How bad did I play this? :D (1 Viewer)

legonick

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9 player SNG, make heads up, villain has 6.5K, hero has 2.2K, blinds are 75/150.

On the button, hero wakes up with :kh::qc:, (edit) 3-bet raises to 300 450.

Villain makes the call.

Flop comes :9s::9c::6h:.

Villain checks.

Hero bets 450 into pot of 900.

Villain calls.

Turn comes :kc:.

Villain checks.

Hero bets all-in (1405) to a pot of 1800. Top pair, Q kicker! Got there. Hoping villain thinks it's fishy and makes the call.

Villain calls, turns over :th::9d:, for trip.s, river comes :2h:...GG, 2nd place for me!

How bad did I play this?
 
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I agree with this. 15BB is the perfect 3 bet shove size. Why give a weak hand a cheap price to call and hit when you are getting it in on pretty much any flop?
I think the HERO just raised to 300. No 3-bet involved. I can get behind a shove too especially if there were antes involved. But I think heads up at 15bb with no ante, you have some room to make a min raise.
 
I think the HERO just raised to 300. No 3-bet involved. I can get behind a shove too especially if there were antes involved. But I think heads up at 15bb with no ante, you have some room to make a min raise.

you’re right that he only opened, but he said 3-bet in OP. Still waking up myself lol.
 
Yes, assuming you misclicked the 3bet and actually min raised, I like the play. Maybe a check back or smaller bet flop, but that's still questionable. Money is going in once turn hits, you are shallow and there's no wiggle room here. Get it in with a made hand and hope to double up.

If you actually did 3 bet??? there is only one 3 bet here. All of it.
 
Oops, I totally misclicked the first action. Not sure how I botched that so bad...it was late, LOL.

Hero actually raised to 450 (3x BB) pre-flop! Does that change opinions at all?

Thanks for the feedback so far!

Yeah I wonder if I would have pulled a call with a pre-flop shove instead of a 3x bet...villain was actually pretty sticky. Seemed a little LAG, but would become a bit more of a calling station if there was action against him. Frankly he was pretty dang good, and running like a God. (He crushed a bigger hand to knock out 3rd place by sucking out a flush with a split-suit hand).
 
You were in a tourney, heads-up with less than 15 BB, and you ran top pair second kicker into trips that slowplayed the flop. Not a lot of room to judge, but I'll see what I can scratch up.

1. Looks like this was actually a min/min 3-bet preflop. This short, you're almost at the point where you should be shoving preflop as the first raise. If you're 3-betting, it should be all-in. At the least, you should be setting up a flop shove by raising to 1K (though whether to do this is kinda player-dependent). Small pots are very substantial at this point in a tourney. You should be happy to take them down even with a hand as strong as KQ.

2. Does Villain almost never flat-call the flop? You've described him as having LAG tendencies but tightening up when he's facing aggression. If he's the kind of player who never flats flops, and especially paired flops, that might have been a sign to escape. But given that you turned top pair, it's that much harder. (If you hadn't hit top pair, maybe you could escape with a mini-stack and try to fight you way back up.)

3. Were you heads-up for more than just this hand? A lot of the time, people fixate on the final hand that knocked them out of a tourney. The reality is that heads-up play is a sort of dance, and how well you "dance" matters a lot more than how you play the hand that happens to end it. Sounds like this opponent (aggressive but measured) would have been a challenge heads-up, and maybe that's worth more analysis than this one hand.
 
You were in a tourney, heads-up with less than 15 BB, and you ran top pair second kicker into trips that slowplayed the flop. Not a lot of room to judge, but I'll see what I can scratch up.

1. Looks like this was actually a min/min 3-bet preflop. This short, you're almost at the point where you should be shoving preflop as the first raise. If you're 3-betting, it should be all-in. At the least, you should be setting up a flop shove by raising to 1K (though whether to do this is kinda player-dependent). Small pots are very substantial at this point in a tourney. You should be happy to take them down even with a hand as strong as KQ.

2. Does Villain almost never flat-call the flop? You've described him as having LAG tendencies but tightening up when he's facing aggression. If he's the kind of player who never flats flops, and especially paired flops, that might have been a sign to escape. But given that you turned top pair, it's that much harder. (If you hadn't hit top pair, maybe you could escape with a mini-stack and try to fight you way back up.)

3. Were you heads-up for more than just this hand? A lot of the time, people fixate on the final hand that knocked them out of a tourney. The reality is that heads-up play is a sort of dance, and how well you "dance" matters a lot more than how you play the hand that happens to end it. Sounds like this opponent (aggressive but measured) would have been a challenge heads-up, and maybe that's worth more analysis than this one hand.

It benefited him well here...that was his usual line. He'd be a bit LAG on his own, but when facing aggression he'd usually go more calling station. Pretty reluctant to let go of hands when there were decent chips in the pot.

Yes we danced, at least for a short period of time! I don't think chipstacks changed much though - I'll look through the other heads-up hands after work to see if there was anything spicy I could add to this. :)

Thanks!
 
Nah, heads up a diff beast. He could've flopped the 6 or on a straight draw. Maybe check the turn and see of he value bets the river? Either way I prob would've played it the same...
 
Oops, I totally misclicked the first action. Not sure how I botched that so bad...it was late, LOL.

Hero actually raised to 450 (3x BB) pre-flop! Does that change opinions at all?

Thanks for the feedback so far!

Yeah I wonder if I would have pulled a call with a pre-flop shove instead of a 3x bet...villain was actually pretty sticky. Seemed a little LAG, but would become a bit more of a calling station if there was action against him. Frankly he was pretty dang good, and running like a God. (He crushed a bigger hand to knock out 3rd place by sucking out a flush with a split-suit hand).
In that case, as played is standard. GG.
 
Yes we danced, at least for a short period of time! I don't think chipstacks changed much though - I'll look through the other heads-up hands after work to see if there was anything spicy I could add to this. :)

Thanks!
I've played a fair amount of heads-up poker over the years, and I will say that the more substantial exchanges of chips tend to happen with hands that never see a flop. This is especially true in tournaments. Deal, raise, fold. Deal, raise, fold. Lots of hands end that way. How many of them are you winning, and how many is your opponent winning?

When you get heads-up, your cards are only a tiny fraction of the picture. You're mostly playing against your opponent's tendencies. How often does he call raises preflop from the BB? If he defends his BB, does he tend to check-fold, bet out, or take a sticky line? Does he raise often when it's his button? That kind of thing.

Some of the most important spots are going to be where you win pots uncontested, whether you're just taking down the blinds, c-betting a pot you raised, or 3-betting your opponent off of a loose raise. Those are some of the trickier spots. The ones where you get a massive-for-heads-up hand like top pair with short stacks, the spot basically plays itself.
 
At just under 15BB pre, I’d possibly lean towards a shove, but it’s definitely not bad to raise 3x in position with stack sizes.

I don’t necessarily like the flop bet. I may have checked back for pot control and then to possibly realize equity (obviously he was trapping and there would’ve been no way to get away from that when the turn comes a K. I think money was going in either way (especially if you make it to that turn).
 
You're not getting away from that.

The bet to 450 preflop is fine. The only thing I would have done postflop is either check back to the villain or shove all in right then and there. With doing the latter, you would just seal your fate one street sooner than you actually did. Save for a miracle runner runner Kings or Queens on the turn and river, you were DOA.

I would have done the same seeing the king on the turn.

I'm not sure if I would shove pre on two non suited high cards with 15 BB's, but I'm a nitty nit. I am starting to go into either fold/shove mode around that time though.
 
I'm not sure if I would shove pre on two non suited high cards with 15 BB's, but I'm a nitty nit. I am starting to go into either fold/shove mode around that time though.
I think shoving preflop is actually the best move, based on the details we're given here. Heads-up, KQ stands to be a solid favorite against an opponent that OP has described as a LAG who slows down to pressure (but can be sticky).

If Villain has a big hand, then sure, he calls and it's bad. That's a chance you're taking. But with KQ against a guy who raises a lot, that's going to be a minority of the time. Villain is going to have weak and speculative hands (like, say, 9T) a lot, and when he does, either he'll call the shove in a spot where OP is ahead with KQ, or he'll fold and give up the 450 in the pot, both of which are positive outcomes.
 
I think shoving preflop is actually the best move, based on the details we're given here. Heads-up, KQ stands to be a solid favorite against an opponent that OP has described as a LAG who slows down to pressure (but can be sticky).

If Villain has a big hand, then sure, he calls and it's bad. That's a chance you're taking. But with KQ against a guy who raises a lot, that's going to be a minority of the time. Villain is going to have weak and speculative hands (like, say, 9T) a lot, and when he does, either he'll call the shove in a spot where OP is ahead with KQ, or he'll fold and give up the 450 in the pot, both of which are positive outcomes.
Yeah, if villain is on the LAG side and will call with a wide range of holdings, hero is more likely than not ahead here.

I'm also not that great of a heads up player, which is a leak of mine admittedly. I cash lots of tournaments but have only won one and chopped another in about 20 that I've played in the last couple of years. But that's neither here nor there.

I suppose my range heads up to shove would be higher than 10 BB's and that my shoving range should also expand a bit in turn.

The only thing I would have done differently from OP is shove/check back the flop rather than bet, but shoving pre isn't at all a bad player either.
 
I think shoving preflop is actually the best move, based on the details we're given here. Heads-up, KQ stands to be a solid favorite against an opponent that OP has described as a LAG who slows down to pressure (but can be sticky).

If Villain has a big hand, then sure, he calls and it's bad. That's a chance you're taking. But with KQ against a guy who raises a lot, that's going to be a minority of the time. Villain is going to have weak and speculative hands (like, say, 9T) a lot, and when he does, either he'll call the shove in a spot where OP is ahead with KQ, or he'll fold and give up the 450 in the pot, both of which are positive outcomes.

He only would be losing 150 if he folded pre-flop to a shove. The pot was his 150 + my 75 = 225.
 
He only would be losing 150 if he folded pre-flop to a shove. The pot was his 150 + my 75 = 225.
Ahh, okay, I think I get it now. I had been confused about the way the preflop action went down; I was imagining Villain had raised to 300 and you had 3-bet to 450. I was recommending a shove in that context, instead of the 3-bet to 450, which evidently never happened.

Now that I'm clear on this stuff, I have even less to say about how it played out. I don't see it going much differently if I'd been in your spot. I'm almost always raising preflop, and almost always betting that flop too (and expecting to be good and/or folding out an unimproved ace-high). Once I catch that king on the turn, all my chips are lost.

Sometimes people flop big hands in ways that really screw you. I can't imagine many players would get away from this, even strong tournament players who are good at heads-up.
 
At 15bb stacks, given you choose to raise small rather than shove, I think minraising is much better. There's no benefit from opening to 3x this shallow. You're even getting close to the stack size where you definitely want to have a limping range.
 

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