Bubble question

[darin_henley]

This is from a $10+1 Sit&Go at PokerStars.

The blinds are 25/50. I had about T1600. Going into the hand the player in question had about T1200 more than me, and other two players both had about T1000-T1500 more than her. The blinds hadn't yet gotten relevent because we were all ahead of the table. There was plenty of time.

We are at four players, so the next player out loses out on the money. I am dealt KK UTG, I raise doubling the blinds, my left calls and it folds around. Flop comes 8d-9h-Td. I bet T600 into a $200 pot and she calls. I have her on a draw. Flop comes 4c, and I suspect she missed. Now here is where I am not sure what I should do. In a limit tournament, the answer is to bet to keep her from getting the free draw. But no limit, on the bubble, it is a much different story. I really suspect she is going to call no matter what I do. She has already made a "bad" bet on her draws on me once in this tournament. If I check she will check and get the free draw. In this case, I decided to go all in, she called, with the straight draw, and rivered the 6 to knock me out.

I overbet the bet because if I was beaten, I wanted to know and believed she would have told me. I hadn't seen her slowplay yet, and I thought of her as going all-in too easily costing herself some money. However, already once in the tournament she overpaid on a draw to me and happened to hit it. I believed she did it to someone else as well, but they didn't show.

Regardless, I have her on a draw, but I have her beat at the moment. I suspect she is going to call regardless of what I bet because she is tied to her draw. Is doubling up worth the risk of being knocked out %25 of the time. In a limit game, it is an easy decision, and were the situations were reversed, I wouldn't call those kind of odds on a draw on the bubble. She would have been crippled. So I am looking for some other opinions.

So any thoughts on the "right" play here?

[CrisBrown]

Hi darin,

Your problems started the moment you only min-raised with KK. Either limp-reraise, or make your standard open-raise (3xBB or 4xBB). She'd probably have laid the hand down.

Given that, once the 8-9-T flop comes, I wouldn't have bet 3x the pot there, for a couple of reasons. First, if she already has the straight, you're betting off a lot of your stack. Second, if she doesn't, many players at the lower buy-ins absolutely refuse to give up on a four-draw at the flop. I wouldn't go all-in on this flop, because the only hands that will call you are likely to have you beaten. If you bet 150 (3/4 of the pot), a draw is getting the wrong odds to call you, but you've left yourself leverage for a strong bet at the turn.

Remember, the bigger the pot, the better the pot odds for the drawing hands in the later rounds. By the turn, there was (by my calculation) 1400 in the pot already. Your all-in bet made it 2000, with her needing 600 to call. She's getting over 3:1 pot odds at the turn. If she has anything to go with that draw -- one pair, or an overcard -- she has the odds to call you, and you gave her those odds when you overbet the flop and left yourself no leverage at the turn.

Hope this helps,

Cris