Let’s look at this one.
9-seat SNG, 7-handed, blinds are at 100/200
Th8h in the SB, I come in to see the flop, along with 3 other limpers. The flop hits me for bottom two pair, with a Jack over me: 8cTcJh.
I opt to check-shove, to see if I can get a little more value out of the hand, maybe suck someone all-in and knock them out. The BB bets pot, and is called by the next player in the hand, the Button opts to fold. I shove, and I’m snap-called by the BB, who is holding 78s and called with a draw to the inside straight.
Unfortunately for me, they immediately fill their straight draw on the turn, have me covered, and I’m busted out 7th.
I generally feel that this was a bad place for me to shove, not because of the outcome, but because the likelihood of someone having the right cards (Q9, 97) in their range to flop a straight and have me drawing very thin for a full house suck-out are too good.
Getting called and beaten on an inside draw was a disaster, but I’d take this 9 times out of 10, since that’s how frequently they’d hit their straight. Only in Bizarro Pug World, this ends up happening more like 7/10.
Was the size of my shove not sufficient to give poor pot odds to call here? Would hit have been better had I shoved immediately on the flop instead? Or should I have cautiously checked, called, and then mucked when the 9 came, assuming that my opponent likely had a Q or 7?
Incidentally, the player who mucked behind the winner’s call to my shove did have a Q, and would have won the hand had they stayed in. Which just goes to reinforce my belief that the shove here was bad. If I have T8 flopping two pair with a more disconnected flop, say T8A or T83, I’m in a lot better shape to check-shove. I could also worry about the two suited cards on the flop giving someone a potential flush draw, but two suited cards on a flop is common enough that if I’m scared of every flop with two suited cards in it, I might as well not play at all.
My only actual question on this hand is how likely am I to draw out to fill my boat? Flopping two pair, how likely is it to make a full house by the river to beat that hypothetical flopped straight?