ranges. I wouldn't lose sleep over your jam if you ran into a big hand, but I would have preferred you just called the min-raise.
