I don't post in strat, or anywhere that often, but a hand came up this past weekend in a tourney that has me scratching my head.

$50 freeze-out, about 30 players left (top 10 get paid). blinds at 300/600, I have about 8,000 left. I'm SB, one caller in front of me, who has a huge chip lead. I raise to 2,000, with A/Q off, leaving me with 6,000 in chips. The limper (aka big stack) calls. Now, my opponent is definitely not a strong player. He's been at my table all day and I've seen how he's built his stack.

Flop: K, 8, 5 rainbow.

I think for about 3 seconds and check. ( here is my first question. Is this check weak or what? ... )

Now, he thinks for a few seconds, looks straight at me and says $4000 while throwing chips in with both hands. I wait for about a minute and the guy doesn't take his eyes off of me for a second. My initial read is that he is weak, but he's pretty much putting me all in.

( Second question, I know I'm not calling here, leaving myself with 2k, but should I push, knowing I only have 6,000 and the blinds are going to 750/1500 in about 2 mins, or should I fold and wait for a better chance to get it all in?)

you should fold, but you should wait for a few minutes and make him sweat. he probably has a bad king.

obviously, you have to fold. maybe he hit a set of 5s. maybe he has AK. maybe he has 78, but in any of those situations youre beaten.

thinking about what you can beat, it's basically AJ, A10, etc. it's possible the player has those hands, but you can't afford to find out.

how is it that the blinds go from 300/600 to 750/1500? where was this?

I made a mistake w/ the blinds, it should have been 500/1000, and there was one other limper ahead of the big stack. I'm rushing this at work.

thx for the input.

Thanks for taking the time to make that reply!! ...

I honestly feel like I rush my decisions at the table. In a home game, for the same stakes, I feel I can logically think out my moves, but with ppl I don't know staring at me waiting for a decision, I find it harder to concentrate. Not sure how I can get over this. Casino tourney's seem to take the thinking out of my game, and I seem to only play the cards. I hate this.

OK, with the blinds at 300-600, I think your play was fine, but not with them at 500-1000. When you have a raising hand in this situation, you need to raise to at least 3 times the big blind to put pressure on your opponents. Since in this case, a raise to 3000 would basically commit you to the hand, you should just go all-in.

By min. raising and then checking the flop, you're inviting the big stack to steal this from you. If he is LAG (which you imply he is), this is the last way you want to play this hand. Basically, you've got a good enough hand, that you don't want to wait and see a flop; you want to commit all your chips immediately. Most of the time you'll get 2000 free chips to add to your stack, and when you do get called, you're likely to be no worse than a coin flip to double up.

why is it so clear he has the worst hand? Why can't the guy have 10-J. That's a play i would make with 10-J if i were chip learder and it was checked to me like that. If this guy is staring you down like this, i would tlak to him a little bit and then make my decision. I hate being on that morphine drip when you have 4x the big blidn, i would rather take a chance to try to aqquire a lot of chips. i mean, in reality, i might fold but why is everyone so sure this guys not bluffing?

Agreed ....

Just to clarify ... the blinds were 300/600 when the hand came up, and rising to 500/1000 in about 2 min.

I don't know .... when I was waiting to make my play, I was soooo sure this guy didn't have a K, pretty much 100%, so I really wanted to just push right there. It was pretty obvious the guy didn't have a K, he was way to nervous, I could tell he was trying to buy it. But, my read was that he was weak, but had a piece, I really thought he hit an 8 or a 5, and being inexperienced just wanted to take it down.

With a larger stack, I would've pushed and I'm confident I would've taken it, because after the hand he told the guy next to him that he didn't have a K. My problem was that I didn't have enough chips to do anything. If I pushed, I had to hope that he was on a draw, and my gut was telling me he had hit this board. Hence my fold.

I feel like the fold at that point was correct, but I really think my chips should have gone in pre-flop, and if not, I should have pushed on that flop.

being outta position coupled with ~13BBs i mighta pushed here. i mean unless this guy had a habit of limping with monsters, he cant call.

i also HATE ace queen. i swear i went 3 months when i couldnt win a showdown with it....only steal pots with it