With 6 players left at the final table, the following hand came up, and I was looking for input:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, t1000/t2000/t100 (6 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx

Button (t7528)
SB (t43524)
BB (t23657)
Hero (t87495)
MP (t43115)
CO (t64681)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with [Qc], [Kd].
Hero raises to t8000, 3 folds, SB raises to t14000, 1 fold, Hero calls t6000.

Flop: (t28400) [Qh], [Jh], [Ts] (2 players)
SB checks

SB has 29424 left. He wasn't at my table before the final table, and I didn't have reads on him yet.

Your move.

It's definitely worth a bet... But, any reasonable bet constitues more than 30% of his stack (and thus pot commits him), so I would just go and put him all in.

Bet 29423. If he goes all-in over the top, fold, he must have you beat.

Seriously though, just put him all in.

I go all-in here.

Ugh, can't get away from it now. Go ahead and move in.

Does this mean that you think I should have played it differently earlier? Or that you don't like feeling committed to the pot here?

Nah, your pre-flop play was fine IMO. I just never really like being minimum raised pre-flop, having to call, and then seeing a flop which could put me in a position where I can't really fold but could still easily have the 2nd best hand.

What do you guys think about checking here, and calling if he goes all-in on the turn? Our check could induce him to do this with a hand like 99, AJ, A10, 88 etc. If he has a monster, like a set of jacks or something, or thinks it's a good idea to slowplay AA or KK here, maybe he will just bet small into us on the turn and river, which we will call and lose less on the turn and river if he doesn't move in.

Keep in mind we are never folding to an all-in at any point of the hand, we just have a chance to possibly save us some money if he's milking a monster and have a chance to get him to bluff his chips off by checking the flop. I think this is a legitimate option, but if anyone sees any key flaws in it, please let me know.

One flaw could be that we could let him catch a heart for a flush, but I doubt he'd be folding a heart draw to our all-in on the flop anyways, and he may even milk if he hits the flush and we lose less. The other problem I can see is if the board comes running hearts, and he has something like 9h 9d, then we've made a big mistake by not betting, but that isn't going to happen often.

He has marginal calling odds for the flush, make him pay for it...you want him to call, you win 2/3 of the time and have a great stack to control the table.

He's not going to have the flush draw very often. Also, you'd think he'd semi bluff all in with the flush draw if he had it. With that said, what's so bad about checking behind here? Also, what hand re-raises us preflop that flops a flush draw? Ah 9h? Kh 9h? Ah 10h? Kh 10h? I doubt it.

I was trying to put him on a range of hands here and had some difficutly (I don't reach this stage of a tournament with even this size of a prize pool very often).

There are some hands that are obvious to me, but I'm looking at some of the other hands you've listed (I frankly didn't consider 99, for instance), and I'm wondering if maybe my hand range is naive here.

I was thinking AJ-AA, KQ-KK, QQ, JJ, TT, AT-AKs, KJs (maybe?), KQs.

But am I off base here?

It depends on your opponent obviously, but in these small buy-in tournaments I have seen a ton of re-raises preflop with small, and middle pocket pairs. It doesn't make sense, but it happens.

the pot is huge and you have a good piece of it.

i wouldn't overthink this.

throw 30k in and see what happens.

Push. Even if you are currently losing the hand (ie. against pocket aces), you have a ton of outs to improve. You have lots of chips, so even if you lose this showdown should your opponent call, you are down some but definately not out.

This hand is more about chip stacks then actual cards. If you lose this hand, you are still in good chip position, If you win you have a dominating chip stack. if you push and are beat the worse out come still leaves you with plenty of chips. He may call with a worse hand becuase he feels committed to the pot.

Absent of reads, the check to induce a bluff here is not something I would do. If he checks, and you fire on the turn he will probably lay down a weaker hand then yours. But people seem to make more bad calls on the flop.

We don't look like we've hit a monster when we check behind on this flop, remember, we didn't have the lead preflop, he did. All our check behind on the flop would look like is trying to avoid a trap play, I think we can expect a good number of bluffs if the flop goes check check, I'm kinda dissapointed no one has looked more into this line. I suggested it, and expected people to look into it as a viable option, instead it was just tossed aside without good reason. I'm not saying it's necessarily the best option, but it deserves to be explored, as do all decisions that might seem "clear" at first.

I think the problem with checking behind here is not because you are worried that it makes it look like you are trapping with a monster, but because there are so many cards that could come on the turn that could kill your action. Any heart, 9, 8, A, or K. And with the last one, if you get action, there's a decent chance that you're beat since it is a good possibility the villain raised preflop with an A in his hand. Now, there is a possibility that any of those action-killing cards make it more enticing for the villain to bluff, but with anything but an A or a 9, you also have to consider the possibility that you just gave him a free card that made a better hand for him. Generally, I like to induce bluffs in situations where the hands the villain could improve to represent are still likely to be inferior to mine or unlikely enough to not really be credible, which isn't the case here.

Also, if you don't think you are capable of laying your hand down if another K falls, then you are better off betting here and charging your villain to draw to a likely gutshot (very likely he has an A here).

Good point about the cards that can kill action. If he does have an ace though, what does he have that we're ahead of? Did he really re-raise us out of position preflop with AJ or A10? If he has AQ or AK we're beat on the flop anyways, so we're not really giving a free card since he's ahead.

yes, good point, but i think this makes the decision even more clear-cut to push the villain in here rather than checking behind.

the likely hands that are ahead of us now are AQ, AK, and a set.
the villain would have pushed the set knowing that even if you hold a str8, a call by you still gives him the correct odds to fill up. if you don't have it yet, then it would be disastrous to give you a free card that could make a str8 on the turn. so i think we can discount a set. i also think that KK would've probably led out with a push banking on some FE and an OESD rather than giving up the lead and risk getting pushed out.

if he has AQ, then you have some fold equity right now.

if he has AK, the only likely hand that you are totally smoked against that would play this way, would you rather be drawing to a chop with 2 cards to come or 1 card to come?

if he has anything less than that, there are too many turn cards that will either make him a better hand or kill any action you could've gotten.

I'm not sure how much fold equity I have on AQ when he's put a third of his stack in preflop and has hit top pair, top kicker with the gutshot draw to the nut straight. I'd say this is especially true if he has the ace of hearts for the backdoor nut flush draw. Especially given the buy-in level.

I'm kind of intrigued at the direction this has taken a bit. I certainly hadn't thought through some of this.

Can we get some results?

Yeah, if he has AQ it is true you don't have a whole lot of fold equity. But does it get better or worse on the turn? I'd say worse since you've already shown weakness, and also if another heart falls and villain's holding the redraw to the nut flush. Plus, if he calls, you have better chances to make your outs (7 of them - 3 Aces and 4 Nines) with 2 cards to come rather than 1.

This is all assuming that you're not folding this hand. If you're considering the possibility of folding, then it's probably best to check behind and check/fold the turn unimproved.

If you really want to know, I hadn't looked at his stack size and bet half the pot. He pushed, and I called, and he flipped over AK (no hearts).




I don't think I can fold this hand.

Except for the absolute worst case of AK, I've got a lot of outs to win and/or split the pot, and effectively, even if he had pushed, the pot would be laying me 2:1. I think the number of odds I have against any reasonable range of his is too many to fold this hand on the flop.

On the turn, I might be able to fold, depending on what comes, I suppose, but I'm not sure I should be looking to.

I guess that's what I had been trying to figure out with this hand...

I'm guessing he sticks his stack in at some point even if we check behind on the flop. But if he doesn't we lose less chips with that line by just checking or calling anything he bets, he may think we're weak and try milk bets instead of big ones. I kinda like the check behind line, but I think it depends on your opponents range. But, since this is a Stars $4 180 man, I don't think the check behind line is as good. If this was a larger buy-in tournament, people will only be re-raising you preflop with a select number of hands, all of which hit that flop hard.

I think the only modification I would make to the check behind line if we did decide to use it, is that if another heart rolls off on the turn, even if he checks to us again then we have to make him pay and bet.

I don't think any line where you fold is any good.