Deep Main Event Hand With Limited Information

[MIddLES 0]

61 remain in the main event. Playing 30k-60k with 10k ante. Moved to a new table and I have position on Yuval Bronshtein the only player I know at the table or even recognize (I'm ecstatic as this is the first time in 3 days I have been excited about my seat). I have seen roughly 3 orbits and the table has been extremely tight. In fact the bb has had walks multiple times, I do not recall ever seeing a 3b, and the middle aged gentleman to my immediate left is openly talking about how he got out of line earlier and is only going to play premium hands and has snap folded every hand. I am moved to the table with roughly 2.5 million and blind down to about 2.1 million without playing a hand. Folded to me on the button and I opt to open Q9o...The BB started the hand with roughly 2.3 million (younger guy, Russel Thomas, who currently has a healthy stack going into the final table) and hadn't been out of line or hardly played a hand since I sat down, and the sb was the middle aged man who is mentioned above. I may still be too light opening here and feel free to share thoughts.I open to 125k, the sb folds, and the bb defends. The flop is a rainbow 579. He checks and I cbet 150k into a pot of 370k. He min raises to 300k... I will hold off on my thought process during the hand until I receive some feedback... I callturn is 3d bringing 2 diamonds, he bets 375k. I jam 1.75million. Welcome discussion on pre flop open but assuming we open here, can we fold the flop? Can we fold out better hands on the turn? How often are we value betting the turn? Can we call the turn? Should we jam the flop? I'll happily contribute my thoughts and the result after some feedback. Thanks...

[answer20 5]

A pre-Flop open with that hand is certainly not a big issue from the Buttion. You would hope to get some respect, but it also suggests a bit of a steal since you have been so quiet during your brief stay at the table ... and your first good hand is on the Button?? ... Steal attempt!! This would have put you on a fairly wide range of hands in his mind if that is what he is thinking. If he puts you on cards a little more solid, then you are at the bottom of this range. Hard to tell since you have had limited 'exposure' to him so far.Can you fold the Flop? ... I don't think so. You have top-pair decent-kicker, rainbow board. Nothing wrong with calling here as I think you are ahead of quite a few hands here ... AX, connectors that made one pair and even J10 draws that might min raise ... and only behind a smaller group (77, 99, 55, A9, K9, 68, 79 or 1010). I don't think he is raising his sets here and we may have heard from 99, 1010 or better before the Flop.Are you going to get better hands to fold on the Turn? Not sure as you are jamming 29bb (23bb to call) at someone who played back at you on the Flop. What did the 3d do for you? It would be nice to know which card the other diamond was ... If you jam here and the 9 is NOT a diamond, then you can imply that you have top-pair with a new-found diamond draw. One can't really expect a set to play this way and the 46 is very unlikely so what are we implying we have here? 1010, JJ?He bet the Turn for us, so we don't need to and I'm not so sure we would want to open the door up to another raise by betting this Turn as it probably didn't change anything for either player.Yes, I would call the Turn ... again, what did the 3d do for either player. If you are calling the Flop raise, you are calling this bet. There are plenty of River cards that you can use against this player even if you don't improve ... unless he leads out too big which puts you to the point of no return or jams.Jamming the Flop is interesting ... or at least re-raising (probably not with these stacks) ... If you had known that such a blank would hit the Turn, then I actually think you get more 'better hands' to fold on the Flop than the Turn since you are playing back at a raise and even if they are ahead (or think they may be ahead) you have 2 cards to catch up. The 3d can only 'help' someone with a 7 or 9 (whichever non-diamond card is on the board) that now has a flush draw.Either jam is polarizing with that stack size, obv any set, 2-pair, staight hand is snap calling but I don't think very many 5s or 7s are calling without some sort of extended draw to go with them. So you are just worried about the 9s (and over-pairs?) ... you want the 9X drawing hands in there, but you dont want K9 or A9 putting you on the same type of draw ... and of course they could put you on air paint.Interesting hand, not sure that was the best Turn to shove, but you may not have got a chance to shove the River either. Normally when someone posts, its a loss, but lets at least hope you were up against the 8-9 and he hit a 6 or something like that.

[akashenk 12]

I think answer20's analysis is pretty good here... I would add:If my math is correct, the villain check min-raised you on the flop and then really min ( < 40% pot) bets the pot on the turn. Typically this is a line of someone who is pretty darn strong.. or being pretty darn tricky. Your description of the nature of the table would leave me away from believing the latter. I would put him on a minimum of 89d in this situation. As it turns out a shove agains this particular hand would probably be the best play since you have him beat, but what are the chances he has something like this? And even in that case you need to dodge a lot of outs. I think its much more likely he has a bigger 9 and is probing or flopped a monster (2 pair minimum). Whether or not you can get him to lay down a bigger 9 with a shove on the turn is hard to tell, but my feeling is you could be in really bad shape.I would also add that you bet this hand in a way that didn't help you determine the strength of your opponent and that put you in a situation where you went all in and you probably didn't know exactly where you were in the hand. Pre-flop you were basically stealing. Why throw out such a small bet on the flop? You welcome people to call you with all sorts of random drawing hands or pairs that could counterfeit you and you don't get any infomration about where you stand at that moment. The same goes for calling his check raise. What does that tell you? If you're willing to go all in on a blank turn after he leads out, I think you need to be willing to try and determine where you're at earlier in the hand. When he check raises you on the flop, you need to put in a good sized re-raise. I think all-in would be very risky since he could have hit the flop hard, but a raise to ~1 Million would have gotten your point across... I have a big pair I am not going to fold... go away. That sort of bet would likely get him to fold a lot of draws and also get him to fold a lot of mediocre hands that happen to have you beat. If he hit the flop hard, he'll be all in and you can safely fold your hand knowing you lost only half your stack.

[TrueAce13 18]

ya I always open pre here, thats fine. I like the call flop. turn, i'd just call. Why are we jamming here? I doubt he ever really calls worse and think he will barrel if we just flat

[Mercury69 3]

I like the jam. Screw that dude's flush and inside str8 options!

[donk4life 34]

I like the jam. Screw that dude's flush and inside str8 options!

Andddddd Mercury just confirmed that flatting is the best play.

[MIddLES 0]

sorry for leaving this sit so long... thank you for the analysis. Seems like the consensus is the best line here is to flat the turn planning to call off on essentially all rivers with a few gross exceptions. Without disagreeing I would like to elaborate a little on my perception of villains range. I think that we all agree that we cannot fold the flop to this c/r... I will add that my read on his hand given his timing/ my perception of the player/ gravity of the tournament/ etc is he was unsure about the hand and I confidently ruled out most pairs and certainly over pairs before the flop. I could have jammed the flop. I did not do so for several reasons... to me his c/r here strongly reps pair + gutter, 9T-9A with k9 and j9 being slightly less likely, Ax hands that hit a pair, and of course a flopped str8/55/i think it is very unlikely this player would have two pair here. A considerable part of this range includes hands that I not only have beat but will bet the turn to set up a jam on the river to put what he likely perceives to be a fairly mediocre strength range in a very difficult spot. In addition on this flop I am very likely to flat with my sets and certainly with a flopped straight, I would also have flatted my over pairs against this player here and whether or not he realizes this (i think that he would at least consider this part of my range) or if you even agree with the play is another discussion. Now for the fun part... After min raising the flop, I would expect him to bet all his weaker draws and any hand that has picked up a fd. I would also expect him to possibly bet a decent amount of his top pair hands here with this small sizing essentially blocker bet with the added benefit of protecting what he probably thinks is the best hand. I would flat this bet on the turn as standard, but I have an issue with the stacks in this hand as I am going to be left with considerably less than a pot size bet left heading into the river and given our stack to pot ratios I am very often going to be in a very gross spot. I think that this turn appears to be pretty polarizing for my shove, I certainly have bluffs here (all hands that picked up fd, JT possibly as well as the bottom of my pair + gutter type range) however I think that most would also expect it likely for me to jam my stronger hands here as well (all over pairs, possibly sets although i think flatting is ok here with sets). I felt that the pot was large enough at this point that tournament preservation and picking up the pot here in this particular tournament was worth more than the equity lost that I gain from bluff catching rivers, and I may be out of line here. I essentially decided that I was ok with possibly folding out some combo draws or gambling on the turn against this range that I have a relatively small equity edge against, folding out non top pair + gutters that I would prefer to keep in the pot, and possibly getting called worse by top pair + gutter type hands and combo draws that are now priced. Although I do think that it is a stretch for someone to bet fold A9 on the turn I felt that against this player with my image at this table that I could put that hand in a very tough spot and possibly squeeze a big fold in this trny. Opponent tanks probably the longest I have ever been involved with (well over 5 minutes real time) and calls off with A9. Extremely disappointing end to this tournament and a hand I will regret for a long time. Thanks for the feedback all, it is of course greatly appreciated. gl lets get the next one! ... for those of you playing on merge i'll dig up some spots vs regs at significant final tables recently that should be fun, and i know that i have mentioned this in another post but if your grinding merge and want to discuss i'd out my sn on there in a group chat type setting...