There are a couple of things about this hand which did not get a mention and they could have been relevant.
At what stage was this? A glance at the stacks made wonder if we are close to the prizes, where the decision is influenced by whether we are wanting to mini cash or go for glory and get deep. Turns out this is fairly early in a deep stack tournament where everyone starts with 50,000. I probably limp pre flop, almost certainly check the flop (maybe shoving rather than betting, about once in 10) but never call the shove as played.
What about the other two players? How often will one of them show up with a straight, or a 9h, ?h hand which we are struggling against? We are risking our entire stack very early in a tournament on a draw heavy board where we cannot improve.
If your overall strategy is to enter lots of tournaments, gamble early because you like a deep stack and can make it count, then calling is fine.
It’s the beginning of a high blinds MTT, with a 50 BB entry stack. The strategy is to play pretty aggressive, shove premiums (there are many beginners who often don’t know their calling ranges), and get a decent number of blinds to be more comfortable. Then play tight, and take profit of the little stacks who were too risky before by playing some shoves/flips against them…
I’ve played many of these MTT’s, I like them, just to play them for fun, and I’ve managed to win a few and get ITM almost 70% of the time…
You have to play aggressive here ; This setup is so clutch : you’re saying our hand cannot improve … We flopped a straight, isn’t it strong enough ? There are so many good hands we dominate : all sets, all two pairs, top pairs, … “Donkey” isn’t donk shoving 9hX for example, he would maybe be betting, but never shoving. What he’s saying is “I’ve got a very nice hand, but don’t want to see a turn”.
It would be so so nitty to fold here. The worse hand you can be up against is 910, or hands with a open-ender + flush draw like you say. It will still be a 40/60 and just a setup.
This is really not gambling, this is just playing some EV+ moves, with a SPR of around 6 here, a call is the way to go.
If you are folding flop str8’s where the effective stacks pre are 30 bb’s in a fast tournament where starting stacks are 50 bb’s and going up quickly you can not be winning long tournaments. This fold is way -EV and should really never happen.
Everyone should just read this post. Pay close attention to this…
and this…
We don’t need a hand that can improve when we flop str8’s in this structure. We are way away from the money with 30 bb’s. Also, it’s not us with 30 bb’s it’s the tournament average and in a couple minutes our stack and the average is going to decrease to 20 bb’s. Folding here is an egregious error.
the original post used one of the many, many hands you will never see at the professional level, or the higher stake tables, here. no one’s gonna let you dress up your garbage for cheap, and no one’s gonna pay 3 - 5 BB to see if their 54o is gonna flop a straight.
however, this is replay, and the level i can afford to play, sees a lot of limpers. It seems to me that this can be exploited by agressive pot building with your higher ranked hands, and flop shopping with low EV hands, IP and the blinds. this leaves me with the question i suppect many beginners share. how much do i adapt my game to exploit the lower levels that i play.
to the original poster i say…make the call. if you’re right, the increased stack will help you in many ways, if you’re wrong, there are other tables filling up.
it was really cool, tho, reading the different lines of thought that went into the decisions that people would make.