Queens facing open shove, NL MTT

DailyHandQuiz

Game type: Poker Stars Sunday Million
Stage of tourney: ITM, 42 / 7176 remain
Avg stack: 1.7 m
Your image: Possibly tilty
Opponent’s image: No strong read
Your hand: Q♦Q♥

The setup: You might look a little steamy to the table – you’ve played a couple of pots recently and been forced to lay down each time after showing strength. You had legitimate hands every time, but since you didn’t go to showdown, no one knows that.

This time you pick up QQ EP. You raise to about 2.5x and the table folds to the BB, who re-raises you a bit over 3x your total bet. You flat call. The flop isn’t the best:

K♠9♦9♥

Your opponent open shoves. They have you covered, so the actual pot size is about 2.8 million. What’s your play?

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5 COMMENTS (Jump to comment form)

Morat

3betting an EP raiser – steamy or not – is rarely light. BB must have had some legitimate hand here before the flop, like AQ+, JJ+ at the widest, but honestly I’d discount AQ, JJ. Unfortunately the latter are the only hands we beat here. We have to be ahead here 33% of the time, but I think we’re far worse than that.

Also, the good thing about steamy players is that they can’t accept being likely behind in a series of hands, so they call often when they are behind. What V does seems to be the best play to valuetown someone on tilt.

Fold.

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Pirate21

You know…. I think this is pretty close.
I can see V making this play with TT+, AT+. We’ve folded a to pressure a couple times previously which may even open his range a little more.
Really we have to be worried about AA and any K (hard to see him having a 9 here). If V doesn’t figure us for those hands, he can be making a play here knowing it’s hard for us to call.
I voted fold because it’s the rest of our chips and we don’t have a strong read on V (why not this late in tourney??) but I don’t have much problem with those who vote call.

[Reply]

samo

I’m with the folders.

I believe Hero call p/f exhibited extreme control for a tilting player holding QQ … not saying that is good or bad. As such, I think that could be read as a sign of strength, indicating V is shoving while ahead the majority of the time.

I think AK pops-up here most of the time, as V has ruled-out AA since Hero did not 4-bet p/f. No read on the V, so I’d give credit.

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Anonymous

allin pre

[Reply]

general johnson jameson

What are we beating here? AJ, AQ, JJ, JT. TT-. I have a hard time thinking these are gonna show up often, if at all. The hefty 3 bet of our EP raise, especially when he is going to be playing out of position is a good sign of strength. Can’t imagine this entire hand is being done with rags. He doesn’t have AA or KK here, I don’t think he would put max pressure on us to fold this early with a super safe board. To my gut, it feels like he didn’t want to take his AK out of position, and needed more information about our hand, he rather would have ended it right there preflop, but instead we called, which 1) tells him we don’t have AA or KK and 2) we have given up control of the hand. So when his AK hits on the flop, he knows he’s good all day long. His shove is understandable… He’s still giving us 2:1 on our money for a call if we’re worse, which is a tasty price, and he isn’t afraid of anything. He has no problem with a call. Like I said his AK is good all day long because we didn’t 4 bet, and his open shove before us might help get us to fold our AK in case we have it too and get us off a chop so he can scoop, if that’s what he is putting us on. I think the story is legit, we aren’t beating anything here, and he isn’t joking.

Let’s fold here. We are still the 5th stack at the table, with an M over 10. Calling is too risky. It sucks we are on a heater and none of it is holding up, but remaining cool headed is a virtue and the patience will pay off eventually. We don’t need to go nuts with QQ here.

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