Hand Analysis of a recent tourny
Top 5 get paid. Blinds are 50/100. I have 2300TC (2nd out of 15) and pick up KK in the Big. Chip leader in MP calls, everyone else folds including the small.
I check to slow play my monster.
Was this the right move here with only one player against me?
Flop comes
3 4 7 rainbow
I check, chip leader bets out 300.
I firmly believe he does not have 5 6 as he does not typically play such a hand but of course, you never know. I push all in.
Right move here?
more to follow....
stp
I check to slow play my monster.
Was this the right move here with only one player against me?
Flop comes
3 4 7 rainbow
I check, chip leader bets out 300.
I firmly believe he does not have 5 6 as he does not typically play such a hand but of course, you never know. I push all in.
Right move here?
more to follow....
stp
Comments
However, I can see the logic in checking them here. It's a NL tournament, you have a well-disguised monster (you are the big blind), it's heads-up, and you're playing against the only player in the tournament who can truly double you up. Or bust you, but let's be positive here.
So, I think checking preflop was fine. In even slightly different circumstances (one more player in the pot, different position, etc...) I would probably recommend raising.
On the flop, I would probably bet out, around 400 or so. This is a bad flop for you... he limped, he could have a WIDE range of hands. You want to end it there, because if the player has a 5 or a 6, and is smart enough to check behind you, he'll see what could be a deadly turn card for you. I'd bet 400. This is not your kind of flop... Q 7 3 rainbow would have been a nice flop to checkraise, but with this one, I'd bet and try to end it before it gets complicated.
However, since you did go for the check-raise, I think pushing all-in was the right play. If he's a good player, and he has a big stack, he shouldn't feel committed to call an additional 2000 or so unless he has a really big hand. My guess? He called, and showed you trips.
Regards,
all_aces
There's nothing wrong with checking it pre-flop to slowplay. But I don't see why you panicked on the flop and moved all-in with a massive overbet check-raise. What happened to the slowplaying idea? If I slowplayed pre-flop, I would probably just call on the flop. In fact, I may very well just call it all the way down, or maybe put in a small-to-medium river bet if the turn goes check-check.
I think this approach may save you money if you're already losing, or get the opponent to possibly burn off some more chips if he has missed and wants to push you off the hand. One of you is drawing thin. What's wrong with taking it easy with the betting?
Another cool thing is that if your opponent has 2 overs to the board of the form Ax, then you may very well win his whole stack if he hits the x, and you can get away from the hand if he hits the A. Not to mention that he's nearly drawing dead to two other overcards. In some sense, he *may* be drawing to a scare card anyway, i.e. the Ace (or perhaps the 5 or 6), if your opponent is in fact enough of a Fox to bet the Ace on the turn or river if it missed him. Good luck against such an opponent. But also, the situation is twice as good compared with when he had Ax. Now there are *two* cards which may end up busting your opponent, and one which will force you to fold and forfeit a small pot.
Needless to say, whatever the pre-flop & flop play, I'm just not going to be able to avoid losing all the chips that my opponent cares to bet if my opponent has out-flopped KK. So be it, nh, c ya next tourney, looking forward to posting the bad beat story on the forum, yada yada yada.
The more I think about this example, the more I hate slowplaying (any hand) out of position in NL.
ScottyZ
Possible risk: someone may outdraw you because you let them in cheaply, but the key is, you're pretty close to busting out of the tournament anyways.
Reward: someone catches a piece of the flop, and because you 'only' have 6 or 7 X BB, they double you up.
Previous discussion about never limping preflop with JJ
Cheers,
all_aces
The flop obviously scared me enough to make me want to end it there. If the flop had came down as Aces said Q 7 3 I would have been able to extract more by slow playing it for sure. Saying that though, I do like to end it after the flop and after a hefty bet by my opponent.
Well, here is the outcome.
He calls...
Turn Ace
River 10
He flips over trip fours.
Nice call Aces...
I like to post these hands to see if I could have done anything differently to get away from loosing everything on KK with a board that is full of rags. I'm still not sure if I could have, perhaps that is a flaw in my game at this point. Thanks for the help.
stp
Not really.
KK and JJ are *miles* apart in hand value.
In that thread (IIRC) I often refered to JJ as a "very strong yet vulnerable hand". I would not describe KK this way.
Also, from this very thread:
Aside from everything said on these two threads, sometimes I'll limp with JJ and sometimes I won't. That particular hand has a bit of a split personality.
And I guess what I was trying to say here was that while I would often raise myself with KK form the BB, I can also see some possible advantages to doing this that might make checking the KK in the BB a reasonable play now and then.
ScottyZ