Is AJo a bad flat to an UTG raise in a PKO?
Collin Moshman and the PokerStrategy.com community came together to review a PKO hand where Barry Carter has a big bounty on his head.
In this new series PokerStrategy Editor Barry Carter gets a relatively 'standard' hand reviewed by a professional player to see if it was a trivial decision or not.
Unless I didn't brag about it enough, I had a very nice result in a PKO High Roller recently. I went on our very own Collin Moshman's Twitch stream to review it and this was one of the hands we discussed. Join us later this month where we will have the full video of the session.
This is midway through a $530 PKO tournament, I have a $250 bounty on my head where the starting bounty is $125 (mine is the biggest bounty). I have a loose image. Player 2 raises to $6,300 with blinds at 1,500/3,000.
So Villain covers me so I am not going to win a bounty from him. I flat call, in a normal MTT I might even fold AJo here but I'm generally putting him on a wider range than in a normal MTT.
Collin Moshman: It really depends on the player. If he is very loose I like the flat, my most common play here is to nitfold. If I was going to play I would occasionally use this hand for a light 3-bet, but typically when an early position player min raises I'm going to fold AJo outside of the blinds.
You occasionally light 3-bet here because AJo contains two good blockers to bet/fold?
Collin Moshman: Exactly. The majority of the time I am not doing that to be clear, but if I were to play it that is what I would do. If you had AJ suited I would call. Calling with AJo is not crazy but not my most common play here.
The Big Blind (who also covers us) also calls. We flop top pair on a JT5 board with two diamonds. It is checked around to us and we bet $19,104 into a $23,400 pot.
Collin Moshman: The stack to pot ratio is everything there. You get a stack to pot ratio of between three and four, you have top pair top kicker, you know with this flop you have to stack off.
Our member said in the Twitch chat that you bet a bit too big, it doesn't allow weaker hands to stay in with us. One thing I would point out is that when you have AJo and you bet 19 into 23, most players are going to interpret that bet pretty well. It looks like you have a pretty strong hand you want to protect.
The Big Blind folds and Villain puts me all-in and I have to call. He has KQo and my hand holds.
From Villain's perspective he probably thinks he has an open ended straight draw, a diamond blocker and two overs, do you like his play? He probably thinks he has really good equity to go after a big bounty.
Collin Moshman: He needs fold equity, if he doesn't think he has fold equity the $23,400 in the middle isn't enough unless he gives himself full credit for the King and Queen partial outs, which he shouldn't. Maybe on balance he has something like an 11 out draw and about 40% equity. I like his plan of going for a check/shove but I think it is marginal when you bet $19,104 into a $23,400 pot.
Twitch user 'koincha' has just asked did Villain really need fold equity with a x2 bounty on Barry? It's 50k extra chips in the pot so even if Barry calls with 100% of his flop bet range, Villain is still standing OK.
Collin Moshman: Yes, I wasn't accounting for the fact he was eligible to win your bounty. I still think calling might be better if he knows what your range is, at minimum it's close between folding and shoving. I agree 'koincha', jamming is a good play on his part.
I like jamming from him because he doesn't want to call on the flop and have a card that kills the action come on the turn. By shoving he guarantees himself a bounty the times he does win at showdown.
Collin Moshman: That's a fair point and definitely a spot where bounties come into play.
Look at hands from Villain's perspective
I really enjoyed discussing this hand, especially turning things around and looking at it from the Villain's perspective. I think that is a really healthy thing to do to remove some of your own bias in hand reviews.
I wasn't 100% sure of whether I should have called preflop with this hand, on balance I think it was a very close fold. I also completely agree with what Collin said about essentially making it very obvious what I had with my bet sizing. As I wasn't trying to win a bounty, I think a smaller bet would have got a few more hands I beat to stick around.
Collin Moshman is a PokerStrategy.com coach who hosts a weekly free Twitch webinar on Wednesdays at 21:00 CET which covers all things MTTs and SNGs. You can find out more by visiting his SNG Crushers thread. My thanks to him and everyone who joined us in the Twitch chat.
Thoughts on the hand? Let us know in the comments:
