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Pot Committed With Overpair in a 3-Way Pot
Our image is tight. We haven’t had many spots to play in the first 3.5 hours of this $1,110 multi-day tournament. Blinds are 300/600/600 and we are in the big blind with 21k behind with AA.
EP (24k) bet 2,000. CO (>50k) call. BB (hero) raise to 6,000. EP and CO call.
Flop (18,300) JT8 rainbow.
BB (hero) jam 16k.
There hadn’t been much 3-betting at all. EP player had only been there for maybe an orbit or so. His previous bets had also been oversized, so I didn’t see this bet size as anything particularly noteworthy. CO was a sticky player who could’ve made those preflop calls with a fairly wide range.
My thinking on this 3-way flop was that my AA overpair was nothing to be overjoyed about. But with an SPR <1 I was pot committed and needed to deny equity to hands like KQ, T9s, 98s, 87s. AA could get value from QQ and 99, and AJ.
EP reluctantly folded but alas, CO had 88.
Was my jam on the flop correct?
Was my squeeze too small? I didn’t think I could go any higher than 7,000 because that would be 30% of my stack.
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3 Replies
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I don’t mind a shove pre here. There’s 5500 in the pot which is an increase of 25% to your stack. That is a lot of tomatoes. The old adage “with aces you often win a small pot or lose a big one”.
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With the over size raise by the CO and the intervening call, I would like a jam pre-flop here. Would not have waited for a flop.
You have two interested opponents and taking this down preflop nets you about 9BB with little risk.
A jam puts pressure on both since your attacking 1/2 their effective stacks.
Might work with 88, might not. Either way the pressure you put on them is going to be massive.
There’s zero likelihood that the 88 fold for 6K here. A larger raise is needed to crow bar him off his hand. And you need it to hurt. If it doesn’t, he/she easily calls and you lose on this flop regardless.
At 21K, you’re jamming 30-35BB into about a 10BB pot. Anyone sits up an notices. Better chance of getting the fold.
The 30BB stack is awkward to play since it’s large enough to sit around and survive for a while, but small enough to become pot committed to any hand you play.
Jamming preflop gives you two ways to win the hand, he folds or calls with an inferior hand.
As played, your opponent played his hand perfectly. Called when behind and called when very far ahead. Jamming preflop would have forced him to commit, or not, with imperfect information.
I’ll let Chris deal with the actual breakdown of the hand. He’s far better at it than I am.
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So I agree with the sentiment that the squeeze is too small. I know pot geometry is a thing, but do we really care if we’re overcommitting with a hand this strong. I don’t think we want to jam, but rather we want to commit ourselves. We can jam hands like AKo/AQo/JJ/TT, but with AKs/AA/KK/QQ, I’m squeezing big to try to induce someone to say, “well I can’t just call that.” Those lesser pairs are going to have to think long and hard about calling, and if they want to continue, they will mostly just have to overshove hoping to run into AK and race (yes, if 88 does it, it sucks this time, but mostly that is an ideal result). So I’m going to 9k.
Regardless, we get postflop here multiway. We have 15k behind and there is around ~20k in the middle. The calling range of our opponents is going to be rotten with 77-JJ, so this is a kind of a miserable flop. We’re going to be behind a significant amount of the time, but they will also have hands like KQs/AQ/AJ/QJs/T9s etc. We’re committed here, and I don’t think we can really fold to a bet. We benefit from protection and may get called by hands like 99 that may check back if we check. So I like the jam.
It might not have changed the results in this exact spot, but I do think 88 has to consider taking a different path (raising or folding) if we go larger.
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