Baffling hand

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t400 (9 handed) converter

saw flop|saw showdown

UTG+1 (t7720)
MP1 (t2760)
MP2 (t12945)
Hero (t7455)
CO (t3295)
Button (t10745)
SB (t3960)
BB (t3260)
UTG (t8128)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with A Diamond

, A

.
UTG raises to t800, 3 folds, Hero raises to t1600, 4 folds, UTG calls t800.

Flop: (t3375) Q Heart

, K

, 4

(2 players)
UTG bets t6503 (All-In), Hero...

What could UTG have that he plays like this...?

AK or a heart draw. Call this and expect to be ahead almost every time.

Don't min raise man, please.

He could have KQ, JTh, weak PF EP KK, AK, a crazy K4, or he's sick of your aggressive crap and wants to push you off this hand Wink

.

I thought AK at first, and it's possible but there are only 2 aces out there and I think he might play QQ like this. He wouldn't push back to your minraise because he probably knows that you know he has a big hand to raise UTG like that and would only reminraise (I hate minraises like this too, but they might be good precisely because of that) with a premium holding like AA or KK or AK yourself. When he flops a set and sees a king, he could put you on AA in which case I love pushing allin. It looks just like AK trying to protect against the flush and would be very hard to get away from if your opponent held AA. It's like Brunson says, leading into the raiser in these sorts of situations is one of the strongest moves in poker. However, maybe all his chips is a bit extreme, and half of them would be just as good to get all your chips in the middle. Do you have any reads on this guy? What's your table image? If you've been making a lot of these minraises and being very aggressive, and he's a good player and he knows you know that, he might just have AK. I'm curious about how it turned out.

well first off, tylerk didn't min raise. min raise would have been to 1200 and he raised to 1600. the question is, would he really go all-in on the flop when he is first to act if he had QQ for the set or QK, i doubt it. even AK, he would think he has the best hand and would probably lead out with a bet of 3000 or so which would be just under the pot size. an all-in bet he is clearly overbetting the pot which makes me think he could have AQ or something and is just hoping you would fold. now of course, he could have something like KJs with top pair and the flush draw. i'd say more times than not you will be ahead in this hand if you call on the flop. if you call and it holds up you have a great looking stack, if you lose, theres always next time. i'd say it also depends on the buyin of the tourney. the lower the buyin, the more often you will probably be ahead because with a QK flop people in higher buyins ill be more cautious of a flop like that that was reraised. gotta take your chances somewhere along the way in tourneys to build your stack and this seems like a good place to me.

lovemachine nailed it....no way a flopped set or top 2 pair plays it this way (well they could, but that is just silly)
Although if the guy was prone to panick then I could see A-K betting like this to slam the door on a flush draw....oh well my guess is A-Q or A-K too....

It looks like most of you guys thought along the same lines I did, in fact I was convinced he had to have AK. Of course when the flop came up, I was horrified (expecting KK or QQ), but when he pushed I knew he couldn't have KK or QQ. It occurs to me now, though it didn't at the time, that AJ of hearts might do this too with 2 nut draws. Anyway, I think he has AK or a draw here often enough that I can call, but KQ, KK, and QQ are still a part of his possible range, I think.

It was KQ this time though. Sad

I don't think villian's KQ PF play (modest (min) raise, call larger (4x) raise) was so very weird because he was under the gun and may have been playing Tyler based on prior hands.

Does anyone else min-raise UTG? I sometimes do (mixing it up) just to keep the PF from getting checked through and wind up seeing the flop against really scary crap like 74o, or to mildly discourage the late positions from trying an uncallable steal -- just kind says, "I'm here and I really do have something, so don't dance with me unless you want to screw [or vice versa]."

I think the reason he pushes with KK/QQ or KQ is simply the draw that he does NOT have. If YOU have the nut flush draw, he wants to make your pot odds as bad as possible - hence the all-in bet.

yea he might push would 2 pair to outbet the flush draw, but he has to keep in mind what are the odds of you having a flush draw? the Q is on the board so if you reraised with AQ then you dont have a flush draw, if you reraise its likely that you have an overpair, in which you wouldn't have the flush draw. in fact the only hand that i'd think someone would reraise with and still have the flush draw would be AhKh. yea, he might have you on ak, but the odds of your ak being hearts isn't very likely. i would think more times than not someone would slowplay here with KQ despite there being 2 hearts on the board simply because it would be very unlikely you reraised and have the flush draw here. i would still make the call most of the time because with an all-in right away on the flop because if someone has your AA beat they will usually slow play it because you dont usually expect a call when you overbet a pot by that much. on the other hand, if he check raised you, i'd make a case for laying it down because a raise on a dangerous flop like this either means hes got a great hand or huge balls thinking he can bluff you out of it.

If he checkraises me, I easily put him on KK or QQ and fold...I still can't come up with any logical reasoning for him to make this play. I can't see how he could have put me on aces with enough certainty to think his push had a good chance of getting called, but if he somehow did then this play might make sense.

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