$5,50 NL HE MTT: How to play small Pocket Pair against a c-bet?

[Andyreas]

Game

Hold'em

Game Format

No Limit

Table Format

MTT

Buy-in

5,50

Currency

$

Somehow my HUD did not save the hand, so I do not have the stats of the villian but if I remember correctly his VPIP was around 25 and c-bet% was >70%

A short summary of the hand/my question:
I get dealt 44 in BB and call a bet of MP+1 of 2.2BBs. I check the flop and he takes some time and bets 1/3 of pot. My feeling was that he did not connect, so a classic c-bet.

Question:
Should I check-raise here?

I only called, called his turn-bet and river-bet. I did not pay enough attention to the final board and he hit a flush on river. So my question is: Should I have been more aggressive before and taken the pot down since my hand is unlikely to improve? Or should I just let it go, since I am not very deep in chips? Any advice?

Here's the detailed hand:
pokerstars, $4.90 + $0.60 - Hold'em No Limit - 125/250 (30 ante) - 8 players
Hand delivered by CardsChat

987654320 (UTG): 4,755 (19 bb)
gustavo0412 (UTG+1): 7,989 (32 bb)
Od1nVulc41n (MP): 6,714 (27 bb)
Wallysonfr (MP+1): 6,585 (26 bb)
Flowillwin (CO): 2,445 (10 bb)
Kimmy2011 (BU): 10,648 (43 bb)
SD ANDRE (SB): 3,200 (13 bb)
AndyreasDE (BB): 6,132 (25 bb)

Pre-Flop: (615) Hero (AndyreasDE) is BB with 4♠ 4♥
3 players fold, Wallysonfr (MP+1) raises to 550, 3 players fold, AndyreasDE (BB) calls 300

Flop: (1,465) 8♥ A♦ 3♣ (2 players)
AndyreasDE (BB) checks, Wallysonfr (MP+1) bets 483, AndyreasDE (BB) calls 483

Turn: (2,431) 2♣ (2 players)
AndyreasDE (BB) checks, Wallysonfr (MP+1) bets 1,000, AndyreasDE (BB) calls 1,000

River: (4,431) A♣ (2 players)
AndyreasDE (BB) checks, Wallysonfr (MP+1) bets 3,500, AndyreasDE (BB) calls 3,500

Total pot: 11,431

Showdown:
Wallysonfr (MP+1) shows K♣ T♣ (a flush, Ace high)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 51%, Flop: 31%, Turn: 34%, River: 100%)

AndyreasDE (BB) mucks 4♠ 4♥ (two pair, Aces and Fours)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 49%, Flop: 69%, Turn: 66%, River: 0%)

Wallysonfr (MP+1) wins 11,431

 

[D0nk3y Hunt3r]

So many ways to do this, even with 25bb, but considering your line I would rethink calling river.
I have a question about calculated equities, which software do you use, HM failed at this.

 

[monkeytilter]

Flat calling this shallow is not good, you cannot set mine at this depth and trying to get baby pairs to showdown OOP is a nightmare.
I think better options are to 3 bet/fold or 3-bet shove, I prefer the second option - just think, you ended up with your stack in the middle anyway in the worse way possible! (At least shoving lets you realise 100% of your hand's equity and adds a good chunk of fold equity - there are plenty of hands in a 25% range that will yield to a 3bet jam)

As played fold the turn. even bluffs have good equity against you, your draw is worthless and you never really know where you stand on the river barring a non-flushing 4 or 5.

You have a major leak if you are doing this regularly with your baby pairs, don't chase bad draws on the turn and don't try to bluff catch like a high stakes boss in a $5.50 MTT tournament!

 

[Andyreas]

I have a question about calculated equities, which software do you use, HM failed at this.

I used the CardsChat hands converter on the forum here. I think it's based on PokeIt. 🤔

Flat calling this shallow is not good, you cannot set mine at this depth and trying to get baby pairs to showdown OOP is a nightmare.

Totally agree. I usually fold small pairs when the board has higher cards and I don't have a good reading on the opponent.

This time my feeling was right but my execution was horrible. That's why I asked for suggestions here. 🤓

Thank you for your two suggestions. I'll keep it in mind for the next time I get in a similar spot. ☺️

 

[D0nk3y Hunt3r]

As played fold the turn. even bluffs have good equity against you, your draw is worthless and you never really know where you stand on the river barring a non-flushing 4 or 5.

You have a major leak if you are doing this regularly with your baby pairs, don't chase bad draws on the turn and don't try to bluff catch like a high stakes boss in a $5.50 MTT tournament!

Against a .25 player with such stack size I would say on turn he's ahead most of the time, and going forward with this assumption, second barel usually means a possible bluff and well, flush draw, like in this case. So calling small bet on turn could be treated as bluff catcher, and yes, still a chance to catch something on a river, though I agree, wouldn't bet on this either.
At this stage stacks are getting smaller and provoke action.

 

[makisaa]

I think that with 44, there are limited prospects, so you are waiting for a three of a kind or something better and generally you want to complete a stronger hand. If you had played more aggressivelly he might had folded, but it is a decision to invest to 44. So I think you should leave at the turn, when the bettings went four figures!

 

[takinitSLEAZEE]

Set mining has can be a nail-biter. With a missed flop I'd fold to a c-bet, just because it's likely that the villain has a better pair since, for some reason, pairs seem to get dealt in pairs, sometimes more, imo. It's to just save chips and to pick a better spot.

 

[Tato Ivan]

I would throw this pair away if I had to pay for it.

 

[fundiver199]

Preflop
You could rejam here, but for 25BB effective its pretty marginal. I would like that play much more, if you were <20BB effective. For just over a minraise I would also call here. You are getting almost 20:1 in implied odds to setmine, and sometimes you can also do a bit more than that.

Flop
I guess, its ok to peel here for a 1/3 pot C-bet, but if I was busy with other tables, I might just let it go and be done. A high boards do favour the preflop raiser, and the problem with a small pair is, you almost never improve.

Turn
You picked up a gutshot, so now you have 6 outs when behind. But even so this is a bit iffy facing a 40% pot bet. One of the issues is, that if you improve, there will be a 1-liner to a straight on the board. So how easy is it going to be to get paid out of position? And if you make a set, is your hand even good, when any 5 how has a straight? There is not much upside in continuing with a combination of a bad made hand and a bad draw, so I would just fold and be done with the hand. You put him to the test to fire two barrels, and if he bluffed you, good for him.

River
Ac reduce the amount of AX combos, he can have, but it also bring in the backdoor flush. He is betting almost full pot, and your hand is a pure bluffcatcher with no relevant blockers. The average player is not bluffing here 35% of the time, so if I made it this far, I would clearly fold now.

Results
So he got there with the backdoor draw, and this is part of the problem with continuing on the flop and turn. Even when he is bluffing, he has equity, so sometimes he will get there, and you just end up playing a guessing game out of position for nearly all your chips. Just get out early and avoid the headache. Even folding preflop is much better than, what you ended up doing.

 

[eetenor]

As fundiver and others state the issue with our hand on this board is how do we continue confidently on each street OOP with this stack depth-It is ok to be bluffed on turn-----If however you you want to trust your flop read then you have to XR flop not call---The issue is if we had the ACE why would we XR flop?-that is why this board can be an easy fold on flop OOP with our hand

 

[dallam]

Paying attention to the stack sizes, still would call it pre, but prepairing myself if there's not a 4 on the board, its probably a fold. We even were lucky to be able to pay out such a small bet on flop, and have our small pocket as a bluff catcher. On turn it turned out to be visible that 40% bet is not a continuation bluff without a backup combination like 55 - KK or 22, so a cheap lay-down: fold here is what you needed to do. Runner flush draw was kind of unexpected for me at first too, this line not fit into it that much, but still in it a way, as he was in position and controlled the party with the bets. I would fold on turn, but river is uncallable, we beat no combinations now, probably curiosity brought us to a showdown, which is not bad at all, cause it can make us better player. Hard spot, better luck next time.

 

[Andyreas]

On turn it turned out to be visible that 40% bet is not a continuation bluff

My mind was a little twisted since I've seen such multi-street bluffs quite a few times but indeed, I shouldn't risk too much of my stack for this small possibility.

probably curiosity brought us to a showdown, which is not bad at all, cause it can make us better player.

Exactly. There was so much of my stack in there that I wanted to see what he had. 🤣
And tbh, I also overlooked the third chub card cause of this minor tilt-move. 🙃

 

[fundiver199]

It is ok to be bluffed on turn

I think, thats a key statement relating to this hand. The goal in poker is not to be unbluffable, and while we dont want to never defend anything, its always ok to let go of our worst bluffcatchers on any street. And with small pairs specifically our main focus should usually be on setmining rather than mocking around with third or fourth pair.

 

[Tigroslav]

It's a pretty bad flop texture to do anything other than fold in this spot really.