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So this was a weird hand. Like I said previously, I hate posting questions about soul reads but I think there were some fun components to this one. First off, I think I messed up on the river lead. In this specific spot, it’s probably best to just check/call with how the hand played out. I’m targeting a very specific part of his range to call a river bet (i.e. A7/A8/etc.) that I think the better play is to check and allow our opponent to bet into us with some high card hands as well.
But after I took the lead option, when we get raised I’m struggling to put them on a hand outside of JT. Something about the large sizing on the flop lead me to believe that they have a hand that wishes to take it down immediately, and the check behind on the turn adds to that read. Which if that’s true, overpairs are unlikely, 9x hands are unlikely, but there are still draws and over cards to fade. The other potential option in my head is 88, but with the check behind on the turn, I feel like the 88 would have put another bet in this spot with the intention of checking behind on most rivers (at least that’s what I would do, but it’s not the best idea to say my opponent will act the same as me).
With ICM calcs — If we fold, we have an ICM of $792, I we call and are wrong, its a payout of $355, and if we call and are right, it goes up to $1237. So through ICM math, we need to be correct 49.5% of the time to justify the call.
Like I said before, I struggled with the decision. I knew I had to be right a decent amount of the time, but didn’t know the ICM would say we have to be right almost 50% in this spot. And honestly, what it came down to for me was blockers. If I’m concerned about one specific hand, and I block that hand, it’s less likely that they have it. I just could not fathom another value hand that they play each of these streets in this way unless it’s JT or a bluff. So I decided to call with my T9, and probably would have called with J9 as well. I think some better 9’s like A9/K9/Q9 would have been a fold just because of the lack of blockers. just holding a J or T makes its 25% less likely that they have JT. And if we are talking about a very tight range for our opponent, that 25% is a lot.
In the end, I called and our opponent flipped over J8o. I’m totally unsure what they were thinking turning second pair into a bluff like that, but it worked in our favor. But the very next hand I was dealt KK, busted one of the short stacks and held onto the chip lead until I won the tourney. Guess we got lucky with that hero call.
