Top pair on monochrome board, PokerStars Sunday Million

DailyHandQuiz

Game type: Poker Stars Sunday Million
Stage of tourney: In the money
Avg stack: about 500k
Your image: Aggressive
Opponent’s image: A little desperate
Your hand: A♦9♥

Thsi hand is taken from actual gameplay in the PokerStars Sunday Million between pbdrunks and Big Pig 63. You’ll be standing in for pbdrunks

The setup: You’re deep in the Sunday Million when the following hand comes up. You’re dealt an offsuit A9. Three players fold and you raise to 2.5x the BB. The table folds the the BB, who makes it about 75k more to go. You call and flop top pair:

T♥4♥A♥

The BB open shoves for about pot. He’s been pretty aggressive and seems a little tilty. What’s your play?

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8 COMMENTS (Jump to comment form)

DHQ Staff

The preflop call is questionable, but the flop play seems pretty straightforward. You’re probably up against a better heart or a better pair, but you’re rarely up against both. Either way, you’re getting a decent price to call and you’ll have a decent stack remaining if you lose what amounts to a slightly +EV call by most calculations.

What actually happened: pb called and Big Pig 63 showed KT with the Kh. Big failed to improve and pb won the pot.

[Reply]

Andrew

Flop call is automatic, this isn’t really worthy of being called a hand quiz. Call preflop is a pretty awful play. All-in would be better, although fold is best. It is frustrating how I play right into tilters’ hands by making “correct” folds like this.

[Reply]

mes

I agree with the staff’s conclusion, but think it is a little harder than they think. While the two possible hands that they think you are up against, a better heart or a better pair, both have very positive equity; they ignore the possibility of being up against a better pair with a better heart or against a made flush. The equity on the latter two is quite negative. Against a aggressive player I would agree with the staff – because it is more likely that he has one of the first two hands. If the opponent was tight I would guess that he has one of the latter hands and fold.

[Reply]

...

Flop call is really an automatic move here… I mean what did you hope would happen after you call the pf raise? That you flop quads? Or that the opponent open-folds? You connected with the flop and although it may indeed be that neither your pair nor the draw is good here but this is what you get for calling with A9… anyway, for that price you can’t fold here.

[Reply]

tzilla

Fold preflop donkey

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Mary

I wouldnt be the A9 from the middle raise.
That being said (perhaps the cat stepped on the raise button) with only a comparably small stacked BB as a taker I could call the BB’s preflop raise. With any kind of a connection I would call his all in here.

[Reply]

Chad Gerson

Call. Yeah you may be outkicked and he may have a better heart draw or a gutshot that hits without making the flush, but I think most of the time this is a coin flip at worst. You can easily survive losing the hand and if you win you are going to have the rest of the table wetting their pants.

[Reply]

Paul McGreevy

The preflop play with A9 is fine with a 30 odd BB stack. You have the chips to keep active to take down pots and generate action for your good hands. The BB is gambling with a stop and go, he min raises to suck you in but he’s obviously committing all his chips preflop and will be getting it in on the flop no matter what comes. A9o is not strong enough to call preflop but as the call is made connecting with the ace is all you can ask for, the villain doesn’t care whats on the flop. Easy call

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