3 pocket pairs in a row, facing a shove

I'm playing in a $160 buy-in MTT with about 90 players. We start with $16K in chips, and I'm down to about 12k after the first 90 minutes or so of play.

I'm in MP, with TT. Blinds are 100/200 and I raise to 900. I get two callers, one of which is two seats to my right. He's in his mid-50's, dressed a little preppier than the rest of the crowd (but not too much). My read is that he seemed solid, but there was no reason to think he's on any kind of higher level.

The flop is not terrifying and I make a c-bet for about 2200. One player folds and Mr. Preppy calls. check/check on the turn and river. he shows down pocket 7's and I win.

Next hand - I have AA, raise pre-flop and get heads up with another guy, two seats to the right of Mr. Preppy. We'll call him Shrek because he looks like an ogre. He's also not too bright, and has been a pretty exploitable calling station.

Shrek donk-bets out on a board with broadway cards, I call. The board gets wetter on the turn and I check behind his check. The river gives me broadway with only a backdoor flush possible. He checks and I value bet 4200 (probably a little less than half of his stack at this point) and he snap calls. I won, he didn't show.

Next hand, my stack is up to about $18kish and blinds are 200/400 now, Mr. Preppy is UTG and limps. I raise to $1600 with TT (again). It folds around and Shrek calls. Mr. Preppy then shoves for about $10,000 on top. Shrek is still behind me with about $5500 left.

Call or fold?

Preppy's play smells a lot like AK, I think JJ is the bottom of his range for limp/shove here? He's expecting a call from at least one of you. Shrek is really Donkey and will call, hard to put him on a range, could be any pair, any paint, any Ace?

You've also shown down some good hands, so if Preppy is anxious to get it vs you I'd give more weight to a higher pair.

Can anyone run this in poker stove?

Me, I muck here with TT: in a tournament, especially live, I don't mind giving up a (questionable) small edge in order to take advantage of a bigger edge later. You still have 16k in chips and can pick a different spot.

One thing I like to do here is Hollywood and stall just a bit before folding: I want to watch Preppy out of the corner of my eye and look for any indication of hand strength: how is he sitting, what's his composure? (You also want to watch him while he shoves the chips in.) There's a good chance Donkey will call behind, so we will see both hands and get some potentially good information.

Rocky - get the f out of my head. I though preppy's play smelled like AK too.

I haven't played with him before, but my general read on the field is that most players are bad and will probably never ever ever fold KK or AA post-flop. Which means that they avoid multi-way pots with these hands like the plague. It's also customary for someone to raise 3 or 4x and get 4-6 callers. It's also common for 3-bet pots to go mutli-way. So I really discounted huge pairs.

And you're right. I tanked and hollywooded for a long time trying to get a read. He was leaning back a bit, arms folded, but definitely focused on what I was going to do. I can't explain it but he just gave me a vibe like "hey buddy, you're not going to bully this table like that". Even though I had shown down good hands, most players in these type of places only remember that you raised, and not what you showed down.

Let's say there's a high probability of Preppy's AK, so you're priced to call. But Shrek, even with his shorter stack, is dragging down your odds. You'd hate to see QJ, but even AJ, AQ sucks.

I can't get my head around the math with the side pot and Shrek's super wide range. I think in the heat of battle I say, "just kidding" and toss 'em in.

Now that I think about, it, Preppy's play, if he has AK, is straight out of HOH, especially with you bullying the table. Guy like that probably read the whole series twice.

I can't really get my head around the math either. Obviously, if I'm up against AJ and KQ, or AK and QJ, or AQ and KJ, I'm devastated. If I'm up against AK and an underpair, I'm in good shape. Shrek might call with Ax suited, he might call (thinking he has good odds, lol) with something stupid like JTs. I don't have alot of history with either player, so I really don't know.

In reality, I called. However, in retrospect, I feel it might have been bad. But now that I think about it more, I think it was ok, but I'm not sure.

My experience in this poker room, and others in the area, is that very very few players are willing to limp/raise AA or KK from very early position. And those that are able to do it, will rarely shove. They would raise to $5k here and then either open shove, or check/shove the flop.

I'm hoping for a few more opinions before I reveal what the villains held for cards

Close but I probably fold. If you had won those last 2 hands without showing down, you'd look aggro. But since they saw your big pairs at showdown, they have much less reason to play back at you.

If anything, live players are afraid to get money in against "lucky/hot running" players. I think our preppie guy could easily be sitting on a monster here. I really doubt he's showing up with 99- so we're racing at best.

Is there any merit to the idea that this is the stage of the tournament where we should be looking to take some shots to chip up?

I mean I only have slightly more than the starting stack at the beginning of this hand, and blinds go up every 30 minutes.

I've heard it said that you have to "get lucky" at least once to make it all the way to the end of a tournament, and I think most people would agree its true. This seems like a good spot to either make a huge run at the money, or try to grind my way back with the $6-7K I would have left if I lose.

A little. But a spot where you are either a slight favourite (say 53% vs AK/AQ) or a huge dog (20% vs JJ+) isn't one I generally like to take. Especially since our pot odds aren't that good.

Alright well, it seems that I was right to think that folding is the best option. However, in the moment, I let myself get skewed by my assumptions about the general population in the room, and the fact that I like to 'play the rush', so I called.

After the hand I was told by people at the table who know Mr. Preppy, that he was just playing back at me for raising 3 hands in a row. I had three people at the table tell me that even though I just turned over two big pairs. It's a psychological game where they would rather play back at a "bully" than avoid a "luckbox".

BOTH players had AK and I flopped a set. WINNING

It's close but I'd have a hard time folding.

I think more info on UTG is needed, like what you think his limping range is, his limp-rr range, how often he raises, what your image was prior to these hands, etc.

If the table was aggro and he could expect a chance to backraise, I'd put him on a pretty big pair here a lot.

Unfortunately I dont' have any of that info. At the time it just felt like Mr. Preppy just didn't want to believe that I could have the goods three times in a row.