€4 NL HE STT: Villain made min bet then all in at the river. Call?

It was a 5-player sit & go, with the top 2 in the money. There were only 2 players left.

The stack before posting blinds were 33.12 vs 41.88 BB, I was the SB and the villain was the BB.

I had Q8s and raised my SB to 2 BB, the villain called.

The flop was Kc Jd Th, the villain bet 1 BB and I called for the draw.

The turn was Jh and he bet 1 BB again and I called for the draw.

The river was Ac which completed my flush. At that point, he shoved. I thought that he wouldn't have a pocket pair for a full house (as he would have 3-bet pre-flop) but how likely would he have AJ KJ or JT to kill me?

Preflop
Standard open but you could go slightly larger with 30+ BB stacks.

Flop
A min donk bet is usually weak, so I would seriously consider to put in a raise with your draw.

Turn
Now that the board has paired, and as played I would also opt for the cheap river card and not put in a raise.

River
It makes no sense for him to min-bet flop and turn with KJ or JT only to then jam the river, when nothing changed for his hand. Even AJ improved on the turn and would likely have made much more than just a min-bet. So I think, its much more likely, you are chopping. And even though it kind of sucks to call a big overbet just to chop, thats what I would do.

If you want to approach it from a more theoretical point of view, would you ever arrive on the river with a full house having just called his silly min-bets on the flop and turn? The answer is most likely no. And then a straight is the best hand, you can even have. Which mean, that unless you at least call with a straight some percentage of the time, then you are literally folding your entire range to this line.

miklcct said:

It was a 5-player sit & go, with the top 2 in the money. There were only 2 players left.

The stack before posting blinds were 33.12 vs 41.88 BB, I was the SB and the villain was the BB.

I had Q8s and raised my SB to 2 BB, the villain called.

The flop was Kc Jd Th, the villain bet 1 BB and I called for the draw.

The turn was Jh and he bet 1 BB again and I called for the draw.

The river was Ac which completed my flush. At that point, he shoved. I thought that he wouldn't have a pocket pair for a full house (as he would have 3-bet pre-flop) but how likely would he have AJ KJ or JT to kill me?

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Preflop bet size Why this size? What does it do for you? How does it affect the V range? Is that something we want to do with this hand? A rule of thumb is we want to be raising our best and worst hand from SB and flatting the rest where does this hand fall into those categories?

A key aspect to poker is to not give up the betting lead.
If we are going to raise preflop small the BB still has a wide range with -as you point out- no nuts in the range. Why would we not lead in this spot with our range advantage and our nut outs with this hand? Leading helps us have clarity on further streets. We do not have to guess about what the V is doing on river.

eetenor said:

Preflop bet size Why this size? What does it do for you? How does it affect the V range? Is that something we want to do with this hand? A rule of thumb is we want to be raising our best and worst hand from SB and flatting the rest where does this hand fall into those categories?

A key aspect to poker is to not give up the betting lead.
If we are going to raise preflop small the BB still has a wide range with -as you point out- no nuts in the range. Why would we not lead in this spot with our range advantage and our nut outs with this hand? Leading helps us have clarity on further streets. We do not have to guess about what the V is doing on river.

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I raise 50% pot in-position with a linear range for about 70% of the hand, with the aim to build up the pot and see the flop, isn't it a good idea?

fundiver199 said:

River
It makes no sense for him to min-bet flop and turn with KJ or JT only to then jam the river, when nothing changed for his hand. Even AJ improved on the turn and would likely have made much more than just a min-bet. So I think, its much more likely, you are chopping. And even though it kind of sucks to call a big overbet just to chop, thats what I would do.

If you want to approach it from a more theoretical point of view, would you ever arrive on the river with a full house having just called his silly min-bets on the flop and turn? The answer is most likely no. And then a straight is the best hand, you can even have. Which mean, that unless you at least call with a straight some percentage of the time, then you are literally folding your entire range to this line.

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I like to look at this kind of spot by considering the size of my remaining stack. Why would this villain player risk their entire stack to bluff off another player to gain 4BB or to chop a straight? Especially this close to the money? Doesn't make sense. Still lots of BB left in my stack. Don't really care to find out if he has the full house or not (or some bingo four of a kind).

Another similar situation to this, but not really with the silly 1BB crumb betting, is a river where I arrived multi-handed to 45678, rainbow. Of course I held 9T and I jam, knowing it's a good possibility players will think I am stealing with a board that holds a straight and then others may have a 9X that will be feeling pretty good too until they see my cards.

puzzlefish said:

I like to look at this kind of spot by considering the size of my remaining stack. Why would this villain player risk their entire stack to bluff off another player to gain 4BB or to chop a straight? Doesn't make sense. Still lots of BB left in my stack. Don't really care to find out if he has the full house or not (or some bingo four of a kind).

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This is a fair point. Pot is 8BB + the ante, and there is almost 30BB left in the effective stack. So we are getting a terrible risk-reward, especially if we are mainly calling for a chop. The opponent seems to be pretty bad given his sizing, so maybe we can just let him have this one and outplay him in future hands.

puzzlefish said:

Especially this close to the money?

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It was down to the final two, so no ICM to consider. We are just trying to win all the chips and the tournament.

fundiver199 said:

It was down to the final two, so no ICM to consider. We are just trying to win all the chips and the tournament

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I must have misread, thinking two left to the money rather than final two

puzzlefish said:

I must have misread, thinking two left to the money rather than final two

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But even so after looking at it again, I have kind of come around to your point of view and think, its better to fold here. Heads-up is a game, where dynamics are very important, and presumably this match just started. So we can fold here and see, if he makes absurd overbets regularly, and if that is the case, we can start to give them action more liberally.

But if its just this one hand, then its probably more likely to be a weirdly played nuts type hand, and we dont need to risk ending the match prematurely or give him a huge chip lead to find out. We should have a skill edge, so it works to our advantage to let the heads-up play along for a while and allow him to potentially make some big mistakes later.