Thrust and Parry

[Nate.]

$1k WSOP ME satellite on FTP. Roughly halfway through. Blinds 80-160 with an ante.

MP, a tight good regular, makes it 380. At least one excellent player is in the blinds. I call two seats behind him with AQo. The others fold and leave me heads-up with MP.

I just moved to this table. We don't have too much history from previous tournaments and I think I'm more or less unknown, if not a completely unfamiliar screen name, to him.

MP and I both have roughly 6k. The pot is roughly 1100.

Flop KTTr. He bets 480 and I minraise.

--Nate

[registrar]

Nice post. I reserve this move for players who think I'm an idiot and other quite specific spots. Oresumably, you fold if he raises and go 2/3 pot if he calls and checks the turn?

What PP's do you expect him to continue with? What are the worst/best turn cards?

[Nate.]

Registrar --

Thanks for the comments.

I'm not quite sure what pairs he calls with. I'm fairly sure that he will mix it up with some of them (folding sometimes and calling sometimes, etc.)

After my minraise, if he calls, there will be roughly 3k in the pot with 4.5k left to bet. If he checks a blank turn to me I will follow through with a bet sometimes but not all the time. The size will depend on the turn card (and I'll also mix it up).

One thing about this hand is that if he 3bets me, folding is no huge loss because I'm probably drawing to four or zero outs.

One tricky thing about this hand is that I think, but am not sure, that minraising is better than raising more. (In a vacuum, at least.)

Any more thoughts, anyone?

--Nate

[UpstateMatt]

Nate:

Did you consider a reraise PF, or is that insane against this opponent in this situation?

I agree that you will fold to a 3bet. One point: many agressive players will 3bet {JJ, 77-99} here, i think. Especially if your minraise is interpretted as a probe from a similar underpair hand, no?

In those cases you actually had 10 outs. Don't think that changes much, but it's in there.

I remember FoxwoodFiend once weighing in strongly against a minraise bluff in a similar situation because it might lead you to getting blown off a hand that you otherwise would have liked to continue with. It's not clear to me that you want to continue here without raising, but is a call outrageous? Is this TAG likely to make continuation bets here with AQ, AJ, 88, etc, such that you can realistically float and take this away when he checks the turn?

I'm interested in your motives for minraising as opposed to a full raise. It seems to me that the minraise line is bad if he wants to get stubborn with medium pairs. Those are the hands we are targeting here, no?

Do you think opponent is going all the way here with AK, or can he be pushed off that with a full raise or min-raise with follow-up turn bet?

Finally, what do you estimate your chances of actually having the best hand here are? Is AJ or QJ even remotely possible? Did you consider that a K might bring you the best hand if he's holding an underpair?

looking forward to your responses.

matt

[shaundeeb]

nate I think raising more may scare him that you are shoving the turn, your minraise looks more like you don't have a plan for future streets which may be good as he will interpret it as you want money going in no matter how bad the bet sizes will be.