I don't really like flatting this out of the sb. It's a weak hand and we have the BB behind us. It would probably play better to put it into a 3bet folding range in the sb (being an A blocker). Depending on my image and more reads on the player I'm either 3betting or just folding.

Flop check call is standard. Turn I need some reads here before I'm calling. His bet isn't too big but even "loose fish" in a live setting don't double barrel bluff often enough for this to be profitable (imo).

Ralphy, thanks for the response. I think that you are making a fair point, pre-flop I should indeed 3-bet fold but, to be perfectly honest, I made the assumption of him being a bit "fishy" and that resulting in him not realising what ICM is or how close to the money we actually were.

That may be a faulty assumption and perhaps I should've indeed 3B-F but I thought that I had a PF edge against him so I basically wanted to play smallball(very possibly a mistake from my part)

On the turn/river I indeed had reads, on his play but also live tells of (what I interpreted as) insecurity.

What are your thoughts on that explanation? mainly the PRF decision

I think pre-flop hinges on what category of loose and fishy our villain falls into. I think we need to find a fold if he is habitually very aggressive. Our hand hits a lot of flops hard enough that we'll often want to continue, but it rarely hits hard enough that we're excited to play for multiple big bets OOP. Being two seats to the left of this player, we'll have plenty of chances to abuse him with position on our side. Why get involved OOP?

I can't assume he was hyper-aggro based on one hand. Anyone who's played enough poker has seen more than one passive fish suddenly play a hand this way for no apparent reason. If villain won't pressure us very often, playing a middling ace out of position can't be that bad when we can exploit frequent post flop errors. I will say that 4x is pretty steep, especially considering villain had less than 40bb to start the hand (if I counted right). If you believe villain might be easy to read because of tells or an obvious lack of emotional control than I think calling is great. Otherwise it's pretty marginal unless BB is overly tight, or seems very conscious of the approaching bubble. With our big stack we can afford to take less than optimal spots, and to make deep runs we want to give ourselves every opportunity to take weak players' chips (before someone else does), so I really don't hate the call if villain is on the passive side.

Regardless of open size, I only like 3-betting if we've seen villain fold to a flop cbet in multiple 3bet pots. If he is folding preflop it's obviously fine, but not sure loose fishy players are doing that very often, unless we make our 3bet really big. Aside from hand selection, which we aren't really using here, we probably gain most of our edge with superior post-flop play, so I don't see why we would inflate the pot OOP. I guess it is useful to make sure BB isn't likely to get involved, but I don't think that's a good enough reason when we can expect fairly straightforward play in a multi-way pot this close to the bubble (assuming that we have BB covered).

I think your decisions post-flop are okay, but I do want to highlight some potential problems:

1)You might be defining villain's value range too narrowly. Why is villain not allowed to have J9s, QTs, TT, 44 or AT? Is he limping cutoff rather than raising with most of those hands?

2) Your numbers re: villain bet sizing seem inconsistent. With two callers pre, the pot would be 36k (+ antes if there are any) on the flop. After an 18k flop bet, pot is at least 72k on the turn, so a 29k bet is pretty small. By your reasoning, this is right around the size a scared overpair and/or set wanting action would pick. Although I think regs will bet big with sets (and check back a lot of overpairs) considering all the draws, I agree that weak players often tend to pick small sizes when they desperately want to get paid, regardless of board texture, or when they feel they have to bet an overpair but are kind of scared by the board.

3) You mention tells that indicated insecurity, but even with those I think peeling the turn is very questionable holding 3rd pair. We can't assume a fishy villain wouldn't bet a hand like AT or JJ (or 99) despite the overcard coming (and might feel pretty insecure doing so). When you are ahead, villain must have outs. There's a lot of river cards you will really hate. Effective stacks make a river shove pretty likely, and even when our hand improves we will lose a non-zero percentage of the time. Even with a pretty good price, you'll find way better spots to commit a big chunk of your stack. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that villain reps so few value hands that he must be bluffing too often. Unless you think he is betting 100% of his air, how many hands flop enough equity to bluff on this board but are still behind A8?

4) I flat out disagree that QQ and TT won't shove the river, unless you are pretty certain that a min cash meant a lot to this player (which in your reply to Ralphy you seem to be saying the opposite). I think a lot of recreational players aren't even considering ways they could be beat when they have a hand as strong as a set (unless a 3flush/4straight hits the river).

Either way, there aren't a ton of value combos that beat us. Once we get to the river and see one of the best cards possible I think we are priced in to call. We have enough chips behind that we shouldn't be at risk of bubbling when we lose this pot, and winning it puts us in a great spot to make a very deep run (which I hope you did!).

I hope this was helpful. Some of my reasoning is likely flawed and I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Hi MuckMyNuts,

I want to start with saying thanks for the great response. by all means disagree with my plays, I made a few mistakes in this hand for sure.

my most interesting point is this hand is the QQ/1010 shove you said on the river. let me give a bit of background, I play the £50-£200 live tourneys and have a good ROI there. the players there are not betting to protect, more betting because they have a hand. these are players that have played for years without spending a second thinking about what they are actually doing, theory wise.

To return to the QQ/1010, in my experience, the level of players lack the ability to valuebet in these spots, I think that most players would checkback the trips there or bet 40K because they don't really know what to do. the players there aren't considering how much they have behind after a bet often enough. Hence I was pretty confident that he doesn't have those types of hands.

Why he cant have J9s or Q10. Quite simply, this tourney sees plenty limping and minraising, nobody open raises 4x, 3-3.5x is considered a very large raise. so he polarises, without knowing that he is doing that(I think), his range to the nuts or nothing. taking all that in account, for sure I might have made some mistakes, absolutely possible.

But, I think that in these types of tournament, one of the greatest weaknesses, people like us (who understand the game and try to improve) have 1 weakness and the greatest pitfall of all: yes, analyse a hand, its going to hand you so much(!). but don't overanalyse, I learned this quickly in. Because, for over analysing a hand you need an opponent who knows what he is doing.

Same goes for micro/low stakes online poker btw.

And yes, I ended up shipping the tourney. :)

Let me know your thoughts

Grats on shipping it! Well done sir :)

I think if you have pretty strong population reads then for sure your assumptions make more sense than my general approach to unknown fishies.

I completely agree that we can drive ourself crazy and accomplish nothing by overanalyzing spots against rec players. If they think about the game in a much different (and likely convoluted or overly simple) way than us, it will be hard to gain much by using logic that assumes a well reasoned approach to predict the meaning of their plays.

For example, I recently played a drunken home game with some friends. At heads up I 3bet pre with KQ. Flop comes QT7 and I made a ~1/3 pot bet with <2SPR (he has me barely covered). Buddy looks me right in the eye and says "What do I do with trip 7s here?" He tanks and then shoves. I figure he is trying to level me in some weird way, and am pretty happy to call. He of course shows 77. Like, wtf right?

Really curious why u decided to flat btn 4x with A8o @blinds.