WSOP Hand Review: Should Kitai have gone to war with a small pair?

Not a big fan of doing this with small pairs - Rodgethat

I think the 4bet is fine for Ruberto, he has a hand that flops well and has a few blockers (KK, TT, AK). Not a big fan of Kitai's call vs the 4-bet, he has a hand that flops poorly and will be hard to get to showdown with.

I would have liked to see Ruberto barrel the turn if he knows Kitai is defending vs his 4-bets with as little as 44. Vs someone with a tighter calling range preflop I like checking since they just have a stronger range that will continue more often.

For Kitai I don't see much reason for betting the turn, he won't get called by worse hands and might get check raised and put in a weird spot, so I like the check back.

On the river it's clear that Kitai has showdown value so I wouldn't like Ruberto to be bluffing in this spot very often.

In general I'm not a big fan of 3-bet bluffing with small pairs, they just flop very poorly, don't have any blockers and hard to continue barreling since it's hard to pick up equity on turns and rivers.

Rodgethat

Ruberto should have bet the turn - chenny8888

I feel against a wide range, and vs relatively smallish sizing (2.24x 3bet at 12k/24k after we've made it 55k), it's simply a waste of chips and a waste of a hand to 4-bet it back with KTs.

I understand what he's trying to do. He thinks with reasonably deep stacks, Davidi Kitai is going to 3-bet a lot of more playable hands, and consequently Ruberto would like to fold out Kitai's equity. However, especially as a suited hand, KTs plays a bit too well postflop for us to take this approach. Even out of position.

Here it's good to think of a more balanced approach to constructing our range for opening to 4bet and passively defending 3-bets, consider our pot odds, and play a smaller pot accordingly.

Faced with the 4-bet, Kitai has to call another 160000 for a pot that will be 624000. He's in position, with a very disguised hand, and there's still 1.1M left behind to play. Without doing the math, if Kitai is purely setmining I would say this is a pretty close spot. However, it's also nice for image reasons to peel in a spot like this. If it gets to showdown, it creates a sort of aura that makes people fear playing back at you even more (gives you more fold equity).

As played we get to the turn in an extremely bloated pot and Ruberto decides to check.

Hopefully without being too results oriented, I think this is a horrible line by him. I think Ruberto is hoping to take a check/raise all-in line and get a bit more value from floats, and also get Kitai to bet/fold some very weak pair + no draw combinations.

However, with 882000 left in a pot of 1.144M, I don't think Ruberto has enough fold equity if Kitai had decided to bet. Consequently a better option is to directly shove. Even if our fold equity is on the lower side with the exact board texture, we absolutely print money every time Kitai folds, and our play looks stronger than it should (given the size of the pot, we should be shoving a fairly wide range here). Also, our equity when called is quite decent.

Kitai's check is on the more standard side. He has showdown value here against Ruberto's bluff range, has a redraw against Ruberto's value range, and can get more information in position on the river before making a decision. Kitai also cannot realistically fold out much better on the river with a bet, so he elects to check it behind.

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