hero being 4bet by big bounty on final table
we're 2nd in chips in this 5$ bounty tournament on the final table 7handed with around 66bigs. biggest bounty player to our right with around 40bigs and a 40$ bounty opens.
we have 99 in the cutoff as the covering stack. what do we do?
I choose to 3bet him IP to get more chips into the pot, isolate him, and potentially get him allin. the plan is to call him off if he reshoves, as I expect to see AK / AQ oftenly there.
unexpectedly he 4bets our 84k 3bet to 182k. I end up timing out and folding.
our opponent did not seem to be a thoughtless fishy player. he might be reggish or at least somewhat considerate. in an earlier hand on the final table I bluffcatched him succesfully on the river.
so what's going on here, in his mind?
we assume he knows about a) his big bounty b) me covering him c) me 3bet isolating him because I want to win his bounty
during the hand I ended up thinking that he's not going to ever bluff me for these reasons with something like Ax suited or KQoff as what folds does he expect? I just have to call IP after I already signalled my willingness to play against him or reshove immediately so his bluffs appeared to not achieve anything.
I expect AK and AQ to 4betshove. So does he have only nutted hands there, AA, KK, ...?
only much later I realised that he may have reason to assume that I 3bet him with my whole range just to isolate him and bloat the pot IP to win his bounty. Then he may have reason to expect some or a lot of fold equity to his 4bet immediately and / or postflop. this means he may have bluffs like suited aces in his range.
he showed me an ace when I folded, by your experience, what does showing an ace in a spot like this most likely mean?
another thought I later had was to just call his 4bet and go postflop IP setmining which may be good play even under the assumption that he only has nutted hands like AA and KK there and considering his shallow stack depth.
if he has a very strong hand and we hit our 9 we stack him for some implied odds. and we win his big bounty. as we're IP, we may even get to see the river cheaply if he chooses to play some tricky / deceiving lines postflop, like a small cbet and check on turn. he's shallow stacked, so he'll always be able to get his chips in by the river if he wants to.
even better if he also has bluffs in his range.
5 Replies
does anyone know how a big bounty in a spot like that influences the dynamic [regards 3bets and 4bets] between reggish players? was my opp in above situation to be expected to have polar 4bets, being covered and having a big bounty, or only strong holdings in his 4bet non-allin range?
What are the payouts? The payouts relative to the bounty matter a lot when determining how wide we're willing to get it in, especially vs. a stack this deep. (I'm not sure how deep it is exactly-- GG hand history screenshots always confuse me because they don't show starting stacks.)
This is an example of what I'm talking about with keeping your foot on the gas when you shouldn't. ICM would dictate just flatting here, and 99 isn't a good hand to 3-bet because you don't have any A/K blockers and you're probably deep enough that you can't feel good about 5-betting all-in. You're ramping up your risk at a time you shouldn't-- and either 5-betting and probably getting it in bad, or turning a good hand into a bluff.
If villain is good, he could definitely have bluff 4-bets-- his value range should basically just be AA/KK/AK here-- but I don't know if he is that good.
Anyway, again, the payouts relative to the bounties matter a lot here.
since it's a bounty tournament I thought ICM effects are smaller and his bounty is worth quite a bit. 1st place pre bounties was around 150$, 3rd like 75$ and so on
starting stack 10k, starting bounty 1.25$
Ive been ready to get it in if he shoved (because of his bounty),
as I thought AK and if he's feeling wild AQ go into his 4bet-shoving range
but I had no idea of his nonallin 4bet range and how to react. he started the hand with around 40bigs.
There's a real push and pull between the ICM considerations and the bounty considerations. But on the final table the ICM considerations start to outweigh the bounty considerations because the pay jumps usually outweigh the bounties. But a $40 bounty is pretty huge at these stakes...
I actually don't mind the way you played it at all. You shouldn't be prepared to commit 40bb effective with 99 here because the ICM damage is significant. You lose and you become one of the shorter stacks, which not only loses you ICM value but makes you a bounty target.
You also have the big stack two seats to your left to worry about, which makes flatting problematic. It opens the door for him to squeeze, and getting into a big pot against the chip leader when you're second in chips is ICM suicide. So I like the 3b to isolate the bounty target. 3b/folding here has a negligible impact on your relative stack size.
since it's a bounty tournament I thought ICM effects are smaller and his bounty is worth quite a bit. 1st place pre bounties was around 150$, 3rd like 75$ and so onstarting stack 10k, starting bounty 1.25$Ive been ready to get it in if he shoved (because of his bounty), as I thought AK and if he's feeling wild AQ go into his 4bet-shoving rangebut I had no idea of his nonallin 4
So, the bounty is significant at this point, but you also need to think about villain's 4-betting range (whether small or jamming) and future game scenarios. If you lose this all-in you're the second-shortest stack on the table and that's going to make it difficult to run deep for a top prize or to collect anyone else's bounty.
I think you decided here that villain would jam AK and you'd be fine calling that, but didn't consider if he'd jam TT-QQ, or what you'd do in a spot like what happened, the small 4-bet. You gotta consider all scenarios. And whether or not the small 4-bet is a bluff, I think villain's own stack is going to make him reluctant to get it in lighter here.
A big reason I like flatting here is that, even though the bounty is really nice, you don't really have great equity against villain's preflop all-in range, and you can play the hand in position. I think even with the bounty size, an 80BB flip isn't really a good spot to take here, and that's the best-case scenario. If he jams TT-QQ and AKo, and 4-bets small with AA/KK/AKs and a few bluffs, you're a 2:1 dog against his jamming range. And that's the real issue here-- you're focused on being OK with flipping but not accounting for the times you're an 80:20 dog.
There's a real push and pull between the ICM considerations and the bounty considerations. But on the final table the ICM considerations start to outweigh the bounty considerations because the pay jumps usually outweigh the bounties. But a $40 bounty is pretty huge at these stakes...I actually don't mind the way you played it at all. You shouldn't be prepared to commit 40bb eff
But this is exactly why I don't like the 3-bet. You're turning your hand into a bluff with no blockers. Wasting a good hand. And OP said his plan was to call a 4-bet jam and he panicked and timed out, so it's not like he played the hand in the way he intended to.
You also have the big stack two seats to your left to worry about, which makes flatting problematic. It opens the door for him to squeeze, and getting into a big pot against the chip leader when you're second in chips is ICM suicide. So I like the 3b to isolate the bounty target. 3b/folding here has a negligible impact on your relative stack size.
The big stack is in the SB, so I don't think a squeeze is as likely from there. And you can't play your hands constantly in fear of the worst possible scenario. If he does squeeze, you have position and can see what the original raiser does first. If the original raiser 4-bets, I think you can get away pretty easily. If he folds, you can either play the 99 in position or just fold and move on at the cost of 2BB.
Basically, I think OP focused on one specific scenario (3-betting to call a 4-bet shove from AK and maybe AQ) and didn't consider the other possibilities for how the hand might play out, whether or not he 3-bet.
