People say, wow what happened on the river, but its a lot deeper than that. The hand starts pre flop, I raise UTG, I have a big stack, deep in a WCOOP, I’m going to be raising pretty wide for value. Nick knows I’m going to defend my opening range quite a lot, i raise from UTG and he 3bets me from middle position, usually this is a very polarising range and people make big mistakes by folding hands like j9s to 3bets. Nick will know I’m going to defend appropriately, and can start 3betting a more merged/depolairsed range because my 4bet/get it in range here is so tight. Usually people would just flat ak because they don’t feel comfortable “getting it in” thats the first big mistake I see people making. I mean, I know his range is going to be like Axss, suited broadways, AQ, some suited connectors, basically hands that will never fold to the 4bet, ofc I need to pump more money into the pot, so I make a pretty unstandard yet very standard 4bet. He calls as expected.
On the flop it is very very dry, with the way the SPR is, I don’t need to bet big at all, 1/4 maximum, I imagine he calls all overcards with back door flush draws. So I bet, and he calls, as expected.
On the turn, I can’t shove and get called by worse hands, also if he has a hand like KQ/AQ if I improve on the river then I’m likely to get paid off. He checks back.
The river is a blank, now I think his range looks something like A4s/A5s, AQo, AQs, AA/KK, KQs , KTs, T9s, AJs,
I think JJ/QQ he likely shoves pre flop and TT will likely just flat pre flop. This means that on the river I am good very very often, the problem is, his hands are just a little bit too weak to be calling my big shove at this stage of the tournament, thus I decided to go for a small sizing that gives me 2 benefits.
1) He gets to call me with AQ (he has to defend AQ to this sizing) and 2) He can very quickly be over bluffing. Other reasons why this is such a strong hand to bet/call is that 1) I block his value hands (AA/KK) and 2) My K doesn’t block any of his back door flush draws that he could call the flop with. OFC having an ACE is a bad card to call with because I block a tonne of his bluffs, but in this kind of spot all of my bluff catchers will have undesirable connections with the board. I also think its unlikely he shoves Jx on the river.