Another before a break hand

Your elaborate (barely) semi-bluff got there. Sigh call. Sometimes you just have to pay the RIO gods.

But I would definitely not have played the hand this way -- starting with the pf call. Betting in a multiway pot into a soaking wet board is a recipe for disaster.

After call pf. Check flop.

After bet flop and getting two callers. Check turn.

Think pre is a big mistake - hand plays terribly with these effective stacks. This has a snowball effect as now you find yourself trying to "make a play" on the flop on a connected board. Not a fan overall

Agree with others. I am not making this preflop adjustment just because we won't get many callers behind. I will open a little wider and defend a little wider in the 'dinner break scenario'. Once other players have shown interest in the pot, either they have a good hand (even if they limped) or don't care about that dynamic. Just play your normal ranges, which this hand falls far short of.

Another Mr Rick read; you seem to be in a life equity spot, where you either want to have a lot of chips, or can do something else. That is definitely fine (I do it myself), but just realize that when you buy the entry.

Sorry about your friend's loss.

This is probably the worst played hand I have ever read about from you. I don’t mean that as an insult but rather a comparison to the quality of the hands you generally post about and the logic behind your explanations, even when I disagree with your conclusions.

This is simply bad play. Snap out of it.

I don't mind the flop bet or pf call but the rest of the hand is [emoji33]... listen man (I know you know this but the forum needs to hear it) Poker ... gambling really, boils down to making +EV decisions. Right or left. Up or down. Blacl or white. if you don't wanna play and would rather be with your friend do that! ... which is mega +EV... if your mind and heart aren't in it then stay away from the felt.

I'm glad you don't mind the preflop call or the flop bet. When I read Jonathon Little's book like 15 years ago, one of the things that stuck with me was he never wanted to fold OTB to a preflop raise. Regardless of his hand. I won a huge pot at the Borgota in one of their Million dollar guarantee $550 tournaments when I called OTB with 52o after a UTG raise and 2 calls and then a BB call. Flop was A34. Large pot and then a J on the turn. It ended up HU and unfortunately a J on the river so I just called a guy who had raised the flop bet and won because he had A5. So here in this spot because we were about to go on a long break and when I glanced down and to the left I felt like I was going to be the BTN if I called.

I'm kind of surprised nobody else liked the flop bet. In a hand right before a break OTB with 3 checks its a bluffing situation. Its a bluffing situation without a break coming up. I have won a ton of pots OTB on a flop where there are 3 players checking and I bet. Often its with a hand I called with preflop that is similar to 74s. And its not my original idea. In a book of bluffs, by I think Matt Lessinger, that's one of his bluffing spots on a flop. And here everyone usually just wants to go on a break so I am thinking they won't call with a gutter. I thought it was likely the opening raiser had a hand like AK/AQ.

I get that nobody likes the turn bet. But my feeling in the moment was I improved and when I improve after bluffing I encourage myself to bluff again on the turn. Because I probably underbluff.
I am currently trying to bluff in a balanced way. Here just before a large break I thought it was a perfect spot to bluff again. I am a little disappointed in my sizing. In retrospect I would prefer to make it 15,000 or even 17,000 here and not 12,000. But I thought the guy to my right was going to fold a 9x hand. I was pretty sure he didn't have Jx because he would have bet on the flop. If the preflop raiser had KQ he was going to c/r and I would fold but I thought he might have cbet with KQ. So I thought he was going to fold as well.

The river was a call not because I didn't care about playing the rest of the tournament. I did want to play the rest of the tournament. I especially wanted to play it with 100,000 chips after the dinner break. It was a call because if I was behind then it was a cooler. I was never going to fold after hitting a backdoor flush. Especially because there was a straight on the board and Villain could have a Q or even nothing and was bluffing himself. My biggest mistakes in tournaments (even last year) have been to fold in spots where I can double up but am afraid I am behind and would get crippled. In this case I would have been crippled without chips because I wasn't going to buy back in.

I was glad I called because Villain had KT and was bluffing.

edit: Also just to be clear I play poker tournaments like this because I want to play tournaments. I travelled close to two hours to play in this one tournament. Parx doesn't have another tournament on Saturday or Sunday in their Big Stax series. So I really really wanted to make it to day 2. I was willing to visit my family friend on Monday or even Tuesday. And as it turned out it was Monday because I made it to midnight on Day 2 and finished 28th out of like 1,136 players.

3bing this hand is better than calling given stacks. Fold > 3b > call. Maybe JL was talking about deep effective stacks - makes sense when you're say 100+bb deep, but you don't make enough if these scenarios when you "hit".

I did almost 3 bet preflop. If I had 75s I would have. But I was satisfied to just call and see if everyone missed (or at least checked) or if I hit some kind of draw or 2 pair hand. It is very strange but I am finding that the hand before a break is always when about half the players won't play unless they have really big hands. And the other half will play but generally won't bluff.

Typically a player stalls so the last hand will be the one he is in. And sometimes a Dealer doesn't want to deal the hand especially if one or more players has already left the table. But on occasion there are dealers who will start the hand (by hitting the green button or shuffling the deck) with less than 5 seconds to go before the break.

I can't say anything about live dynamics and how that would/should cause you to deviate from normal ranges pre.

Your reasoning for betting the flop I just don't understand. We have 3 other players in the hand and a very coordinated flop with cards "in the middle". All 3 players should have quite a lot of hands in their ranges that connect with this flop at least in a way that give them a gutshot. There will be top and middle pairs, sometimes combined with a gutshot. There will be openenders with QT and at least from BB 86. All this hands are in no way contradicting the three checks before you. I would guess we will take down the hand here less than 10 or maybe 5% of the time.

And very few turn cards will make things better for us. Which also turned out to be the case. A bluff on this board against two players can't expect to have a big success rate. Some straights got there, some two pairs. Don't think hands like KJ and KT will fold, and definately not QJ, JT or J9.

This must be a losing play, I'm sorry.

think I would fold pre bc we get into so many dicey spots here + allow the players behind to have a great squeeze spot bc in theory- we should fold a lot when someone bumps it up hefty with a squeeze.

As played- I wouldn’t bet flop. Maybe you can bluff turn if checks but I wouldn’t bluff flop bc it doesn’t work often enough.

River I think we have to call but it’s kinda a gross spot. I can see us running into better flushes a ton here.

I would just fold here and preserve stack. Spots like this- say you flop something like 44x or 77x. We normally only get it in with these textures against hands like A4s K4s, K7s A7s maybe A7o. We just punt a ton of bbbs here when we get super unlucky. The only real good flop is something like 56x, 568 or 563. I would defend the suited 74 from bb but folding sb, button, cu with this trashy hand. Just doesn’t work out well in the long run playing hands like this seeing a flop multiway.

Btw 3 betting pre would be super spicey. Even I who can be a lag tard at times pre would pass on this spot and prolly consider it close to 0% 3!. The hand is just too bad to 3!. Also if you 3! This hand or a 75 76s type hand, you gotta be ready to fire post especially heads up. This type of play can be super punty and lead to just pure punting of chips but can work at times. Again I would pass and look for much better spots

Would you have posted this if you’d called and lost?

I have in the past with the AA hand I jammed on the turn at the Venetian my first hand of the $1,600 tournament. I took a lot of heat for the jam (because I could have been behind) where it turns out I was ahead (70%) but lost on the river.

I had just posted another before the break hand (where I had also won but would likely have lost if I had been called). So maybe I would have. It was my favorite hand of the tournament...