Interesting hand I played last night on a small two table tourney. Hands like these always get me thinking about the concept of blockers. We're down to 4-handed, top 2 spots get paid, though not relevant in this hand because neither player was in danger of going broke.
I'm like 450k deep with the blinds at 4k/8k. UTG folds, I raise to 24k on the button holding Ad7h. SB calls, BB folds.
Flop comes 4d7d2s.
SB donk leads for 30k, I consider raising, but just call.
Turn comes Qc.
SB checks, I check back.
Flop comes Kd.
SB thinks for a minute and leads out for 70k. I think about this for a couple of minutes because I'm not entirely sure what he could have here. SB player knows that I cbet pretty frequently whether I've made a hand or not on the flop. I suspect if he had a strong hand on the flop that he would checked instead of leading.
The check on the turn is what gives me pause. It's either a soft give up or a trap. The lead out on the river is very value sized. However, I am holding the Ad and the Kd is on the board, which eliminates basically any hand he's betting for value here other than maybe something like J-10d or 9-10d. Given the table dynamic, I doubt he would lead off with these hands, as he knows I'm likely to cbet and he can easily go into check/call mode to let me value own myself. He has done exactly this twice before in this tourney.
Ultimately I make the call and he tables Ah8d, my pair of 7s holds up.
If I wasn't holding the Ad and the Kd didn't show up on the river, I think it would have been much more difficult for me to make the call because my best guess as to what he had was pretty much exactly what he was holding, maybe up to something like an Ax-10d. An offsuit K might have gotten me to fold as it would have become much more likely he was holding either a K or a Q.
Anyway, the point of this story is to see what you guys think of how I played it and the line of logic I went through on the river. Would you have played the hand differently? I think I got the maximum possible value playing the hand the way I did considering the opponent's hand, but there are definitely a few combos of hands he could have had that were crushing me.