BvB hand

I think if villian is aggro enough, jamming pre here on a tad under 19 BBs is perfectly fine. Your hand plays quite nice as it is suited and can be 2 over cards to a smaller pp.

I wouldn’t jam on tighter folks here though- just call and play post.

As played, hmm not bad. I like sizing. You prolly could bet 1.5k honestly also and get same reaction from sb. Remember they should be naming some drawy type hands like KJ/ J9 etc. probably fold though in this spot. Prolly up against a lot of Qx.

Hand seems perfectly fine for me. I would just pile over someone that can be wide raising from sb. I don’t think you want to check back flop as your hand is vulnerable to Ax and Kx. Do think checking back flop is ok at times tho and you can just call almost all turns. Then decision comes on river bc you gotta expect it to go bet bet at times.

So... you think he had a worse hand than you, but you still folded?

Don't bet the flop if you're going to fold this much equity to a raise. (And given the board you probably should just check back, unless you want to bet/call and pray you fade however many outs it is.)

You may be able to jam preflop but that really depends on how tight he's calling. But I'm not sure that's optimal.

Call pre is good. Check back flop. As played call.

When you bet ask yourself why? Is it for ...
Value?
Equity Denial?
To get a worse hand to fold (bluff)?

Then what is the plan if they raise? If it is for value is it good enough to call? I recommend doing this every time you put chips in.

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I wasn’t sure he had a worse hand back then. It came to my mind later 😀 And as you mentioned he could have too many outs vs my hand, indeed.

So what would be the optimal play?

You mean I should have called his shove?
Could you explain why? Pot-odds (2 to 1) too good to fold?

If you think you have the best hand and you're getting 2:1 odds, then yes, you should clearly call.

You probably should check this flop back, though. Don't bet here unless you know you're going to call.

I like the call preflop. The SB raise sizing is bad (in my opinion). It should be around 4x in order to take it down right away. So you are getting a good price with JTs to play this in position.

There are several possibilities on the flop. I would basically always check because if Villain missed he may take a shot on the turn and we can call then. If we bet the flop then in that moment you have to know what you are going to do if they jam. That is basically their only sizing OOP because a normal c/r would be about 7000 which is like over 50% effective stack. It is very possible that Villain is semi bluff jamming here. It could be AXs where its a flip. But it also could be TXs where you could be drawing very slim (or flipping).

The flop favors Villain's range much more than yours. So it is somewhat unusual that he checked. Especially if he has a set because you could have a gutter or BDFD. But the thing that strikes me is that if he has a monster then it will go all in with bets on 2 streets. So checking the flop makes it look more like a bluff if you were to check and he bet 2400 on the turn and then jammed the river for a polarizing pot sized bet.

So ultimately I think the fold is best.

Jam preflop would be a massive blunder. That only happens in heavy ICM situations, definitely not here. JTs is very nice hand to play postflop IP.

Preflop 3x from our opponent is normal sizing. 4x would be kinda weird for this stacksize, but perhaps ok given it's a BB ante. Main change compared to normal ante is that SB should mostly limp or jam and not have many raises here. Your opponent is almost surely raising more often than he should. But that doesn't matter for JTs. That hand would not jam even if he plays openjam or 3x only without limping (but there would be more jams vs such strategy, just not something nice like JTs).

Flop either checkback or stab smaller, maybe 25 %. Action vs checkjam is weird because he should never checkjam. But unless he is extremely unbalanced, you are prized in.

Also basically everything Mr Rick said is wrong. Pretty amazing for someone with over 7k posts.

Oh nevermind, thought its a rainbow flop but there is a FD. So checkjamming does make some sense from SB now. And it might get awkwardly close with JTs, probably better to fold vs a nittier weaker opponent. It's gonna be wildly different based on your opponent given how rare this action should be. But he should still have a lot more non-ai checkraises than jams.

I said he should call preflop. You said "Jam preflop would be a massive blunder ... JTs is very nice hand to play postflop IP" <--- So one thing I said that was right.

I said "The SB raise sizing is bad (in my opinion). It should be around 4x in order to take it down right away. So you are getting a good price with JTs to play this in position." You said "Preflop 3x from our opponent is normal sizing. 4x would be kinda weird for this stacksize, but perhaps ok given it's a BB ante." Why I think preflop 3x sizing is smallish for a SB in a HU situation is specifically because it is OOP. Now if the normal opening would have been 2x then I get why SB is raising to 3x. But since we are already in for 1 BB (our blind not our ante) a 3x open by SB would costs us only 2 bb's to be in a pot that already has 5 bb's. Whereas a 4x preflop raise costs us 3 bb's for a pot that already has 6 bb's. People will call much less frequently when the SB raise is to 4x.

I said "There are several possibilities on the flop. I would basically always check because if Villain missed he may take a shot on the turn and we can call then. You said "Flop either checkback or stab smaller". So once again I said something you basically agreed with at least partly.

I said "If we bet the flop then in that moment you have to know what you are going to do if they jam. That is basically their only sizing OOP because a normal c/r would be about 7000 which is like over 50% effective stack. " You said "Action vs checkjam is weird because he should never checkjam. But unless he is extremely unbalanced, you are prized in." My point here is that if I were betting this flop it is critical to know what you are going to do if he jams (or raises) before you make your bet. This comes up all the time for people and when they don't know what to do they realize they shouldn't have bet in the first place. Here what you are saying is that you know that since you are priced in that you would call a jam.

Ultimately what you disagreed with the most was my point about folding to the jam. I can be wrong about that. He could be bluffing with a flush draw and an overcard. Or a straight draw. So basically 11 or 12 outs twice. Which makes it a flip which would benefit us. We could also be up against double draws. And we could also be up against hands that leave us with 5 outs twice (or basically no outs). I have c/r jammed in spots like this with double draws so it is definitely possible.

Thing is even if we can buy back in we would have like less than 20 blinds (my guess) and its not something I would like to do. That's part of the reason I would fold here. But then I wouldn't have bet the flop because if SB is on a draw they would be extremely unlikely to c/r jam the turn. And they might lead out the turn hoping to get us to fold.

The other reason I don't like calling here is that the c/r jam is polarizing. We are getting a little less than 2:1 pot odds to call so they need to be bluffing more than 33% of the time for it to be worth calling. Is this an overbluff spot? Maybe it is. But this flop hit their range

I don't like being criticized. But to make it about 7000+ posts is just downright nasty. Since 2023 when I was in Prague I have played in roughly 275 tournaments. And I have won 5 of them. I won an EPT 2 day tournament (441 entries) and I just won a WSOP Circuit event (139 entries). Now the Venetian ones I won were smallish (like 60 and 80 players) though in one of them I won more in bounties than the second place prize money. And the Rebuy Stars tournament was also smallish (like 50 players) but that field was one of the best I have ever played against. So really your point should be that for a player that wins more than their share of tournaments, your posts really suck. And I would be very happy about that because when I am playing poker I always appreciate when my opponents think I suck...

Okay, I will admit, the worst thing here is suggesting to jam this preflop, which is a crime you didn't commit, that was others in the thread.
Weird to say that its unusual SB checked, while it should be a cbet quite often, check is still gonna be common play. And definitely weird to say that check would be unusual with a set, because that is precisely the combo that would have higher checking frequency than other stuff. Hands like KK or QJ are much more mandatory bets.
Tbh I think Ive noticed you giving some wrong answer somewhere else so thats why I got triggered now. 😃 Good job with all the won tournaments. 😀

Here are some screenshots:

Looking at 19bb normal chip ev range. Thinking about it, the fact that it is BB ante should not really play much of a role, so we can just look at normal range.
This should be SB:

This is our preflop response. Jamming JTs preflop loses the equivalent of 44bb/100h.

SB flop strategy:

Our strategy vs check. Slightly smaller bet would be used a bit more, but I simplified to the as played sizing. Notice highlighted JTdd is actually the combo that checks back more than the others.

SB response. Very low amount of jams. Heavily prefers very small checkraises.

Facing the checkjam we call, but accuracy is wonky at this point.

MTT DB Review, in practice a preflop jam could be the highest EV play if our opponent is overfolding to a great enough extent. People in lower stakes live fields often drastically overfold these spots.

The problem is that the same types of players who overfold to a jam also under raise facing a SB limp. So the range you're jamming into might be overly tight to begin with, which makes a pre flop jam much worse.

All that's to say call pre, check back flop is probably the best line.

After you bet flop I'm likely calling off the jam, but as someone said it's best to think about how you will respond against that particular player before you bet.

I don't quite get this. There was no SB limp in that hand.

I didn't word that right. What I meant is that the types of players who tend to overfold vs a jam are often not raising as wide out of the small blind.

So when they raise instead of limping their range is stronger to begin with, so even if they "overfold" according to the strength of their hand, they might not have that many combos that they raise with to begin with. Hope that clears up what I was trying to say.

BvB is one of the most misplayed spots in MTTs. Most players either play way too passive (just completing from SB) or way too aggressive (3betting everything). The key is stack depth - under 20bb its mostly a shove or fold game from the SB. Above 25bb you can start playing a more nuanced strategy with smaller raises and 3bets.