Considering a three bet with a weak king, NL MTT

DailyHandQuiz

Game type: $100 1R 1A, PokerStars
Stage of tourney: Moving toward money
Your image: TAG
Opponent’s image: Strong regular
Your hand: K♥9♥

The setup: You’ve got a playable but quickly shrinking stack in this $100 1r 1a tournament when the following hand comes up.

The table folds to the button, a solid regular, who makes it 3x to go. The blinds are set to go up next hand.

What’s your play?

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9 COMMENTS (Jump to comment form)

Sunshine

Comes down to shove or fold in my book. Chose fold, mainly because you’ve got the button next hand. The TAG part of this guy’s description factors largely into the decision I think. You’re not so hot even against just a weak ace, and he’s going to call a shove, TAG or not, for less than 10M and his current stack (win or lose this hand he’s going to remain the big stack at the table) size.

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That Dude Reply:
October 28th, 2009 at 11:30 pm

You raise!..how much?…ALL IN……. as stated the button player is a regular and knows your a tight aggressive player and he is most likely raising any two cards taking advantage of your tightness in hopes he can take down the pot preflop. Also, if he is a regular he will know the tourny is getting near the money and notice a lot of ppl tightening up with fear of being knocked out before they make the money. A regular will take advantage of this and use this time to build his chip stack in order to make a serious run at the money and making a final table. You as well should notice this and be looking to double up and start making your self a threat in this tourny especialy when you are less then 20x. Knowing all this, I feel the correct move would be to shove in hopes to get the bb to fold and the button as well. By pushing here, you now have two ways to win a an important pot here 1. everyone folds and you take it down right there or 2. you do get called and in this situation you will probably most likely be in a coinflip situation heads up with one opponent (which is perfectly ok! given that you need to gamble here in order to get back into this tournament and get to that final table!) K9s is a good enough hand here to push given this situation, it is very unlikely your opponent holds a monster because he would most likely try to slow play it against your tag immage, so you can safely put him on a hand that would most likely be a coinflip in a heads up pot with you which he will most likely know being he is a regular and he will not want to take the chance given that you still have enough chips to hurt his stack and he can can fold here with still a decent stack to work with for further hands. By doing this your giving yourself two chances to win the pot here and need to make a move in order to make it to a final table (which is what you should be shooting for and where all the money is at!…no point in playing for 3hrs to make only double your entry fee back by just barely making the money). Push my friends…push, its time to make a move before the blinds and antes eat you alive!

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Rowdy

The problem here vs a reg is that he may well of anticipated a reraise from the two stacks in front of him given how many chips they’ve got, and if so if he had worse hand than K9 he may well shove rather than 3x raise and invite the reraise on himself, especially if he intends to call the reraise anyway. It makes me think he may have a good hand.

I still voted to shove though, simply because with our stack size we need to gamble and cannot afford to be so picky. So All-in then, even though I’m not entirely happy about it.

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Tony

Borderline Shove or fold, and I’m in favor of a shove because any reg’s opening range from that spot is much wider, and I believe you do have enough chips to get the player to fold alot of hands.

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meh

I think this is a classic borderline case. I’ve both shoved or folded in these situations many times. An M of 5.5 makes this one especially problematic. Shove and get called and beaten by A9, or fold this and shove in the cutoff later with K5o when you’ve failed to get a decent opportunity for 2 orbits and get insta-called by 2 players. All told, I prefer the shove.

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catcher

I too shove. If you’re up against a real hand, tough luck – pray and hope to suck out. That said, competent player’s opening range from button in a situation like this would be wide open, so our equity is not that bad and we MIGHT even get a fold.

Also, with blinds going up next hand we have pretty much lost all that little fold vig that we do have at the moment, while taking down this pot will get us back to the point where we can at least threaten to do some damage.

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phillycoach

you have to fold in this spot praying and hoping dont help you here to much he has to know if you have a a playable hand due to your stack you are shovin and he is trying to intice you to do so with that bet and why gamble with k9 when you are gettin close to the money find a better spot in position

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catcher Reply:
October 28th, 2009 at 4:41 pm

Yes, but it is no way certain that you WILL find a better spot. Next hand your M is below 5 and you will have a deep stacked player in BB/SB for two hands. We will have to make a stand in the next orbit, as if we go through another round of blinds we’ll be on a life support. This may well be our only chance to get money in with some fold vig, or at least see all 5 cards heads up.

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catcher Reply:
October 28th, 2009 at 4:48 pm

Also, what would be YOUR opening range from button with an M of 20+ vs. two shortstacked blinds when nearing the bubble? Would you fold suited connectors, ragged aces and low pocket pairs or put in a standard 3x raise?

Of course, V may well have AK/AA/KK/QQ that they raise 3x with in order to entice us coming over the top – and then we’re in a horrible shape. I just figure that a strong regular would use their stack in a spot like this and raise pretty wide – at least I believe it would be a correct thing to do.

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