Archive Pick: Facing a stop and go from a weak player, NL MTT

DailyHandQuiz

Game type: $100 One rebuy, one addon, 6 max
Stage of tourney: Middle stages
Your image: Aggressive
Opponent’s image: Weak
Your hand: A♣Q♣

This hand is from our archives. View the original quiz and comments here

The setup: You’ve been very aggressive in this 6 max tournament and have a solid stack to show for it. Your opponent has been playing a pretty weak game, making lots of small raises and surrendering when pressured. This hand he raises to 3x and you decide to 3 bet with AQ. The table folds and your opponent thinks for a bit and then flats. The flop comes:

6♥7♦6♦

Your opponent tanks and then shoves all in for a little under 3k. The pot is right about 7700. What’s your play?

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5 COMMENTS (Jump to comment form)

DHQ Staff

What we said then Very few players with this stack and this image will flat JJ – KK in this spot. Some might do it with aces some of the time, but generally this flat is legitimately weak and made with a hand that wants to see a flop, like KQs, AJs, 99, AQ, etc.

So, you’re getting 2.5-1. How is AQc doing against that sort of range with two cards to come? I set the range at AA,TT-55,AQs-AJs,KJs+,AQo+. I include AA just to compensate for the fact that a weak player is a little more likely to be shoving with a pair here than with missed overcards. Against that range you’re a 2-1 dog and you certainly have the chips to spare, so I don’t mind a call.

Given the uncertainty about your opponent, a fold probably isn’t terrible, but calling and winning will give you a monster stack at this point, while calling and losing still leaves you having the table comfortably covered.

What actually happened: You called and your opponent showed AQ. You split the pot.

[Reply]

kaimano

The delayed shove looks like – I hope you fold but if you call I’m not dead. This can be two overcards, a middle pocket pair or a flush draw. Against this range, my AQ has better than 2.5 to 1, so I call

[Reply]

Richard P

The pot odds and our stack make this an easy call and I would think we’re more often ahead here anyway with opp playing something like AJ- KQ as would assume that JJ-88 would normally check to call off their stack in this spot having less than a pot sized bet behind and AA-QQ would have shoved pre. But then if playing weak-scared they may want to protect their hand and prevent us from checking behind and hitting a potential 6 outer and happy to pick up the pot. Whatever just call it.

[Reply]

John Kugelman

Snap call. I do not fold given those pot odds.

[Reply]

Loki

Not only are the pot odds great, I have never in my life seen a weak player online not go all-in with TT-AA pre-flop, especially when short stacked (even a bad player knows what that means). Bad players don’t play that much, and a high pocket pair is like solid gold to them. The ONLY hand I would be afraid of here is AK, but I think he/she would have shoved with that too.

In retrospect, AQ is the best I would have expected. I think normally you pull this down with a higher kicker.

[Reply]