Battle of the blinds, deep in the Sunday Million

Game type: Poker Stars Sunday Million Tournament, $530 buy in
Your image: TAG
Stage of tourney: 31 of 2919 remain
Avg stack: ~950k
Misc notes:
Your hand: K♠J♣

This hand is taken from actual game play in the Sunday Million on 5/27 between Mamzer and Jovial Gent. You will be standing in for Mamzer.

The setup: You’ve made a deep run in the Sunday Million. 31 remain, and the money jumps about $1200 when you hit 27th.

Preflop. the table folds around to you – probably the first hand in several orbits where the table has folded to the blinds preflop. You have a solid hand with KJo and you decide to mix it up and double the blind. The BB calls and the flop comes

9♣A♣Q♠

You follow up with a bet of 90k into about 140k. Your opponent thinks for a bit and then calls. The turn improves your hand significantly with the J♦.

There’s about 320k in the middle, and it’s your action. What’s your play?

4 COMMENTS (Jump to comment form)

Valelrie

I would check planning to fold. JJ is not that strong on this deal.
hugs, valerie

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jon w

awful lot of possible hands out there, the j that supposedly improved my hands could easily be a fourth straight card, and my jack is fourth to the board. what do we think he’s calling with that doesn’t beat jacks exactly?

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jon w

oh yeah, also, re the above, i have a congenital problem where i confuse the word “third” with “fourth”

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Ally

I’m really not sure I like the way we played this hand from the start… First as to how we’ve played it so far…

1) A SB minraise is so awful here. The blinds and antes are huge, so why minraise a pot against the bigstack BB that he is going to have incredible pot odds to play? He’s going to have to put in 30k in chips into a pot of over 100k in chips? You’re pricing him in at over 3-1? I think you have a couple of options which are better here. You could limp here. Limping isn’t terrible is it? You could make something more like a standard raise. Maybe jack it up to $100k or so. Or, you could shove. A shove might be a little bit of an overkill since you’re not really too short and you’re risking your entire stack. If your villain here wakes up with a big pair or AK, you’re in bad shape. I think I like a limp here.

On the flop, I think we could do a better job of defining our hand. Having raised preflop (hopefully more than a minraise), we should at least be given credit for a weak ace or a pocket pair. Let’s represent that ace with something closer to a pot sized bet. If we now face resistance, we can figure that we’re beat.

On the turn, I really don’t like our options. Staff mentions that the J is a good card for us, but I don’t see how. If we were behind on the flop, we’re still behind. And, with the J, two straights have just been completed. Sure, we’ve still got a gutshot draw for the nuts, and another J gives us trips, but I don’t even like a K to help us here since that completes another straight. So, with one card to come and us needing just a few cards to make a hand here, I’m going to just try to get out of the hand as quickly and painlessly as possible. I like a check/fold here.

How I would have played it…

Limp preflop. Bet pot on the flop. Check/fold the turn. I know, it’s weak, but my hand is not that strong. I lose pretty much the minimum here. And, if someone is going to float us enough because of our weak play, they’re going to pay us off large for that mistake in the future because next time, I may hold AJ when I limp in this same spot.

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