$5,40 NL HE MTT: Bounty Hunters Warm-Up: Would like your thoughts on some preflop spots

Andyreas · Jul 8, 2025

Hey forum,

would like your thoughts on some preflop spots I took (or not) and how you'd played those hands.

Game is the $5.40 Bounty Hunters Warm-Up [Final Stage], so we are ITM already.

After being short stacked most of the game, I recently won a threeway all-in with 99 vs. AQ vs. AK and now I have a decent stack to win some more bounties.

Here's some hands I am wondering if I took the right action preflop and would love to hear your thoughts:

Hand 1:
We (81.73 BBs) are in MP and holding 8s8h.
1 BB = 8k chips; Initial starting stack was 10k. Initial Bounty was $2.5.

BB is sitting out and put auto all-in and has a bounty of $9.85. GGPoker wil have him auto-fold and you win the bounty.

Folds to Hero. Hero?

Hero raises to 2 BBs, MP+1 (TAG) 3-bets to 6 BBs, BN (LAG) 4-bets to 16 BBs. Hero?

Hand 2:
We (75.5 BBs) are in SB and holding Jc7c.
1 BB = 10k chips = Initial starting stack was 10k. Initial Bounty was $2.5.

UTG jams for 10.22 BBs and has a bounty of $9.53. (We would win half of it.)

Folds to Hero. Hero?

Hand 3:
We (64 BBs) are in UTG and holding KsQd.
1 BB = 10k chips = Initial starting stack. Initial Bounty was $2.5.

Hero opens to 2 BBs, folds to SB (aggressive, medium range) who 3-bet jams for 22.16 BBs. Bounty of SB is $11.10.
BB folds.

Hero?

Hand 4:
We (28 BBs) are in SB and holding JsTc.
1 BB = 20k chips; 10k Initial starting stack. Initial Bounty was $2.5.

Folds to BN (TAG) who jams his last 9 BBs. His bounty is $27.20.

Hero? Additional info: BB is a LAG who has 12 BBs left. (Bounty is $29)

Happy to hear your thoughts on those hands / preflop situations and how you'd have played them.

primrose · Jul 8, 2025

Hand 1: this seems like an easy all-in? It's tempting here to all-in very wide, which could lead others to call wide. But you happen to have a great hand anyway. Don't non-allin raise and let someone else jam over you; this just increases the chance to get it all-in vs. someone else, and I don't think the hand is strong enough to want that.

Maybe if there were several players behind who cover, you could think of not going all-in. Maybe.

Hand 2: J7 is a very bad hand for this since you're almost never ahead and there's a decent chance you're dominated. I think 87s would be much better here. I think I fold.

Hand 3: probably a call for the bounty, but unsure on this one

Hand 4: This bounty is gigantic, so jam I think.

Hand 1 spoiler: now you fold, but I think minraising was a mistake.

Or actually hmm maybe you could still jam, then your holding looks super strong and you could get folds from stronger hands.

fundiver199 · Jul 9, 2025

Hi Andyreas

Its not really possible to analyse these hands properly without knowing the starting stacks and ideally also the bounties of the players behind you. In the first hand they are the ones, that matter the most, since there is a huge difference between playing for 80BB effective and say 20BB effective, when you are contending for a bounty, that is only worth around 4BB. So would it be possible, that you could post the entire hand history or a screenshot or something? I would love to dive into these bounty spots, but its really not possible with the information, you have given.

Andyreas · Jul 9, 2025

Thanks both for your feedback!

@fundiver199 : the tournament was played on GGPoker and I never know how to properly share those hands without spoiling all the results.

But I'll try with their replay functionality which should give you all the relevant info and you can pause when you desire:
Hand 1: https://gg.gl/z80ui
Hand 2: https://gg.gl/r9eqw
Hand 3: https://gg.gl/1e1wg
Hand 4: https://gg.gl/c8wed

Happy to hear your feedback on those.

fundiver199 · Jul 9, 2025

Hand 1 88
As I said already, the value of BBs bounty is likely around 4BB or 32k chips at this stage of the tournament. In the beginning it would be 20k chips, but some of the money has already been distributed, so each chip is worth less now. The way to visualize the situation is therefore, that there is a 8+32=40k ante rather than a 8k ante. This gives us more incentive to enter the pot, but it also gives the players behind more incentive.

I actually dont really know, what solvers say about adjusting to a very large ante. It could warrent using a larger raising size, but it could also warrent developing a limping range, so we can play more hands. And just like SB limping we will then also have a range for limp-reraising. We can also open jam deeper, but here you are 80BB effective with BTN, and this is far to deep even with the large ante.

I dont mind the idea of going for a small raise here, and I would actually hope, that any player other than BTN 3-bet, so I can get it in against them with a decent risk-reward and some fold equity. However when BTN comes in for the cold 4-bet and choose a non all-in sizing, this looks super strong. So even though he could be going after the bounty, I think, its time to bail out and live to fight another day.

fundiver199 · Jul 9, 2025

Hand 2 J7s
Without the bounty you are calling 95 to win 225, so you would need 42% equity. With the bounty, which we can again estimate at 32k chips, you are calling 95 to win 257, so you need 37% equity. It seems a little optimistic, that J7s has that against a UGT 10BB jamming range. Some percentage of the time you will also get action from BB, which is bad news, so I think, this one is a fold.

primrose · Jul 9, 2025

RE Hand 1:
The bounty is worth less than I realized (h/t fundiver). Nonetheless--

It's fine to risk 12 BB to to win 2.5 BB, certainly that would be the play with this hand. Some people jam a bit larger stacks, too, like 15BB.

In this case, we're risking, say, 40 BB[*] to win 6.5BB (SB+BB+Ante+Bounty).

So it seems about reasonable, but it's actually better than this quick calculation suggests because there's also one fewer player who can call (the BB), who is the most likely to call. So I still think just open-jamming is the play.

[*] it's technically more than 40 because one player has more, but the others all have less, so I think putting it at 40 is reasonable.

fundiver199 · Jul 9, 2025

Hand 3 KQo
Here the bounty is $11, so lets estimate it to be worth 35k chips. Without the bounty this is an easy fold, so is the bounty enough to change our decision? Without the bounty you are calling 202 to win 462, so you need 44% equity. With the bounty you are calling 202 to win 462+35=497, so you only need 41% equity. This is not a massive difference, so I think, KQo is still a fold. But of course the mistake is smaller, than it would be in a regular MTT.

fundiver199 · Jul 9, 2025

Hand 4 JTo
Here BTNs bounty is worth at least 80k or around half his stack, and BBs bounty is worth even more, should he decide to come along. So this is a spot, where you need to get it in very wide, and JTo is easily good enough.

eetenor · Jul 13, 2025

Andyreas said:
Hey forum,

would like your thoughts on some preflop spots I took (or not) and how you'd played those hands.

Game is the $5.40 Bounty Hunters Warm-Up [Final Stage], so we are ITM already.

After being short stacked most of the game, I recently won a threeway all-in with 99 vs. AQ vs. AK and now I have a decent stack to win some more bounties.

Here's some hands I am wondering if I took the right action preflop and would love to hear your thoughts:

Hand 1:
We (81.73 BBs) are in MP and holding 8s8h.
1 BB = 8k chips; Initial starting stack was 10k. Initial Bounty was $2.5.

BB is sitting out and put auto all-in and has a bounty of $9.85. GGPoker wil have him auto-fold and you win the bounty.

Folds to Hero. Hero?

Hero raises to 2 BBs, MP+1 (TAG) 3-bets to 6 BBs, BN (LAG) 4-bets to 16 BBs. Hero?

Hand 2:
We (75.5 BBs) are in SB and holding Jc7c.
1 BB = 10k chips = Initial starting stack was 10k. Initial Bounty was $2.5.

UTG jams for 10.22 BBs and has a bounty of $9.53. (We would win half of it.)

Folds to Hero. Hero?

Hand 3:
We (64 BBs) are in UTG and holding KsQd.
1 BB = 10k chips = Initial starting stack. Initial Bounty was $2.5.

Hero opens to 2 BBs, folds to SB (aggressive, medium range) who 3-bet jams for 22.16 BBs. Bounty of SB is $11.10.
BB folds.

Hero?

Hand 4:
We (28 BBs) are in SB and holding JsTc.
1 BB = 20k chips; 10k Initial starting stack. Initial Bounty was $2.5.

Folds to BN (TAG) who jams his last 9 BBs. His bounty is $27.20.

Hero? Additional info: BB is a LAG who has 12 BBs left. (Bounty is $29)

Happy to hear your thoughts on those hands / preflop situations and how you'd have played them

have not seen the spoilers

Hand 1 in order to study PKO all the table data is necessary. What size are the stacks behind you --all of them. What are their bounties? How agg are they? If you make it 5 will one of them shove for 60bb's with worse than 88? if 2 have 20 bb stacks will they both go all-in preflop giving you the chance to win 3 bounties? Is there a nit on the table who will shove premium only and has a small bounty? That is some of the data you want. PKO requires us to play non-linearly. We have to anticipate actions and ranges not just basic math. Yes we use math but we have to adjust math to possible ranges---wider and tighter than standard.

Of course we open to get the bounty what sizing depends on all that data.--

hand 2 big blind data is missing no way to tell you what to do without it

Hand 3
simple math issue v has 22x starting but only 4.5x bounty--So we are adjusting our Jam calling range only 3% Ish wider but what about the next ladder how much is that? If it is equal to $11 we can fold KQoff Vs a tight shoving range ICM would have us fold depending on ladders- we would use ICM here unless the V is shoving wider.
In these spots we also want to think about stack size ratio to the rest of the player pool-can we edge pass here to keep stack advantage?

Hand 4 ladder data missing----BTN has 18x starting but only 11x bounty again we are not going to overly widen our calling range vs that ratio we will 4% ish more hands vs the shove but how tight is that BTN shove? CEV gto we fold JToff btn is shoving 35% of hands but not AA KK QQ gto-- add in those hands and JToff is an easy muck

Marshmalo1994 · Jul 13, 2025

This is how I'd play those hands. Just an opinion, not definitive answers of how to play them.

Hand 1: I'd open 2.3 normally. Maybe 2.5-3 trying to avoid someone else call just for the BB bounty.
After the 4bet, I'd only consider the call if BU is all in, but if they have more stack left, I'd fold.

Hand 2: It's a fold to me. Even in BB I'm not sure if it's call.

Hand 3: I call less with off suited hands (don't use this against me 😅). I may call with KQs.

Hand 4: I think I'd play it the same as the hand 3.

Andyreas · Jul 17, 2025

eetenor said:
in order to study PKO all the table data is necessary. What size are the stacks behind you --all of them. What are their bounties? How agg are they?

Makes a lot of sense. That's why I added more info in the replay of the hands in post 4 in case you want to have a second look: