Did hero play T3s correctly in this hand?

Given the tournament stage and description of villain, I might just fold pre.

I'm not real sure about the river. I don't think villain is gonna have a lot of 8x (88 is in there, maybe A8s, but I don't think they bet the flop at that size). I don't think he checks back KQ, a set, or even AJ on the turn either. That makes me think you could check/call because his betting range is likely to be bluff-heavy if he bets. I even think a villain like this checks back AJ or an overpair here with a 4-straight on board.

I guess you could also block-bet and see how he responds. Does this guy ever bluff?

Flop might be a fold to that sizing on a wet board. Check/reevaluate river.

I'm fine w pre and flop. Vil doesn't seem to either bet a wide range when checked to nor does he call off light either. I think I check call a small bet and fold to 50%+...

I agree folding pre is probably not that bad of an option, but I was confident I could outplay this player postflop given his old school style and likelihood of playing straightforwardly and folding to pressure if he misses/shows weakness. I also agree that he's rarely checking back with two pair or better on the turn, so his check absolutely caps his range at one pair on this blank river. I agree too that many OMC players are simply checking back top pair on this river.

Definitely he has very little 8x in his range. I just wanted to showdown my hand as cheaply as possible so as you suggested I did elect to blocker bet for around 25% pot. Do you think there's any merit to turning this hand into a bluff? This had been my intention if I missed the flop but I have some showdown with second pair.

This guy can bluff sure but like most OMCs does not take big risks postflop for a large percentage of his stack. In other words, I doubt he's bluffing this river if I check to him.

Yep, you're right and that is what Piosolver also suggested. The problem is that this board is absolutely smashing the UTG range, and this player is probably playing tighter than average, I imagine something like this:

which means that more than half of his range is top pair or better, and his overcard hands AK and AQ and gutshots+two overs and open enders respectively. Even his weakest pair 88 is an open ender, and all of his second pair Tx holdings have a gutshot/open ender too. As a result villain's range is so stong that hero is making a negative EV decision when calling with Tx on this board, and should simply let it go - this was the first thing that surprised me when I looked at this hand.

Agreed that check/reevaluate is a good idea on this river.

Sounds okay to me. What about hero jamming river as a bluff?

Well, the BB has enough raw equity to call the minraise, even without the BB ante in play. But I agree it's something of a problem hand to play postflop vs UTG, especially on this nightmare board.

I'm not sure hero is always ahead on this board, it absolutely drills UTG's range. Agreed that I would have to fold to bets on the turn/river, and indeed I likely would have if this player had bet the turn.

You can't call the flop, because he can bet draws on the turn or missed draws on the river and you can't call.

Okay so by that logic - which hands can call flop/turn/river?

many hands. I can't enumerate them all. Not second pair no kicker and bdfd.

What's the weakest hand with showdown value that you're calling the flop bet with?

ICM heavily influences this at this stage, though. At final two tables you're long past playing pure chip EV strategies.

How heavily does it influence the BB defending range in this hand?

I fold preflop with T3s with 25 bb's especially when the raise is coming from UTG.

I will call sometimes (depends who Villain is and how wide they open especially from UTG) with 30+ blinds because a lot of the value will be calling flop and turn bets on a flush draw. Here if that happens we can become too short stacked when we miss.

This flop is rough because we hit and are ahead of hands like AK/AQ. But as was noted we are behind most UTG opens. So its a fold for me.

Given that Villain checked back the turn it is an interesting spot. The problem with bluffing is that Villain can be checking back the turn with big hands like JJ/TT/99 wanting us to bluff when we miss the river. But given that the board is so draw heavy on the turn I don't get why Villain wouldn't have just jammed.

As played on the river I really don't like any of our options. Jamming seems a bit polarizing and might get called by Jx/77+ hands. It really only works against Tx hands that have us beat which we do block a bit. Check/calling seems OK but we likely lose as I think Villain will often check back AK/AQ hands hoping to be good against some of our draws. Block betting small helps us lose less vs Jx/Tx/77+ but ironically Villain may check back sometimes anyway because we can have an 8 or JT/T9. Check/folding is possibly best but hard to do against large bets that look like AK/AQ bluffs.

I would call with top pair. Calling with various draws or pair plus draw.

It is such a wet board and hits his range. If he didn't hit it as such, he probably has overcards or an overpair. He can have a lot of flush and straight draws.

Late in the WSOP and late in $50K buyin tournaments, they seem to be defending their BBs much less than I would. I think play that tight is worried about the money and not correct. However, I don't think this hand is a defend this shallow against an UTG open.

This late, your chips are so valuable, and survival is so valuable, that you want to tighten up the bottom of your defending range considerably. Trash suited hands and one-high-one-low hands start going into the muck more often. (Even at ICM25 and 20BB effective we start throwing away the junkiest offsuit aces and hands as good as K8o / Q9o, and we're at like ICM6 right now.) A +cEV range can be very -$EV the deeper in a tournament you get.

You don't want to be gambling at this stage, you want to preserve your stack and win pots as safely as possible, generally speaking. And given the tightness of this UTG player's range, you don't want to be guessing as to whether flopping a crappy pair is good or not. If you covered him by more, you could defend more often and play more aggressively on flops that are good for you / shouldn't hit him, but you don't cover him by enough here to make it such that a threat to him isn't also a threat to you.

I mean, the point is to make money, so being worried about the money makes sense.

And if they're doing it in 50ks, it's way more likely to be correct than the other way around.

You don't want to be late in a tournament and putting yourself in situations where you likely lose the pot or end up having to guess and potentially lose an even bigger one.

What they do in 50Ks may just be the style, but IMO calling preflop to an UTG raise this late with this hand is a mistake.

You just put in 1xBB, so you don't need to continue every time you flop a pair. The flop call seems like a big mistake. Sure on most boards you can call when the T gives you 2nd pair no kicker.

Yeah, I agree. I thought you said the 50k players defend their blinds a lot less than you would, implying you would have called the preflop raise here and they wouldn't have.

Yeah in hindsight and after learning a thing or two in this thread I am okay with folding this preflop. I'm just used to thinking that any suited cards can call a minraise (especially with a BB ante in play too) but the stage of the tournament etc is of course relevant too.

You're right that the flop should be a fold; I was surprised to see Piosolver advise this, because usually any pair has a plus EV call on the flop. The issue, as mentioned, is that the board is hitting UTG so hard, and it's therefore okay so fold second pair to a larger bet size.

Jamming river is a really interesting option, and I had been intending to bluff this player if the right circumstances converged. But I had a hand that I felt had some showdown value, so I switched plans to just trying to get to showdown as cheaply as possible. I don't think villain is checking back turn with two pair or better, so he's 100% capped on the turn and I reckon would have folded to a river jam perhaps 80% of the time. Does this justify becoming imbalanced in my ranges in order to exploit him? Maybe. But maybe he just snaps it off and I lose most of my stack at a critical time in the tournament.

In the end I decided to stick with my plan of trying to get to showdown as cheaply as I could. I bet around 20% pot and he somewhat reluctantly called with K♦J♦. I knew immediately that I had butchered this hand and was pretty p*ssed off with myself, but still had a good run and made the final table.

When I checked with Piosolver the hands that use the blocker bet sizing are mostly Jx rather than Tx, which is meant to check. It used raggy Ax that floated the flop, missed low flush draws and Q high hands as bluffs on the river - all pretty logical and expected. But the question remains as to whether I should expand my range of hands that bluff this river given the fact that I'm 95% certain this villain will overfold.

Yes, you're right. Top pair or better should call, but it's fine for Tx to fold. I was surprised to see this in Piosolver - but it's simply a side-effect of the range hitting UTG so hard.

This hand is definitely a defend when deep stacked early in tournaments, but - as others mentioned in this thread - it's fine to fold it when deep in a tournament and shallow stacked.

This makes a lot of sense; I learned something, thanks.

So - next thing to mention in this hand is to consider the EV of bluffing the river, even though it's not a good candidate to bluff with - in other words, just for the sake of argument and with the knowledge in mind that I am almost certain this player bets two pair or better on the turn and will fold everything other than his best top pairs or better to a river jam. The first step is to estimate the range of hands with which villain bets flop and checks back turn. If he's range betting flop, betting two pair or better on the turn and protecting his turn check back range with top pairs below TPTK and aces (fairly reasonable for this player type) then his range that arrives at the river looks like this:

Assuming that he calls with his approximately his best top pairs and better, and folds everything else, he should fold about 77% of the time to a river jam. There's 11.5bbs in the pot and the jam will be for around 14.25 bbs. Therefore the EV calculation is as follows:

(0.77 x 11.5) + (0.23 x -14.25)

= (8.81 - 3.2775) = 5.5325

So it's clearly a profitable jam and has a return of 5.53bbs. The question is - do I want to take this large of a risk at this point in the tournament? It would be a plus EV jam, but is it worth losing most of my stack 23% of the time?

I love these spots where we can severely exploit specific player types - and I expect that he may even fold all top pairs facing a jam for his tournament life, in which case hero is clearly printing EV and only getting stacked around 15% of the time, which is a significantly more tempting chance to take.

Another thing worth noting here with regards to bluffing this river and why my hand T3s is a bad combo to do it with is because I'm blocking 7 of the 18 combos of second pair in his range, which is a significant part of what we're targeting with the bluff.

Also interesting to note that AK and AQ makes up almost 50% of villain's range, which again adds weight to the fact that T3s should not be used as a bluff here as it's ahead of almost half of the BB's range. It's much better to use hands with no showdown value like raggy Ax that floated the flop, Qx with no pair, and missed flush draws, which are all losing to AK and AQ and thus gain a lot more by making those hands fold, as villain is likely to check them back on the river and win the showdown.