
Game type: 109 PokerStars
Stage of tourney: Nearing bubble
Your image: TAG
Opponent’s image: Aggressive
Your hand: K♦J♠
The setup: You have a solid stack, but the blinds will start getting fearsome sooner than later. The hijack raises it preflop and you decide to flat. You flop two pair:
J♣5♦K♥
The BB checks, the raiser checks, and you decide to slowplay and check behind. The turn puts a flush draw out: 7♣.
Now the BB leads out for about half pot, and the hijack calls fairly quickly. The BB is a very aggressive player; the hijack seems a little loose but not terribly so.
What’s your play?
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lol @ slow-playin 2pr
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Anonymous Reply:
July 21st, 2010 at 11:24 pm
i hear that
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The problem is any appropriate raise leaves an awkward stack behind so the question becomes ship it or call now and ship the river…
I’m inclined to play it safe and shove it now. A 20k pot would essentially guarantee our making the money. I’d kill myself if I let a river flush get there not just because I’ve now lost the hand, but I’ve seriously jeopardized my ability to make the bubble.
Our flat/check/shove line turns our cards heads up, imo, and I don’t expect to get any callers unless a villain has unluckily stumbled into a lower 2pair.
I’m just not comfortable “slow playing” this further and allowing someone to draw out. If the stage of the tourney and stack sizes were different, I can see value in calling, but the nature of the situation makes it a shove for me.
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Continue to slowplay a little more…fold those f**king two pair!
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Raise.
Slowplaying only makes sense if you think turn and river may make your opponents improve, but not beyond your own hand.
(Many people think it works simply because “they won’t believe I have something”.)
Two-pair never fits this category, especially in a multiway, because there is often a pocket pair present and flush draws are a common danger.
I think a 3/4 pot raise is plenty though, I don’t see any hand that you can beat calling.
Should have bet the flop, obviously
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I would shove, but I bet the raiser will flip over a set of 7′s, and then I feel like a complete moron for slowplaying two pair.
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Hero’s slow-play induced another ~$10k in turn bets, so let’s take it and run with a shove. If stack sizes were comparable, I’d make a 3x raise.
Hero has tag image, so the shove may not appear desperate. Nevertheless, winning this pot will help get us to the $, so get it in now, and hope you get a loose call that misses the river.
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I think our stack size is pretty akward for a raise less than a shove. If we 3-bet to around $16k, we’re still giving either V ~3:1 to call. If they’re on some sort of combo draw, the price is good enough to call. Anything bigger than that and we’re committed anyway so we might as well get it in now.
We’re ahead of everything but the unlikely set and if one of them has a set right now, we’re probably losing our stack anyway.
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A few things that are kind of peculiar: first, if E is aggressive, its strange that he would raise and then check. The only check that might make sense is if he flopped a set, but with a KJ in our hand and on the board, KK JJ are highly unlikely… unless he hit a set of 55 or 77. But if he did, I don’t know why he would only call the turn with 2 players and a horrible looking board. BB could have the set, but on the turn he would bet a lot higher. all of this makes a good question: why are these guys putting more money into the pot, and why is aggressive E playing very passive. I’m guessing he has like 99 or TT, and gave up when it came 2 overs with 2 callers and just wants a showdown as cheap as possible. BB bet feels like a feeler, to see who is still interested and who isn’t. Half pot bet isn’t going to make anyone fold. I think E has some kind of middle pair, and I think BB could be on anything from a pair/combo draw to multi flush/straight draw. This leads me to think we have the nuts here. However, with a flush and 2 different straight draws on the board, we need to shut it down right now. It would be awesome to get some river value, but we have to take what we got right here. Any non-king club, A, Q, T, 9,8,6,4,3 or 5, or 7. These are all scare cards for us, which literally means we are scared of every single card in the deck except KJ. If a non-club duece hits we are for sure safe. haha.
Time to plug the leak and shove it all right now. Hopefully we get called by a draw that misses, or someone with a pair thinking we are full of it. we picked up an extra 2 bets with our idiotic slow play, and i’m convinced we have the stone nuts right now and would be great to get some river value, but it is very likely we won’t after the river card. shove and curtain call this thing right now.
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there are 2 major reasons why you have to end the hand here with a shove. 1) too much chance of getting outdrawn, multiway to the river with only 2 pair. 2) you wont get any more action from missed hands anyway, because with suspicious action, a bettor and multiple callers on the turn, all unimproved players will be wary.
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