Straight draw facing heat, NL MTT

DailyHandQuiz

Game type: PokerStars Sunday Million
Stage of tourney: 7 / 7600 remain
Avg stack: 11.2m
Your image: Solid
Opponent’s image: A little aggressive
Your hand: A♠Q♥

The setup: You’ve made it to the final table of the Poker Stars Sunday Million. You have a pretty healthy stack and a solid image when the following hand comes up.

You are dealt AQ UTG and you raise to 3x the BB. The table folds to the BB, who calls. You whiff the flop:

8♦J♥4♥

The BB checks and you check behind. The turn brings you an open-ended straight draw:

T♦

The BB leads for 2m. The money jump from 7th to 6th is 10k. What’s your play?

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4 COMMENTS (Jump to comment form)

samo

Interesting spot, as I could see cases for either call or raise. I’m really surprised at the number of ‘fold’ voters.

Raising would be strong as we could have floated the flop and are now coming hard, representing QQ+ or even a set. The raise should be large enough to put the V at risk. Problem is that we may be behind. Hero does have a solid image however, and a potential 14 outs.

We haven’t any info on the V hand. KJ, J10, A10, pr/draw, and draws are among the holdings. V is leading into solid UTG raiser who has twice as many chips, so at this stage of the tourney I’m thinking chip preservation – call & eval river.

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Groundhog day

With only 6 clean outs I fold and wait for a better spot. I would have cbet the flop but maybe that’s why I never find myself at the ft of the Sunday million.

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_CityBorn_

definite fold, we have no idea where we are at, he could be strong and tried to trap or check raise. by checking behind we gave away our weakness also. highly doubtful after raising pre, we’d check behind heads up with anything other than a monster, but the board is draw heavy so even that doesnt make sense….wed be more likely to c-bet and hope it looks like a c-bet to get some action.

also, the number of outs is small, and questionable. making a straight could make a flush for opp, 9 kills the action, ace or queen could make two pair or straight for opp. etc etc. just too messy. we’re playing a solid game, keep it that way and dont spew here.

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Morat

Our number of outs can vary between 6 and 14. 6 is a bit funny, it happens only if V exactly has Th8h or Jd4d – two pair drawing to a flush. 14 is a bit optimistic probably. I’d say we have like 9-11 outs, let’s count w/ 10.
After declining to cbet our agressive opponent bet the turn OOP. What a suprise, he must have a set! Or more likely he bets 100% of his range here.

Fold is unimaginable. We have a hand and the stack to play here, so we don’t have to send the message to the table, that if we raise UTG we’ll check flop and give up on the first sign of pressure.

The major question is wether it’s better to call and call river if any of our 14 outs hit, or raise right here. We have the implied odds to play it passively, but we might get in trouble since we don’t know which of our outs are alive, and we might get bluffed by pure air on a brick river. And there’s the chance that we won’t get payed if V’s drawing and he misses.

I like raise better. If we raise we won’t fold but we don’t want a call, so it’s a push basicly. It has to make V fold 55% of the time if we are behind, so I think it’s a slightly +EV push, considering that V can easily be behind here. But what makes raising better for me are the following:
1) Send a message to the table, that we can’t be pushed out easily.
2) Send a message, that we’re not neccessarily weak, if we don’t cbet. (w/o showdown)
3) Send a message, that we’re not afraid to gamble, so don’t try to push around w/ crap. (w/ showdown).
4) If we get called and loose we’re going to bwe in tough spot, but we are not eliminated at least.
5) V will have a hard time calling w/ mediocre hands, since he has to consider the ladder.

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