$2 NLHE MTT Deep Stacked: Pocket kings on the flop with ace and flush on the turn. What decision on the river?

$2 NLHE MTT Deep Stacked: Pocket kings on the flop with ace and flush on the turn. What decision on the river?

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Hello guys, it was satellite hyper turbo for 2$ to next satellite to 14 anniversary Sunday Million. What do you do here with pocket kings. The flop isn't good for kings, but I think that I have to play cbet, because in my range are strong aces. I wanted play also bet on the turn to represent top pair, but on the turn came up third card in the same colour, so I decided to check and see what will do opponent on the river. On the river I decided give up my hands, because on the board are two hands which I lose, top pair and flush. What decision on the river?

I dont mind the way, you played this hand. KK is always a bit rough, when there is an ace on the flop. I dont think, he is value betting JX on the river, partly because most JX should fold on the flop. So your hand is a bluff catcher, and if we approach this situation from a theoretical point on view, you have no relevant blockers, and therefore its a bad hand to catch a bluff with. The ideal bluff catcher is AX with X of hearts, because that hand block both top pair and the flush. So as long as you check back the turn with a lot of AX, which probably you should, it should not be a problem folding KK with no heart on the river.

You bet too big preflop, 3x from utg polarizes your range heavily, you should have made it closer to 2x.

Then going into the flop on an Ace high board 2 hearts. This board is fairly wet and favours your utg opening raise a lot. You need to ask yourself when betting half pot, what is he calling a half pot bet what he would be folding to a 30% bet. If he has Ax, 8x, OESD or flush draw hes calling either sizing and if he has missed hes folding.

We can bet around 30% pot here and expect too see a higher frequency of folds because this board is good for our range. This way pot would be 2100 going into the turn and not 3600.

REMEMBER: you only want to bloat the pot when you have the best hand (or a strong hand). second pair on an ace high board with 3 hearts is not a strong hand.

As played the fold is fine. We have to think what hands does he check call flop, check turn, lead river what we beat?

flush draws get there. Ax beats us. he has all the 2 pairs from bb defending range.

his bluff range is so small and capped to hands like: 97o 1 heart, 87o 1 heart, 75o 1 heart. So much of the time he just has a value bet on the river. Given we have all the Ax and he leads in to us on the river its a pretty easy fold.

bealpoker said:

You bet too big preflop, 3x from utg polarizes your range heavily, you should have made it closer to 2x.

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The reason for using small open sizes in tournaments is to lose less money, when you need to fold to a 3-bet due to ICM-considerations. This gets more and more important, as stacks get shorter. However that is only important, if people are actually going to 3-bet a lot, and in 2$ tournaments there are often a lot of very passive players, who 3-bet way less, than theoretically they should.

This mean, a larger open size works better, because it gives big blind a worse price to call. Also we are 30+ BB deep here, so people can not rejam without risking way to many chips. For those reasons I think, a 3BB open raise is completely fine here, and of course Hero should then use that size with his entire range, if these opponents are good enough to pay attention to bet sizes.

fundiver199 said:

The reason for using small open sizes in tournaments is to lose less money, when you need to fold to a 3-bet due to ICM-considerations. This gets more and more important, as stacks get shorter. However that is only important, if people are actually going to 3-bet a lot, and in 2$ tournaments there are often a lot of very passive players, who 3-bet way less, than theoretically they should.

This mean, a larger open size works better, because it gives big blind a worse price to call. Also we are 30+ BB deep here, so people can not rejam without risking way to many chips. For those reasons I think, a 3BB open raise is completely fine here, and of course Hero should then use that size with his entire range, if these opponents are good enough to pay attention to bet sizes.

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But if were 3x raising from utg with our premium hands we have to 3x raise with our weaker hands (which is the larger % of our raising range from utg) what want to play post flop cheaply and not build a pot.

If were only 3x raising our best hands we become exploitable therefore we would have to start 3x raising QJs KJs, A9s etc from utg which is just losing EV every time. This is why you don't see pro poker players open 3x from EP.

Open up any late phase high roller and watch their opening ranges, all vary from 2x-2.3x.

I don 't like the idea of putting a second bet on the turn if the draw doesn't close. I think I would have played the same way.

bealpoker said:

But if were 3x raising from utg with our premium hands we have to 3x raise with our weaker hands (which is the larger % of our raising range from utg) what want to play post flop cheaply and not build a pot.

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We should not be playing any weaker hands from UTG at all, since we are out of position against the majority of players, and a lot of players could wake up with a strong hand behind us. If we have a weak hand UTG, we should just fold it.

bealpoker said:

If were only 3x raising our best hands we become exploitable therefore we would have to start 3x raising QJs KJs, A9s etc from utg which is just losing EV every time. This is why you don't see pro poker players open 3x from EP.

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Professional poker players are not playing 2$ online tournaments against fish and bad regs, who call way to much, and who dont 3-bet enough. This is why, professional poker players need to stick closer to game theory optimal lines.