
Game type: $150 freezout no limit tournament, FTP
Stage of tourney: Mid stages
Your image: Tight
Opponent’s image: Very bad
Your hand: K♥Q♥
The setup: You’re sitting on a shrinking but still playable stack in this 150 freezeout tournament when the following hand comes up. You get dealt KQs in the SB and the table folds to the button, who open shoves for 40BBs.
You quickly look up the stats for the button, who has been playing a little goofy. You see that he’s got a massively negative ROI over a pretty large sample – he’s lost tens of thousands of dollars playing MTTS.
What’s your play?
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This is a pretty easy fold against most opponents – it’s a lot of chips, but there’s not much added to the pot. You’re rarely dominating your opponent and generally in race situations, which isn’t really where you want to be when you’re calling off chips.
However, against a weak opponent, I think you add a lot of hands that you are dominating to your opponent’s range – lots of rag kings and queens are suddenly in there.
I don’t know that this becomes a snap call because of your opponent – you’re still only a slight favorite against a range like 99-22,AQs-A7s,K7s+,Q9s+,AJo-A7o,K7o+,Q9o+,JTo. However, you are getting to the point stack-wise where either you’re going to have to start running good or take a marginal EV situation, and this might be one of the better opportunities for a double up that you’re likely to see.
I probably flip a coin or something and then talk myself into calling because I’m silly like that.
What actually happened: You called and the button showed K9. You held up to win the hand.
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He’s a bad player and I’m on his left. I like my position and so I fold this marginal situation
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I’d like to know something about the BB. Because as the short stack he has to be ready to move and if we enter the pot he’s getting a nice spot to triple up. If the BB comes in as well and wins the main pot, our side pot against player G (if we win) will only increase our stack by about the same as a stolen pre-flop pot of blinds and antes, for which we’re risking our entire tournament.
Of course, we could win the lot as well, but with KQ in this spot a call here seems like plain old gambling to me.
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I think a call is a bad play here. KQs is a drawing hand,and you still have a playable stack with a bad player on your right.
A fold here is correct.
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I voted fold. A weak player can over-bet a monster as well. The hero has little invested here and will have a chance(s) at the weak villain later. Additionally, the BB awaits and we have no read on them.
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I voted call. Playing a lot of small buy-in online MTT’s has taught me that doubling up off bad players who are too focused on “stealing the blinds” is a necessary evil. He’s accumulated one of the biggest stacks at the table somehow, and this is a prime spot to show him he’s getting too big for his britches. Personally I’d rather be holding A10+ here, this looks like a bad player with a stack trying to swing it with a marginal hand so he doesn’t get outplayed on the flop.
That said, this is a gamble. The other day, in the money of a $10 buy in tourney on stars, a bad player open shoved from the CO with a huge stack and I called from the button with AK, knowing full well I had him dead to rights. He turned over KQ and spiked a river queen to cripple me. But i’ll take that race every time.
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Easy fold. Why would his track record as a player give us any more incentive to make a suspect call for all our chips? –in fact its the opposite, it means we should fold and use our position against him at every future opportunity. You want to use skill against bad players, not bring yourself to their level….pushing all your chips in and hoping.
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CityBorn nailed it. The fact that he’s so terrible and you have position on him means you need to keep it small. You can consistently whittle his stack away throughout the course of play. What you don’t want is to get it all in preflop when you really don’t know where you stand. Put your skill to good work; fold and prepare to steal his chips later.
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Um….was noone paying attention. This is a BAD player. Whittling will not work. You don’t have a deep enough stack to whittle. However you got to your current status matters not. The fact that you know what this person has preflop (certainly not AA, KK, or AK) you can gamble. I call…and laugh.
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I remember losing this hand. Staff fail to mention that my K9 was SOOOTED, giving me a huge flush draw.
And I’m not a bad player – I just get bored…
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I agree with the callers. The guy may be poor, but not dumb enough to go all in with a monster when he stands in 3rd place. I don’t think I am dominated here, and he is likely to be stealing with a playable hand (but not a complete bluff)
As such, I am happy knowing I am a slight favorite most of the time, plus there are going to be some hands where I am dominating.
Short stack or not, when you are place 6 of 9 at some point you are going to have to choose a hand to play, and this looks like an opportunity as good as any.
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Fold, if he’s as wild as we think he is we’ll have other opportunities to take him on. We shouldn’t reward a bad player for his wildness by making a bad call.
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Id wait for a better spot to out play him after the flop
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I’d easily call here if I’m willing to take a risk cuz I know donkeys like that are only thinking at the 1st level. He/she is only thinking about the BB and has forgotten you’re still in the hand. BB has enough to make play a little awkward with a marginal hand…button doesn’t want to play postflop (but would feel comfortable with A, high kicker, other stronger hands). Therefore my instinct right away is that button has a marginal hand that either I am beating slightly or have dominated. I’d give myself 65% over a range of potential hands.
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