flyingmoose

We can't possibly know whether the play was good or not without knowing the prize structure of the tournament. If it was winner take all it was obviously a good play. If it was a satellite where the top 7 players get the same prize it was obviously a bad play.

Nice trip report. Having the pros expose their hole cards and explain their thought process after every hand sounds like a wonderful experience.

I dont think the Gap Concept applies here unless the stacks are deep compared to the blinds. When you can expect a position raise from the SB with a wide range of hands, including any A your gap is basically nonexistant.The Gap concept is especially applicant when every raise is an all-in. If you think the guy will only call with his top 30% holdings and your stack is 6 big blinds, you should push with 67s to attempt to pick up the blinds. You certainly should not call with that hand. Therin lies the Gap.

Your question is way too generic. What was your stack and what were the blinds? If you're at a point where the blinds will increase your stack by >25%, then you can safely push almost any 2 from the small blind. At the $55s you can expect all the players to be familiar with the Gap concept, and you should aggressively attack their blinds with all-ins, because their calling ranges will be fairly tight.

I'm not saying that a raise to 1600-2000 is a bad play, I'm saying that the OP's decision was OK -- certainly better than limping or folding.I also think that the 4 players left to act behind you should not pull against a push, because you'd have to call an all-in anyway, since you'd be getting such a good price on your call.

I completely disagree. Are you forgetting about the 4 players left to act before you even get to see what the big stack does? You are just looking at the results. If one of the five players left to act turns over AK, AQ, AA-JJ instead of KQo is it still a good move to risk your tournament life to win a $1000 pot? Bad advice on your part IMO. No way I push with AJo in this situation.It's not particularly likely that one of the 4 players behind you wakes up with AA/KK/QQ/JJ/AK/AQ. Pretty much everything else is folding this close to the bubble. You have enough chips to kill or cripple all of t

I hate to pick on you, but your logic is just way off. When you're big stack do you regularly limp/call off a third of your chips with any ace, any two big cards, any pocket pair?When you're sitting on a 15 big blind stack with 300 people left in the tournament, do you not want that range to call your all-in with AJ?let's see:op made a huge pf raise, he wants to take it down right there. villain knows that op is weak.so... if villain has two big cards (as in this case) he might put op on a medium pp and wants to race, he can afford itif villain has a pp, he might put op on two high cards and

I completely disagree. Are you forgetting about the 4 players left to act before you even get to see what the big stack does? You are just looking at the results. If one of the five players left to act turns over AK, AQ, AA-JJ instead of KQo is it still a good move to risk your tournament life to win a $1000 pot? Bad advice on your part IMO. No way I push with AJo in this situation.It's not particularly likely that one of the 4 players behind you wakes up with AA/KK/QQ/JJ/AK/AQ. Pretty much everything else is folding this close to the bubble. You have enough chips to kill or cripple all of t

I hate to pick on you, but your logic is just way off. When you're big stack do you regularly limp/call off a third of your chips with any ace, any two big cards, any pocket pair?When you're sitting on a 15 big blind stack with 300 people left in the tournament, do you not want that range to call your all-in with AJ?

fine maybe against a smaller stacknot against the big stackyou must learn to respect them... or else you'll bust early from almost every tourneyWith >30 tables left in the tournament, you still need to accumulate a lot of chips to have a chance at taking this tournament down. Not pushing a +cEV edge when the field is still this large is stupid. Doing it because of a some mantra that applies to other situations is more so. You WANT the big stack to call if he has a worse hand.

The limp was bad, but everyone in this thread has already said it, and I'm sure you know it too. The right play was to push preflop. Your hand was above average and the blinds were going to take away 1/3 of your stack. You had to move soon and A7 was at good as you could have hoped.But let's backtrack a little. Why did you only have 4 big blinds? Had you lost a big pot recently? Was the format of this tournament so bad that a 4BB stack was average? When you get below TEN big blinds, you really need to be looking for spots to steal blinds with all-ins.

I call, quickly. Overbet all-ins in low-limit online tournaments mean draws almost every time.EDIT: I should add that I multi-table MTTs, but can only effectively play 4-6 at a time. So I'm willing to take some risks against hands like the naked Qc here, because I would rather have a decent stack at all my tables and increase my total time equity than stay out of trouble in an attempt to increase each individual tournament's equity.

Your raise was FINE. You almost definitely have the best hand, and the pot is significant to your stack. You did the right thing by trying to take the pot down now. Don't let the results of this hand make you question a good play.

Your preflop raise was pretty bad any way you cut it, in my opinion. The rest of the hand is kind of tough to play, but your preflop leak is easy to fix. It's the first thing you should take away from the hand. If you raise to 2000 preflop, then you have an easy shove on the flop, and the hand won't make your brain hurt.As for your actual postflop play, I would consider a raise on the flop. You have outs unless he has exactly K3/33, and most players would check a king or a boat on this flop. I think you might have fold equity, and I would raise here a decent percentage of the time. Give

I've taken to doing much the same with party and I haven't gotten bored with it yet. I guess I gotta give it some time, huh?What ROI were you showing at the $22 tournaments?I never really got "bored" per se. Poker is always at least a little fun, even when mechanically 8-tabling a mostly mathematical format. I just had a lot LESS fun than I did playing multi-table tournaments and ring games. I held an 18% ROI over about 1200 22s.

The 109 hand was tough. I tend to play spots like this very aggressively, and I might check/raise all-in here. I'm SO not saying that's necessarily the right play, though. It's a tough hand, and I think your line was fine. I would have gambled with the AQ, because a push from a 10BB stack can come from a lot of hands much weaker than that. But if you felt you had control of the table and would have much better opportunities to pick up chips, then folding very well could have been the right play. I hate your preflop raise with KQ. He's not going anywhere for 1400 more, with the pot odds

I 8-tabled the PartyPoker $22 and $33 tournaments for a while. It was fun at first, because it was the first time in my life I made good money playing poker, but it turns into a grind pretty quickly. By the way, a >20% ROI in single table tournaments is pretty good, regardless of the buy-in.

There is no way I'm folding this flop, and no way I'm playing it passively (unless I was positive my opponent had a set -- but nobody can get that type of read by the THIRD HAND of a tournament).You're a favorite against almost everything, take the lead and raise. I'd bet the full pot and call an all-in.

I think you misplayed pretty much every street. That's okay, we all start somewhere. I'll explain why I think your line was bad, and I hope you learn something from the experience.The first thing I would say is don't limp QJ late in a tournament. You should pretty much never open-limp with 25 big blinds, being under the gun with a marginal hand is no exception. This is a pretty easy fold. The fact that you did not feel comfortable raising the flop tells you exactly why you shouldn't limp with marginal hands. You don't know if you're dominated. It is CRUCIAL to avoid trap hands with 2

My advice would pretty much be avoid doing that. Putting a lot of chips at risk with a marginal hand is a mistake, whether you're bigstack or not. You really don't have much power with a stack when you're this far away from the money. You should generally just play the same game that got you those chips. Focus on making good, +EV plays. You shouldn't feel compelled to constantly steal and resteal until you get close enough to the money that weaker players will slow down to ensure a cash.

if you're looking for a typical poker strategy book, save your money. its a lot of fluff - eg personality traits of a good player - and a very small section on strategy. interesting read tho. best player in the world, if you were building the prototypical poker player from scratch it would be barry.I loved Greenstein's book. He doesn't talk about starting hands or pot equity or anything like that, but his book is supposed to be for advanced players. I think every successful player's main problem is with consistency and personal management. Know yourself, when you're not playing your best

Shorthanded won't improve your $/hand unless you're a better shorthanded player than you are a full ring player. It does increase your $/hour because you tend to see more hands when there are fewer people to make decisions on each hand.

Uuuhhh, every game's easy when you win every hand.

I learned something from that event, too. Don't **** with Ted Forrest!!That dude was scary good. Does he have X-Ray vision or something?

Probably true for the masses. We poker enthusiasts get tired of seeing all-in fests. Your average ADD ridden high schooler who's just gotten into poker this month would probably tire of seeing one person raise and everyone fold. Every hand poker might be only for people who are too into the game.