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Hero Fold Late in Satellite
50 of us left in a Main Event Satellite. 30 winning seats. blinds 1k/2k/2k. We are in the BB with 35,500. An 80-yr-old big mouth maniac with about 75k in MP open limps, a thing he had been doing alot. He was VPIP about 40. His habit is to use overbets. The SB, who I cover by a small amount, routinely limps every SB and limped here. I look down at JdTd. Not wanting to play speculatively OOP with 18bb, and no blockers, I checked my option. I did not want to jam this hand into two players either.
Flop comes QcJsTh. SB ck. Since this was a limped pot, and since it was so connected and I had a strong but vulnerable hand, I opted to go big and led out for 5k. Old maniac snap calls. SB fold. I did not like that snap call of this big bet. V could have QJ, QT, or any 98. He could also have a high Q or J. I didn’t put him on a set or AK because he would have raised pre. I decided to go into realization mode, planning to check-call any reasonable bet.
The turn was a 5 brick. I checked, V checked back.
The river was 2 brick. Now I thought I might be ahead. I bet 5k, and V snap-jammed. I took a look at V for a few breaths to see how he was breathing, and it was fairly hard. Then I went into the tank. I remembered two old saws, heuristics if you will.
1. They don’t bluff enough on rivers. Even though this guy was playing like a bully, I doubted he would risk half his stack on a big bluff, with his solid position in this satellite.
2. Never go broke in a limped pot. He had quite a few combos beating me that he could’ve limped in with. His check back on the turn could be designed to induce action on the river. With this effective stack size it’s conceivable he could be taking a street off, under-repping his hand and inducing action on the river. My big lead on the flop told him I had something. Yet he snap-jammed anyway.
If I fold here I’ll still have about 13bb, enough to use the resteal short-stack weapon.
I took another look at V and his breathing had slowed down from when I last checked it.
Given the two rules above plus the fact that his breathing had slowed and that I wouldn’t be badly crippled, I reluctantly folded.
Was this a good hero fold?
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2 Replies
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I hate these spots. But every time I get in them and end up calling, I’m left saying afterwards.. “Why did I call, I knew he was strong”
I think all the signs here point towards a fold. A heavy limper will still have a decently strong range here. The snap decisions always mean they were easy for our opponent to make. Breathing indicates that he is less nervous now than he was earlier, typically a sign of value rather than a bluff.
I hate it, but I’m folding here.
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I don’t really like the river bet at all if we’re taking this bet-fold line. We already have labeled this player an overbetting maniac and we’ve already decided to go into realization mode. Once we’re here, I think we should be checking this river and then deciding. If we truly think they’re a maniac, this is a better line to allow more bluffs to spew and we may have to call. If we’re less confident in our maniac label, we can either see it go check check a lot where we win or call a smaller bet where we also win quite a bit. Basically, I think we win more by checking and face the same tough dilemma on V shoves, but without having just sacrificed 5bb. If we’re planning to fold to a shove here against this player, I don’t like the bet.
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