20bb stacking off with TP weak kicker?
Daily $100 live tournament, 15 min levels flying by. Maybe half the field left, Hero is on around 20bb close to average stack.
Villain seems to be fairly tight and passive from what little we have seen (moved tables recently) although he does have some chips. Hero is effective stack around 20bb.
Villain opens the CO to 2bb and Hero defends BB with QTs (diamonds).
Flop (4.5bb): Qc 9c 4c
Hero checks, V bets 2bb, Hero calls.
Turn (8.5bb): Qc 9c 4c 2h
Hero checks, V bets 5bb. Hero (with 16bb back)...?
Continuing feels like a pretty strong commitment to stacking off on a non-club river, and I would consider whether (if continuing) shoving has merit against pair-plus-draw type hands? On the other hand, my read is that Villain has a hand like KQ or OJ. Solver bets V smaller on both streets and has H continue, but is coming close to mixing range OTF which seems a tad much for this V.
In a (deeper) cash game I'm calling another street, but I am not used to trying to play postflop this shallow as I don't play that many tournaments.
9 Replies
whether you'll want to stack off will depend on villain, by your description rather not.
you can still have the best hand, he can have worse (suited) queens or jacks and stuff.
turn I'd probably favor a call, and sometimes he'll check behind on river.
I probably call and consider folding if he jams a blank river.
Just making sure but there are 3 clubs, right? Even a tight player could be bluffing with Ac and might jam a blank river as a bluff too. They could also already have a flush and you could be drawing dead.
I think when you're this shallow it's probably by the book to stack off if the board bricks out but you could consider folding as an exploitative adjustment.
I still think you've got to call turn though. You're just going to have so many hands that auto-fold to a turn barrel that a decent player is going to double barrel a lot with some pretty junky hands.
Just making sure but there are 3 clubs, right Even a tight player could be bluffing with Ac and might jam a blank river as a bluff too. They could also already have a flush and you could be drawing dead.
Yes, monotone flop.
Absolutely agree that folding turn this high up is massively exploitable, but I think it's pretty clear this V is not the type to take advantage of it (and no one really has time to notice in a daily anyway). Feels kind of icky to call turn and fold river though - takes us down to 11bb. I could probably see him doing this with the worse suited Qx, and naked Ac, but also obviously all flushes and better Qx too. Whether he is good for two barrels with 9x or something on a monotone board, I don't know..
You're also folding a lot of 9x and 4x presumably. What are you really calling with if you fold this hand? I guess pairs with a spade but that isn't a lot of combos in relation to your wide range.
I still probably call and make him fire the third barrel.
Edit: It seems like you haven't seen enough from this player to make this big of an exploitative adjustment? Just basing that off of what you posted here.
generally Id probably lean toward stacking off, it's a what? 100$ live tourney, guess they'll often just fire it off, bluffs, gifts or anything, even triple barrels with jacks.
and yes, in that turbo structure your sample is prob too small to draw a clear image of your opponent, but maybe you somehow feel it.
Aside, this is actually a good spot to 3-bet jam preflop.
from the big? Id favor a reshove from the small, and complete in the big
been curious, so the GTO EV of a shove is around ~1.4 vs ~1.45 of a call.
a call has more room upwards though, postflop.
the pure gto sb shove has EV around ~0.64.
Edit: It seems like you haven't seen enough from this player to make this big of an exploitative adjustment Just basing that off of what you posted here.
Yeah, that's kind of the feedback I was looking for. Was trying to gauge how "this big" of an adjustment it really felt like since I don't have much experience playing short stacked. When I looked it up in GTOW it gave iirc around 1.3bb of EV for calling the turn with spectacularly terrible EQR versus solver's IP range.
Probably obvious from the OP, but in game I did make a somewhat cowardly fold. I actually didn't consider calling to x/f on a brick runout, so I am somewhat intrigued to see that be a reasonably popular opinion.
At the table I just couldn't shake the feeling that V had a stronger made hand. The monotone board was probably the key on my read, as it felt like V wanted to GII before a fourth club hit, which felt an awful lot like top pair. My reads tend to be pretty good, but I can agree not good enough - one big thing I struggle with when making reads like this is that the read is mostly an instinct based on V's actions and demeanor so it of course doesn't come with any kind of accurate confidence percentage, and even if I'm only wrong 38% of the time and V will check back the river to lose, then I should still be calling. Having V on better Qx with 40% confidence is still a very strong read, just not nearly enough to make the fold.
I think in particular I am trying to be more precise and aggressive in these 20-40bb postflop spots without punting. I think the general population trend is to massively overfold because e.g. in this case 5bb was "10,000 chips" which was nearly an entire starting stack not so long ago (now that I remember better, this was a bit later than halfway - 26 left of 75ish and 10 paid) and it's really hard for people not to be anchored to absolute bet sizing. But in the end I am too frequently a bit cowardly about putting my tournament life on the line.
My remaining 16bb quickly inflated away to 5bb and I ran 77 into AA, left considering whether this hand could have made a difference.
