Defending against the overbet, 2 hands from the PPM Semis

[JustPlayingSmart]

Hand 1: blinds are 300/600, and I have 13000. The player to my left has 16000. My image is aggressive, I have been raising quite frequently, and have mostly folded to reraises.

In CO-1, I raise to 1500 with 77. The player to my left reraises to 3400. I call.

The flop comes 5 /images/graemlins/spade.gif 5 /images/graemlins/diamond.gif 8 /images/graemlins/spade.gif

I check and my opponent moves in.

Hand 2: Blinds are 1k/2k, and there are 31 players left in the tournament. 16 players win seats on the cruise. I have 46k, which is about average. I have been playing the same aggressive style, but I may be seen as super aggressive because I raised 4 times the previous orbit. The villain in this hand is new to the table within the last 3 orbits. We are playing 8 handed.

I open to 5000 on the button with A7. The small blind (32000) calls. The flop comes A3A. He checks and I check.

The turn is a T and he bets 15500.

I will post my thoughts in the next post.

I call both bets. On the first, his bet clearly doesn't want a call, so 77's probably good here. It's possible he's got a mid pair higher than your and wants the pot now, but I think you're better than 50% against his range. On the second hand, I can't see folding, and pushing lets him off easy with bluffing hands, so calling seems obvious.

[JustPlayingSmart]

In hand 1, this is only a slightly overbet, since he bet about 9500 into a 7500 pot, but this did not follow this player's or the table's current dynamic. No one was making these kinds of bets, especially this player. I didn't like calling the raise, but I was almost certain I would double if I hit my set, and I was willing to invest 1900 to not have this guy coming over the top of me.

When the flop came, I planned on a check/folding to a bet, but then he pushed. I really felt like he was weak here. I just don't think he would have made this bet with a big pair. But, still, even against overcards, I lose 25% of the time, and against 99+ I'm gone.


In hand 2, this is a textbook WAWB situation. I didn't bet the flop because I don't expect to get action out of a hand that I beat, and if I am ahead my opponent has 2 outs (maybe 3 if he is on a weaker ace, which is very unlikely). My plan was to call a turn and river bet. But when he overbets the turn, leaving himself with about 11000, it's clear that I am now playing for all of his chips, and most of mine. Again, this overbet makes 0 sense with a hand that beats me. Why would he want to push out an ace. Even if I had a hand like KK I would have difficulty calling this bet. Since this player was new to the table, I had no indication of his betting style, so I was at a loss for not only his preflop SB defense range, but what range he would have to make this bet.