On the bubble play

[Swami54]

There are 19 left and 18 pay. I'm in 2nd. The villain has been very active. Do I raise all in since his stack is similar to mine and he can only call with the made flush?

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t600 (7 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: 2+2 Forums)

Button (t8020)
SB (t16880)
BB (t24886)
UTG (t11905)
MP1 (t10455)
Hero (t27480)
CO (t2855)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img].
<font color="#666666">2 folds</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero raises to t1500</font>, <font color="#666666">3 folds</font>, BB calls t900.

Flop: (t2700) 7[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 3[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
<font color="#CC3333">BB bets t3000</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero?

[Dunkman]

I'm not a big fan of shoving 3x pot here. He could have a set too, or even worse have AcKx and be freerolling. Can't really make a normal raise either, since if he has Ac he can shove over you and still expect to have substantial FE. I'd just call here and get aggressive on a turn that's not a club, stack sizes seem too awkward for anything else.

[supair]

sounds good.

If a non club turn hits, we define our hand there, raising if he bets again, or 3/4 psb if he checks and fold to any subsequent shove?

Also id raise slightly more with AK preflop here, hes getting 2-1 which is an easy call for a lot of marginal hands in the bb. I like raising to 2400 here as we dont really want to encourage that much action.

[alwardc4]

This seems like a great spot to get a uber big chip stack.

So I guess either push or check call down. My preference is push to protect the hand and pick up an already good pot.

[All_In_Olly]

Maybe I'm being too weak but I fold to this bet.

He could have called pre flop with xcxc, or have AcKx, or be protecting a set.

If he has one club and no pair or KxQc/KxJc (only hands I think you could be beating) then why would he bet so big?
Surely a 2/3s bet could do the job.

Given you're on the bubble, this is a strong bet to make OOP on that board and I fold.

[DVaut1]

For one, this play is very read dependent. So you should provide some kind of context about what the villain is like.

I'd call this flop bet almost every time unless I had a strong read. Most players are certainly capable of a semi-bluff or outright floating here a large percentage of the time. If we're going to fold here because it's bubble time (despite the fact we're chip leader), then we may as well just shut down and fold in until after the bubble bursts. It's not a perfect flop for AK by any means, but folding seems far too passive given the villain's probably range.

I really don't like raising in this spot on the flop. I think we want to exercise as much pot control as possible -- when I say "pot control", I mean something along the lines of "losing the least when we have the second best hand". This seems like a pretty good case of way ahead/way behind to me; raising gets us committed against a possible flush while chasing away hands that might continue to bluff at us if we play passively. It *might* get a club draw to fold, but it might also get us pot stuck against something awful like AcKx.

So I really don't like repopping here. Yes, we're giving a draw a chance to peel if we just call, but I think the overriding concern here is to get to a showdown as cheaply as possible, and I think we're still deep-stacked enough to proceed with that thought at the paramount. If the stacks were smaller, then a repop or a shove might be in order. But IMO that's a mistake here. I think it would be disastrous to repop to something like 8000 or 9000 here, then have to fold to a villain's possible semi-bluff shove, something he might do with hands like KxJc or KxTc or Ac7x.

In sum, I think we really want to get to a showdown here.

Turn play:

- check/fold if the turn is a club and he leads with anything bigger than half the pot, call if it's a min bet or something similarly small. I could make a case for check/calling any turn bet here (even if a club falls) if you have a strong read.
- check/call any non-club turn card and he leads
- check behind if the turn is a blank and he checks, with the thought being that we're trying to induce a bluff here, so we're going to call almost any non-club river if villain leads out.

Again, though, much of this is dependent on reads. While I understand the motivation to price out draws on the flop, we're not going to give him much equity from the implied odds if he's semi-bluffing because we're probably going to dump if a club falls on the last two streets.

[JavaNut]

We might have to give up this pot, so let us keep it small.

A call from us is also very scary for villain, unless he actually has the nuts.