AK, TPTK, how do you play?

[rong]

Titan $10 + $1 SnG, 10 man, blinds 20/40.

Villain is a bad player, -50% ROI over 250 or so games & $500 down.

Button strike333 (680)
SB elainedan (1595)
BB Essoface (1440)
UTG VFLBMG1900 (1710)
UTG+1 Kukimacko (1410)
MP JiliacTheHutt (2950)
MP mario92 (1440)
CO-1 DanAronG (1775)
CO Ramiris82 (2000)

Preflop: DanAronG is in the CO-1 with A K
4 folds, DanAronG raises to 160, 2 folds, elainedan calls 140, 1 fold.

Flop (360) 2 7 A
elainedan checks, DanAronG bets 280, elainedan calls 280.

Turn (920) T
elainedan checks, DanAronG???

Questions - Do you bet? How much? Are you willing to go all in if raised? Are you wanting to get all your chips in?

What is you betting strategy and what is your main objective?

[rong]

Tai, are there any issues here with me giving out that info about a specific player? Should I change his name to villain or something in future?

[baudib]

We want to keep a player this bad in the hand because we obviously destroy his donk range. I bet less than half-pot here, maybe like $400, and call/shove the river.

[taipan168]

No issues with giving out the info about the player.

The main objectives are:

a) keep this guy calling (so checking behind is the worst thing you can do here)
b) price out his draws
c) get all the chips in over the turn and the river.

I agree with baudib that the best way to achieve the above is to bet 500 or so on the turn and rest in on the river whatever he does.

[TLR]

I would bet 1/2 pot on turn and push river

[Nakamura]

The effective stack is around You have 1155 left after the flop betting. So now you need to think about how much you want to bet on the river first. You probably want him to feel committed to calling on the river if he has anything. So perhaps something like 600 into a pot of around 2000.

If you bet around 500 and he calls the pot is around 1900. On the river the pot will be around 1900 and he will have around 650 left. It will be hard for him to get away from anything here, so I make it 500 on the turn.

[rong]

I notice everyone here is focusing on how best to extrapolate the most chips out of villain. I'm assumming this is due to villains dire stats.

Does anyone think we should consider that we could be behind and perhaps should be looking at betting strategies aimed at estimating villains hand strength, or do we assume the majority of the time we are ahead here and therefore getting it all in the middle is +ev long term.

BTW, I played it just as all have suggested with exactly the same thought process.

[Nakamura]

Does anyone think we should consider that we could be behind and perhaps should be looking at betting strategies aimed at estimating villains hand strength, or do we assume the majority of the time we are ahead here and therefore getting it all in the middle is +ev long term.

Unless you can soul-read, you have to figure you are significantly ahead of his range. Therefore, your job is to work out how best to add his stack to yours. Of course sometimes he is going to stack you when he hits his A7 for 2 pair, but the numbers of times you are going to stack him will out-weigh the times he stacks you.

[taipan168]

I notice everyone here is focusing on how best to extrapolate the most chips out of villain. I'm assumming this is due to villains dire stats.

Does anyone think we should consider that we could be behind and perhaps should be looking at betting strategies aimed at estimating villains hand strength, or do we assume the majority of the time we are ahead here and therefore getting it all in the middle is +ev long term.

Against a donk like this, TPTK is da nuts, get your chips in whatever way you can. If your read was that opp was a solid winning player, I would probably check behind on the turn for pot control and call a bet of up to 1/2 pot on the river.

[baudib]

The board is so dry that normally a call on this flop is a little scary. And yeah, I'd check behind the turn against a good player. You might also consider checking behind this type of flop and betting turn/river sometimes.

Against a really bad player we go for three streets of value and stack off against his weak range.

[baudib]

Actually there's not much a good player should have here that beats us either...still, a bad player probably has all Ax in his range and even though there are a couple more hands that beat us, I'd play TPTK like the nuts as tai said.

[rong]

Well I played it as suggested, and ran into a set of 2's.

Was sure I played it correctly, but thought I'd see if anyone had any suggestions of how I might spot and avoid a beat here. But against a player this bad I guess you just have to accept that sometimes you gotta lose and there aint nothin you can do about it.

Thanks for all your responses.

[baudib]

These types of hands used to frustrate me, too. But in tournaments of any type, with less than 50 BBs, it's almost never correct to fold TPTK. You need really detailed information on opponents that we rarely have -- "calls with any pp preflop, check-calls with sets." etc. If you knew he was really passive and then shoved the river after calling down two streets, you could maybe fold, but if he calls off almost 10% of his stack OOP with 22, he's going to stack off with AJ here and probably a lot worse.

[taipan168]

These types of hands used to frustrate me, too. But in tournaments of any type, with less than 50 BBs, it's almost never correct to fold TPTK. You need really detailed information on opponents that we rarely have -- "calls with any pp preflop, check-calls with sets." etc. If you knew he was really passive and then shoved the river after calling down two streets, you could maybe fold, but if he calls off almost 10% of his stack OOP with 22, he's going to stack off with AJ here and probably a lot worse.

^^^ this. Just because he showed up with 22 this time doesn't mean that he wouldn't play a lot of other hands you beat exactly the same. This is why I edit people's results out when they post them, because we need to be thinking about ranges in this game not "OMG he had me beat, I should have folded".