Opponent Folded Set - Could I Have Gotten More?
Live FL tournament - $400 buyin. Blinds 100/100 with a 100 ante (level 2, very early). I had ~18k. Opponent had a little more, perhaps 25-30k. Opponent (MP) raised to 400. I called in the SB with QhJh. (I know you're supposed to 3-bet or fold everything from the SB, but this is FL live poker and the table seemed very weak and passive so I figured the likelihood of a squeeze from the BB was extremely low. Y'all can let me know if you disagree with this but if the BB is passive I usually just play as I would in the BB.) BB folds.
(1k) Flop KT9, 1 heart. I check. Opponent bets 500. I call.
(2k) Turn 8h. I check. Opponent bets 2k. I raise to 5k. He snap-calls.
(12k) River Ah. I shove for 12,400. Opponent tanks for a LONG time (at least 2 minutes) and folds.
He busted later and told me he had TT. Just didn't see how I could have anything besides QJ.
Obviously this was pretty frustrating for me. How could I have played differently to get more value? 3-bet pre? Raise flop? Raise turn larger? Does it make any sense to bet smaller on the river?
I am currently feeling like opponent just made an insanely good fold and there was nothing I could have done, but wanted to run it by you guys to make sure.
5 Replies
pre is fine for the reasons you listed, and i cheat a little bit in the same conditions when i'm not as deep and a little further into the tourny. However i think i'm only cheating myself as those conditions probably favor aggression with a 3b and a cb. I think this early and this deep demands a 3bet when it will affect you least. OOP with what some would call suited trash, (i disagree), is a good image to cultivate early.
running bdf + rvr pot/jam may be an action killer, but there's nothing wrong going for the kill here esp if villain is telling the truth about TT. not sure why he doesn't mention bdf.
the only audible i may call is sizing down rvr to hf pot and probably settle on 2/3rds. bc bdf could be scary for us as well
you could repeat the bet or size down to 4k, give him a chance to rep it,...in hindsight TT is calling before turning into a bluff, but we don't know holdings at this point. don't want to get too deep but depending on rank of the flopped heart, he could be holding Kh and run a credible bluff.
im curious, did you map it out to be a pot sized rvr jam or did the sizing just work out that way?
x/r flop.
Supporting all the "check-raise flop" posts for two reasons:
1)We most often want to check-raise our strong hands on the flop when they unblock the calling range we can get paid by, which usually means unblocking top pair. We unblock AK, all the sets, and all the two pair combos, and even though we block KQ/KJ, villain would have to continue with those hands as well. And as villain is a preflop raiser, these kind of high-card hands figure to be more likely to be in their range (unlike, say, when we have 76 on 854).
2)Check-call flop, check-raise turn looks stronger than a flop check-raise. Or at least, it looks even more polarized and less often like a bluff. But especially after the open raiser goes b50 flop / b100 turn, a check-raise looks extremely strong.
Aside, the fact that you're shoving for more than pot on the river suggests your turn check-raise is too small. But at least from a theory perspective, we check-raise large bets less often because they're more polarized.
Thanks for the responses. In retrospect, I wasn't very good two years ago, as I would check raise flop now for sure. Straights specifically also suffer from a lot of equity decay so they are almost always in my fast-play range these days.
I like your concept of equity decay and reasoning that fast play would be better. Well stated.
