I've been beating myself up since I played this hand yesterday...please feel free to blast me.

Foxwoods 2k buyin - 70-80 people left, top 20 paid

I have 26k, slightly above average I think. Chip leader at the table has roughly 60k.

blinds 300-600 75 ante

limp w/10cJc from middle position. Action is folded to small blind who calls. Chip leader looks at me before he looks at cards, then immediately raises to 3k. I thought he knew I was weak...that he would put me on a hand roughly close to what I had...so I called, hoping to use that info. small blind folds.

Flop is k74, 2 clubs.

Chip leader quickly bets 4k...here I'm thinking that he is making a move on the pot. He knew I was weak, and I was more than half convinced he did not have a K...I put him on a weak ace, maybe a7. With a reasonable draw, I raise to 10k, hoping he will put me on kj or kq. After thinking a minute, he moves all in. OK, so my read was wrong...he clearly had ak.

While my raise was questionable, I am comfortable with it b/c I was following through with my read, and making a move on a huge pot. If I was right and he folded, I am up to almost 40k probably top 15 in chips. Where I am confused is whether I should have laid this down. The pot was laying a little over 2 to 1 for my last 13k, and my draw was right around there....if I win I'm really close to chip lead....if I fold I'm not exactly crippled, but probably would have about a half hour before I'm forced to move....

called, missed draw, left the table muttering about donking off chips....

what should I have done?

I'm no tourney expert, and those stakes are way higher than anything I've ever been involved in, but my advice would be fold preflop. Once he sets you in on the flop, it totally depends how you feel about your game. If you think you have a large skill advantage over the field, I'd say fold. If it's about even, than maybe it's worth the risk to build a monster stack. Sorry it didn't work out this time

Erac

No, the limp preflop is fine. He has 40BB left, and can hit a huge flop with this hand. I probably would fold to the raise if that's what you were getting at, as you're likely playing a big pot once he makes that size of a raise.

Isn't the pot giving you 3:1? 13k from you already in it, 26k from him already in it, and you have to call 13k.

If the King on the board is a club, then it's an insta-call for me. Since you're about 25% to win is he has pocket kings and it's usually going to be better than that...

If the King on the board isn't a club, then you pray he doesn't have AcKc and call anyway :)

Then again I don't play 2k buy-in tournaments, and if I did my whole bankroll would be invested in that buy-in so I'm folding... So you probably don't want my opinion anyway, oh well it's typed now so I'm clicking Add Reply anyway

I would also want to know if the K was a club. If it was, I would smooth call his $4k bet so I could see another card.

If the K wasn't a club, I would seriously consider folding to his $4k bet but would almost certainly fold to his reraise all-in after you raised.

I wouldn't want to put my tournament life on the line with nothing but a flush draw, and a J high at that. (again this depends on the suit of the K)

If you'd caught a piece of the flop AND had four to the flush I call his all in in a heartbeat.

Fact of the matter is, to win these tourneys you have to be willing to gamble so I don't really fault your play....hindsight is 20/20 and that's where my above comments come from.

Better luck next time

Speaking only on the call for all your chips not on the raise on the flop. What I think this boils down to is what you think your chances are in this field. If you do not have a lot of tourny experience and if most of the field is in your opinion tough (or good tourny players) then maybe you want to take the gamble and if you win you will have a large stack and some staying power. If you feel that you have a big edge and you believe that you are a much better player than majority of the field (even more specifically your immediate table), and you think that with the chips that you have left you still feel confident that you can battle back then go ahead and fold.

All in all with the math being so close I think it is not as much a poker question as it is a tournament dynamic one.

If he is playing a 2k buy in small field tournament, I have a field he has some idea what he's doing.

Also I probably would've just called the flop and taken off a cheap turn card. If he makes you pay for the river, fold.

anytime I call all my chips with nothing but a draw I feel like a donk..


I feel like a donk enough without confirming it by calling off all my chips, no matter what.

Nothing wrong with making a play, getting slapped and retreating.

If you felt he read your hand right preflop, then why would you call his reraise?

when i knew he thought i was weak, i thought there was a good chance he would make a sizable bet regardless of the flop, and then i could convince him that i hit it with kj of kq...

i like to be in hands when i know what my opponent thinks i have...more powerful than knowing what they have.

It seems to me it is either a push situation if we raise the flop at all. I think you're flop raise is weak. The pot is already 3k + 3k + 300 (preflop) + 4K + 10K = 20300 with 6k to him to call giving him over 3:1. Plus you only have 13k left on on the turn to bet etc. If I was him and I had any piece of it I put you all in because he knows if he smooth calls its all going in on the turn anyway.

Now picture this. You move in in on the flop believing he is weak. Suddenly, you have much more fold equity and it is a much larger portion of his stack he has to call off. If he calls and we miss so be it. I like this play.

That being said a call isn't bad either getting some pretty good odds. I would even consider moving in if he checks to me on the turn if I read him for weak. Plus we have the option at a free card possibly. If he moves in on us on the turn, we have to fold.

All in all I like option one of pushing the flop. I hate making choices and giving up the lead in the betting. Folding isn't bad either, tangling with the chip leader is a dangerous game.

pre-flop - i don't like the limp from mp. from ep, i don't mind, but from mp i think you either raise or fold when opening the pot.

when he re-raises i muck it. i don't mind your play though as you went with your read. if you had that much confidence in your read to begin with you shouldn't second guess it if it didn't turn out.

Well, I'd sure like to have a little more info on the villain. Had he been bullying? Showing down some weak hands? Did you have any reason other than his look, to make you think that tangling with the chip leader with a marginal hand was a +ev decision?

All that being said, I whole heartedly agree with lostless. If you trust your read,

"While my raise was questionable, I am comfortable with it b/c I was following through with my read, and making a move on a huge pot"

then the only bet worth making after he leads out is all-in. Your committing yourself to the pot, so maximize your fold equity and take the re-raise away from him. The re-raise you did make could be read as keeping enough behind so you could still get away from the hand (Which you considered, but didn't do). This is also another case where more info about the villain would be extremely useful. Has he been able to get away from TPTK?
I feel silly saying this to someone who was in a 2K, but I will anyway. I get the idea that you are saying "read" when you really mean "feeling". A good read has to be base on a lot of information you didn't seem to account for here. I don't mean for that to sound condescending, because I think that's a mistake almost all of us make at times. I know I still do. But in analyzing the play afterwards I think the biggest thing you can take away from it is, that you played a feeling that turned out to be wrong, and not a read.

Yeah, you priced yourself into a call here. Like Zim said, I would probably just fold after he pops me preflop. But as it stands, the pot contains around 27k and it's 13k for you to call, slightly better than 2:1. The only way you're priced out is if he has a better flush draw, which would absolutely blow.

40bb is very thin to be playing small ball. Your implied odds arent great. I would have folded 75% of the time instead of limping, and folded to the preflop raise 100% of the time.

You get to the flop and he bets 4k into a pot thats around 7300. You are priced out for a 1 card draw, and you are almost certainly going to have to pay more on the turn if you miss. If you wind up having to put all of your money in you are getting far less than the 2:1 you need in implied odds on the flop.

If you are going to play this hand, its basically for the bluff value. Given the strength of his betting he almost certainly has paired his K and I would put him on AK. You arent bluffing him out, imo..you have to make the hand, and you may not even get paid off. Fold to his flop bet (this of course points out why I would have folded in the first place..you have to flop a made hand or have the opponent totally miss the flop and not be willing to play on).

Loose limps sink chips.

Wow this is a good thread. I like a lot of the different options presented so far. My opinion...

I dislike the initial limp. LP ok, EP/MP bad. JTs is, IMO, one of those hands that looks way better than it is. I'm not saying you're one of these, but I have a feeling a lot of people leak too many chips on this (and similar) hands.

Ok so we do limp and everyone folds and now we have position: score! Uh oh, BB has raised - and raised a lot at that. I love the insta-fold here.

However you made a read and thought he was weak - why not raise here then? What if you snap right back at him with 9-10k?
1. You've lost the same as you would/did lose on the flop anyways.
2. You find out way sooner if your read was right.
3. You don't see any alluring flop that's going to tempt you into doing something you regret. I hate hate hate calling all-in on a draw.

If he pushes right back after the limp-re-raise you can fold in the blink of an eye. If he just calls then you have a different story and need to adjust your read: is he calling thinking you've LRR with AA/KK or is he calling hoping to trap with a hand he could've pushed back all-in with? Either way, if he calls I'm just shutting down. If you think he now thinks you've got AA/KK it's still not worth to me to try this bluff - then again, I have no balls.

Anyways, just thought I'd throw out that scenario since no one seems to have mentioned it. Regardless of your read, the fact remains that you're calling an EP raiser with a very marginal hand. No one can ever fault you for raising/re-raise at any time - calling, however, is a very different story.

limping was definitely a 50/50 play here...i did it b/c the three people in late position were very tight...the big blind, however, was LAG, and when I saw him look at me, his cards, then raise immediately...i decided to call b/c i thought he using his stack to buy some chips.

If I didn't have that read, i would mucked jt to the raise easily.


I feel like all the postflop criticism is right on...If I was going to call all my chips anyway, I should have moved all in. This way, he may have considered folding even top pair...

As it was, I made his top pair move very easy for him

thanks for the input

The bolded part says to me that if you are going to play the hand you should be raising, not limping. You are OOP to some tight players and have to fold if any of them raise. If they limp they may even still have decent hands and not just be calling for the odds. The LAG player is in the BB, and you know he is going to be firing if he perceives weakness, and is going to be firing if he makes a hand..ie you are guessing.

Raise or fold.