Curious to see if anyone has any insight as to how they play solid hands UTG in NL MTT or SNGs. Hands such as AA, KK, AK then down the line to hands such as QQ, JJ, and AQ.

I almost always come in for a raise, usually 3x BB, but this play hasn't been working for me. I almost always get multiple callers and am out of position for the rest of the hand.

Then when I go to a 4 or 5x BB raise the table folds around without fail.

Just looking to see if anyone has really explored this scenario.

Limp-re-raise all in.

Not rocket science.

In the early going (when your stack is pretty deep), you can limp with your bigger hands and then jam if somebody raises you. If you get action on a flop you don't like, just dump the aces and go on to the next hand--you don't NEED AA to pay off for you that early in the tournament.

When the blinds and antes are big compared to your stack and you get a big hand UTG, you should get aggressive and take what you can get.

Limping UTG can work against bad players, but not many people make raises against solid players who limped in UTG. That play can be used occasionally, but it is very weak to try it everytime.

You asked about MTTs or SNGs. How are they going to know how solid or weak a player you are? Your argument is valid if we're talking about a weekly home game or a local card room, but the Internet is a big place...

test

I tag players in SNG and MTT after I see a couple rounds. Obviously assumptions change, but people do pay attention. At least the players who are lasting until the end and therefore are harder to beat and the ones that should be paid attention to. Also, I take extensive notes on players, and I know many others do as well, so on certain sites you play the same people a lot if you are in the same limits.

A quote from Paul Phillips' blog a while back:

I played with "the grinder" (mike mizrachi) for the first time for perhaps an hour at the PPT event last week. Usually if I play with someone for such a short period of time I'd be hard pressed to tell you if they are any good; I might be able to tell you if they're bad, but rarely can be too certain about good.

Tables break, people get shifted, and the constant KOs make it nearly impossible to tell who's a good player and who's not in a big MTT. Even semi-loose players can get cold-decked for the first few orbits at the table... how are you to know in such a short amount of time?

Honestly, I take pretty extensive notes, and I'd be absolutely shocked to see someone on pokerstars more than a few times in MTTs or SNGs. It happens, but not often enough for me to automatically assume that they've seen the ol' limp-re-raise move from me.

Also, you'll notice that I didn't advocate the limp re-raise later in the tournament, when you say you'll know your players (and they'll know you). That's because it's not a winning strategy later when everybody has tightened up. You'd just give the big blind a free flop.

UTG - limp with aces, kings, and sometimes queens, hoping to re-raise. Anything lower, make a standard bet of 3 - 5 X the BB. 8)