50 Game Fri 24th

careca

Played last Friday in the Fitz 50 game. Down to 10 players (nine getting paid) when I was UTG and got 88. Blinds were 1000/2000. I raise to 7500 hoping to pick up the blinds there and then. Kevin on small blind reraises all-in, an extra 12,500. I still had 16,500 left at this stage. While I was thinking about his bet a player gets knocked out on the other table so i am def in the money. I decided to call and kevin turns over AA. I flopped an 8 but he rivered an A to all but knock me out. I went out on the first hand at the final table to a flush with a set of 10s.

Was it the correct call to try and double up before the final table or should i have mucked them and played on with 16K ? I was also thinking that players 6-9 at the final table would only get back 100 so I would need a healthy stack to get in the serious money.

DeVore

Was it the correct call to try and double up before the final table or should i have mucked them and played on with 16K ?

You needed to ask this question earlier in the hand.... ie: when you raise 7,500 you should know yourself that you are committing most/all of your stack if you are reraised.
I'm not saying your 7.5K raise was wrong, it might or might not have been what I would have done depending on a couple of things, but you should have it in your mind that you are going to go the whole hog if reraised or else limp in and see if you hit a set. Otherwise you get can get caught between two stools.

DeV.

DeVore

ps: I've taken to limping with anything less then TT if its not the final table. On final table its an all in or limp hand. Unless I'm getting desperate I wont call an all in with a small-medium pocket pair.
Limping in with a small pair has a huge EV. If you hit, you are a stealth killer, no one can put you on trips. The amount you will make is disgusting and considerably more then the limps will cost you, however as ever stack management is important as you cant call serious raises with them in a multi way pre-flop pot, the EV isnt enough to pay for lots of calls of raises the times when you dont hit.
Since lots of Irish players (particularly in the 20-game) over bet their hands and go all in on 6th nuts or worse, your 1000 investment in your pair of 44s can pay 20 times that if you opponent hits a decent hand. Given that a pair hits 1 in 4.5 times thats a healthy payback (even though you wont win every time you hit).

DeV.

careca

DeVore wrote:

ps: I've taken to limping with anything less then TT if its not the final table.
DeV.

That was my strategy alright after taking a similar beat a few tournaments back. And as you say I caught a large stack earlier on by limping with 77 and hitting one. But, as per usual, I was saying to myself "keep it tight and relax" and then suddenly my left hand just grapped a load of chips and stuck them in the middle.

Obscure

careca wrote:

Played last Friday in the Fitz 50 game. Down to 10 players (nine getting paid) when I was UTG and got 88. Blinds were 1000/2000. I raise to 7500 hoping to pick up the blinds there and then. Kevin on small blind reraises all-in, an extra 12,500. I still had 16,500 left at this stage. While I was thinking about his bet a player gets knocked out on the other table so i am def in the money. I decided to call and kevin turns over AA. I flopped an 8 but he rivered an A to all but knock me out. I went out on the first hand at the final table to a flush with a set of 10s.

Was it the correct call to try and double up before the final table or should i have mucked them and played on with 16K ? I was also thinking that players 6-9 at the final table would only get back 100 so I would need a healthy stack to get in the serious money.

Should have folded!

You have to remember that he was hanging on for the final table too! (The player on the other table went out after he had went all-in). He was not gonna put that at risk. He had only the SB in the pot at that stage, if he thought he was behind at all at that stage he would have folded. But he re-raised all-in against someone who had him covered, he must have been pretty confident. He wasnt gonna bluff against UTG raise at that stage of the tourament. Also, since the blinds were just going by him he wasnt under as much pressure to win a pot!

2cents

careca

Obscure wrote:

(The player on the other table went out after he had went all-in).

V good point

Hyzepher

Providing of course that he is cute enough to think like that - some dont

Hyzepher

Krusty_Clown

DeVore wrote:

ps: I've taken to limping with anything less then TT if its not the final table.

It's something I've been doing online and in RealLife(tm) for some time with quite a lot of success. Maybe it's the tournaments I've been playing, but more often than not if I put in a large raise with a small pair, somebody's going to call me with two over cards. I know statistics dictate otherwise, but in these scenarios, I always get beaten. I much prefer to limp with the small pair, hope to hit a set on the flop. I'll even call a small bet before the turn with a couple of over-cards showing. Probably not a good thing to do, but if you hit, you hit big. If you don't hit, you can still get out for cheap.

DeVore

Aye, its the getting out cheap bit I like. There are some hands that are worth a look because you will know exactly where you are post flop. These are one of them, its almost always not worth it to stay with any reasonable raise to you post flop but the payoff for stealth trips is NICE.

DeV.

Samba

Since lots of Irish players (particularly in the 20-game) over bet their hands and go all in on 6th nuts or worse

This was very evident in last thursdays freeroll, i could not believe the looks of disgust on some blokes faces as they left because their pocket 6's were busted, all in as soon as they hit any pockets - stupid play, the stealth ninja approach with the sets is very good but does not always pay, on Thursday i tried both, dealt 55 i limp in to a rainbow flop with only 3 callers and hit, i got about 900 chips from the pot, then on another occasion i get dealt 88, so i make a small raise to 300 hit and acted dumb like i was unsure of my hand and got paid about 2-3k in chips.

It really depends, but overall limping in is the best action i find, as if you miss and there is a rancid AK10 flop, you are not committed and can put them down without any doubts, if you hit and there is a flush/straight draw, you can still put them down and you have no committent whatsoever to the pot, you just gotta tell yourself that you will see them again and you will.

As said before once you were re-raised all in, alarm bells should have rung all in = AK, AA, KK, QQ, JJ or somthing of the sort, eitherway too much a risk considering the potential to win alot more cash.

Just curious, how did he act when it came to him, did he stop and think? or was it an abrupt action?

If in doubt, fold, by you folding and hanging on for dear life you might have even seen one or two more players drop, even if you got dealt crap for the rest of the game, sometimes being a spectator can be the right move to get into more cash.