Do I fold pocket 10Â’s pre flop or shove in this awkward spot.
I was deep in a live tournament with a bounty format. The blinds are 25k/50k and we are down to 36 of 1090. My table just broke and I moved into a feature table on the live stream with most of the table I have not played against. My chip stack is 1.3M and 3 stacks similar to my stack, 4 around 600K, and one short stack. The UTG player 5x raised 250k with an almost identical stack of 1.3M and I am in UTG+1 with pockets 10s. I call because I felt UTG range at 5x narrowed the range down to JJ, QQ, and AK with occasional AA or KK playing this way. I felt stuck because if I 3 bet I may price myself in because of his big opening size and if I shove I could be dominated. My decision was to flat, which now I feel may have been the worst decision as committing 20% of my stack was probably a bad call. The flop was 852 rainbow. My opponent leads for 300k and I called. The turn was a 3 and no flush draws available. He bets all in as we have close to identical stacks. After the stream was available for viewing I saw my opponent got me to fold to AK on the turn and to make matters worse I counted he had 10 outs, but with seeing all the dead cards due to the stream he still had 9 available if I had called. How should I play this spot late in tournaments as I never thought this was a fold in real time, but with the sizing and the fact the player was UTG with a tight range this made me rethink.
13 Replies
Even in tournaments with feature tables there is one immutable law.
Abnormally sized EP raises are 80% likely to be AK or JJ. They also indicate that we’re not playing against some GTO Wizard 😀
We’re 26BB deep and the correct response is hard to see.
We don’t have the stack to set mine, nor do we really have scope to raise fold,
Jamming seems extreme, given that JJ is a significant part of his range.
Folding feels somewhat puke.
Maybe we can flat and launch ourselves at any flop that favours our range?
As played, if we call flop I think we have to call turn.
I have to be honest, this spot is gross. I normally tag a 5x open as a scared hand like QQ, JJ, AK. In reality though, some older or mawgs will do this with kk or aa. It’s a really tough spot to read- also I’ve seen people
Open more than 3x with hands like small pocket pairs where they try to force the opponents out of playing their mid range hands like QJ etc,
Hmm as played- idk. Is it an old guy? I might exploit fold. Is it a black guy, flashy jewelry guy, young kid (all aggro types), I might call as they can spew AK here and we have an overpair. In spot, if you call- you can honestly just say hey I lost to an overpair- what am I supposed to do on a shallow stack?.
On what you said range was- I might just fold if it’s JJ+ AK+. You can 3! Super small here and see how they react? Idk this spot is so awkward. Also wouldn’t hate jamming pre as you have 26bb and don’t really have a ton of post flop play flatting a 5x,
My only thought is this spot is super awkward. It’s punty if you jam and run into an overpair, also sucks if AK or AQ is prolly worst hand you run into if you do jam.
Don't post results.
I think I would just fold pre to the 5x. It's not going to be a hand you dominate.
I will typically fold TT to a 5x preflop raise and probably 3-bet with JJ+. Unless the guy is always raising 5x (which happened exactly once in the 17 years I have been playing tournaments and I 3 bet jammed with KK and lost to A9o because I only had like 25 blinds and he couldn't fold).
You basically can't 3-bet here without jamming and you are very likely to get called by a UTG pre flop raiser. My standard 3-bet sizing would be 750k which is basically over 50% effective stack.
As played I might jam on the flop. We are ahead of AK/AQ (though that should occur a lot less than JJ). Because we weren't set mining as a result of the preflop raise size then our call means we think that AK is in a bit of the range of our opponent and the flop was excellent for our hand.
As played on the turn after calling the flop bet I think I would call the jam. If we fold we have 15 blinds and won't likely go deep. If we win the hand we will have over 50 bb's and we will go deep. In fairness I don't think I have ever been in this spot. The only time I remember a hand like this I folded TT on the flop but the flop bet sizing was pot sized and I thought he had JJ. He showed me his AK after I folded...
Thank you for the replies as I will look to fold most of the time preflop if I see this sizing from an UTG 5x raise. One poster asked about the player and I had no reads on him as it was only my second hand at the table and no history with him. As for appearance, which to me isn’t always accurate he was older white male who was probably retired who had a slight Southern draw in his voice. The one thing I missed until I rewatched the hand is he was really chewing his gum hard when I was pondering a call.
Given your description and given your read that the open indicated JJ+ and AK I agree with folding pre. If we think his range is wide enough that we can call pre then I think we just have to get it in on such a favorable flop for our hand with no over cards.
But the other problem with a preflop call is that we're UTG+1 so some percentage of the time one of the other players will wake up with a real hand and raise. So this makes me lean even more towards folding pre given that our hand vs just the opener's range is already marginal.
It's sick that you're on the feature table, and I think that makes it so much tougher to find a fold. You know people watching the stream will be critiquing your play. I think folding TT actually might be the correct response that a solver would come up with if you forced UTG to have to use that sizing. That's due to the huge sizing and ICM effects, but the donkeys watching the stream won't know that and will likely criticize you for the fold.
Don't beat yourself up. It's really tough to find a fold with such a strong hand in the moment. I once had a similar spot on a final table where my instincts were telling me to fold JJ in a spot you typically wouldn't fold it. I told myself folding would be way too nitty and exploitable given that my opponent was a pro. I ended up taking the half-measure of calling a similar 1/5 of my stack and went to the flop in position.
Then I saw it, the miracle AJx flop to give me middle set and bail me out. I happily got the money in...
Spoiler
And lost to AA for top set over my middle set
Ordinarily I am shoving unless I specifically have a sizing tell. You guys are saying that the 5x open utg is synonymous with an utg open an utg1 3b? I can drink to that.
A 5x open is always a sizing tell because it's a terrible size to open. No one's opening GTO ranges but then just 5xing their whole range.
I concur flatting here is no bueno. This is a jam/fold spot, and I think my jam range is probably JJ+, AK, if only because I do think this sometimes ends up being 99-TT and some big suited Ax that we dominate. But I'll concede JJ is probably super close.
As played, I actually don't hate exploit folding flop as a lot of villains who take this line are rarely going to barrel off with an unpaired hand and end up checking flop more than they should.
It's either jam or fold but without information on villain it's a pretty clear fold for 3 main reasons.
1) You know what the range is for UTG
2) There's still people to act other than UTG
3) You don't have any information
