Another JJ Situation

[KStV]

Early stages of a live 60-player NL tournament (deep stack). Blinds are 200/400. 11 handed. UTG recently 4-bet from early position, got no callers and tabled AA. Seems a little green/fishy (needs prompting, etc.). MP-2 has been moderately aggressive and has taken down a few pots. Seems skilled and experienced.

UTG has ~11,000 chips
MP-2 has ~13,000 chips

UTG raises to 2,500 with J [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]J [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img].
MP-2 calls, everyone else folds.

Flop comes A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]K [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]
UTG Checks.
MP-2 bets 4,000 (Pot is now 9,600)

UTG???

[ChrisV]

Shove I guess, if you call and check turn you might allow him to check behind and find a fold with something like KQ on the river. The only positive to flat calling is trying to get him to hit a set if he just has mid pair or something, but that doesn't seem like it's going to happen very often.

[Fantam]

I think that UTG's pf bet was too big. 3x or 4x the BB should have been enough to prevent there being a lot of callers.

I also would have preferred to lead with a bet on the flop. I would not have liked to see MP2 check behind with a possible draw to a straight.

I would have bet 4,000 (the same size as MP2's subsequent bet), which was between 2/3 to 3/4 the size of the pot.

Anyway, as played I would now go all in. Its more likely that you have the best hand than that MP2 has AA or KK.

MP2 could have bet with say AK,AQ, or QQ, which you beat.

For the above range of hands, you are ahead of 27 comb. and behind 6 comb.

So, I would push. You dont want to call and allow MP2 to outdraw you if you have the better hand.

[KStV]

Thanks for your replies. I was the novice UTG player, I did go all-in, and MP-2 called with AK. My set held up, but I didn't love my line and I knew there were some problems with it.

I guess I chose such a high pre-flop bet because JJ has been a trouble hand for me and I wanted to discourage a re-raise. I also hated my position.

When the flop came, I knew I had to assign some likelihood to his holding AA or KK. I checked rather than bet because I thought I might get some additional information about his hand. As soon as he bet, I realized that I learned absolutely nothing [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]. It could have been a c-bet (likely), semi-bluff (reasonably likely) or even a stone-cold bluff (unlikely, but not out of the question after my check).

I convinced myself that he didn't have AA or KK because he probably would have re-raised pre-flop with those hands, particularly given the fact that there were 7 players still left to act. But I knew I didn't do myself any favors by giving him an option on a free card, and reading your post makes me realize that the wrong turn card (of which there were a bundle) would put me in the position of praying for a check-down.

Maybe I'll self-impose a moratorium on CRAI until I've learned how to properly use it [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img].

[PantsOnFire]

Couple of points:

What was your plan if MP2 had re-raised you? What if MP2 called and somebody behind re-raised all-in? When your answer to these questions is fold, then bet less preflop. If the answer is go all-in, then your bet is okay. However, keep in mind what others think about the size of your preflop bets in past when you showed down (or even when you didn't show down).

On the flop, you are losing to three specific hands, AA, KK and QT. Fortunately, two of those hands likely would have re-raised and the other folded so the chance of them are less than usual. You have a very good chance of having the best hand.

The pot is 5600 and you have 8500 chips left. Your goal is to get all your chips in the pot with MP2 coming along. A check is a very bad way to go about this. You have to be very certain he is going to bet. And even if he does bet, your CRAI might scare him off. There is no point in just calling his bet because you will be committed to the pot no matter what turn card comes.

This comes down to image as well. Most people raise pf and then bet the flop, especially if it looks like it hit them. A bet here by you is not particularly suspicious and is almost expected. The check by you on the flop is very suspcicious to me. It indicates something big or TT or 99. I would have definitely checked behind with AK.

MP2 is going to be very happy with most AT+, KJ and perhaps even QJ, TT or KT depending how loose he is. Any of those hands can beat you on the turn. If he has crap like 66 or T9, you likely won't get any more out of him.

As played, you simply push all-in to his flop bet. You are ahead most of the time here so get it in.

Keep this in mind for the future. In this position, if you check the flop, you need to be very sure that villain is aggressive enough that he will bet 95% of the time. And when you do check, you sole intention is to CRAI.

As well, when you want to slowplay like this, think of all the cards on the turn that could come up and you would puke. Teh flip side of that is also a group of cards that villain won't like and you won't get him to call any bets.

So when slowplaying remember that while there are cards that might make villain a better second best hand that you can milk, there are also cards that can come up where villain will be scared off the hand and you have just slowplayed yourself into winning a small pot.