Did I overplay 9-9?

[98romaine]

Final table of a 3 table $30 NL tournament on Party. We are 5 handed and MP opens w/ 2.5BB bet. He seemed to be a solid player but also the spot for a steal raise. Top 5 in these get paid so I was in the money and playing for 1st, so I pushed it all in. I'm fairly sure this was a fold or push situation, I could not just call. In hindsight after seeing the flop with an Ace, it would have been a good spot for the stop and go.

Any thoughts on how to play the hand differently...



800/1600 TourneyTexasHTGameTable (NL) (Tournament 7795267) - Fri Dec 10 17:44:13 EST 2004
Table 3 - Table(163399) Table 1 (Real Money) -- Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 1: AmericanLeo (4404)
Seat 2: FuriousStylz (6924)
Seat 5: Rounder9898 (8346)
Seat 6: unclekrusty4 (3654)
Seat 7: cosmo2000 (6672)
cosmo2000 posts small blind (400)
AmericanLeo posts big blind (800)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to cosmo2000 [ 9d, 9h ]
FuriousStylz folds.
Rounder9898 raises (2000) to 2000
unclekrusty4 folds.
cosmo2000 raises (6272) to 6672
cosmo2000 is all-In.
AmericanLeo folds.
Rounder9898 calls (4672)
** Dealing Flop ** : [ Ah, 6s, 5c ]
** Dealing Turn ** : [ 2c ]
** Dealing River ** : [ Ad ]
Creating Main Pot with $14144 with cosmo2000
** Summary **
Main Pot: 14144 |
Board: [ Ah 6s 5c 2c Ad ]
AmericanLeo balance 3604, lost 800 (folded)
FuriousStylz balance 6924, didn't bet (folded)
Rounder9898 balance 15818, bet 6672, collected 14144, net +7472 [ Qs Qd ] [ two pairs, aces and queens -- Ah,Ad,Qs,Qd,6s ]
unclekrusty4 balance 3654, didn't bet (folded)
cosmo2000 balance 0, lost 6672 [ 9d 9h ] [ two pairs, aces and nines -- Ah,Ad,9d,9h,6s ]

[Scooterdoo]

Looks okay to me. I think you played it just fine.

[davidross]

Its a good play only if you have some folding equity, and I'm not sure you do. You already said he's a solid player, so the range of hands he raises is probably pretty limited. The number of hands you would love to see is very small,88, 77 maybe. Pretty much at best you're a coin flip, and TT through AA you're in big trouble. And he has you covered. I would haveto believe he will fold 2/3rds of the time here before I pushed in.

[98romaine]

David,

Thanks for your thoughts, curious, how would you have played it? I hate to fold 9-9 here in this type of tournament (10 minute levels) thinking there is a good chance he is stealing and medium pocket pair a fairly strong hand. I guess I could have called and folded on the flop if I did not hit it and still would have had a pretty decent stack of $4k. Any other thoughts...

[davidross]

I think you have to fold it unless you have a read that the guy is loose or stealing, or he has less chips than you do and you want to try and bully him. I would say the same for TT, and JJ gets tough. Calling is awful, if the flop comes rags you're in the same boat as you are pre-flop, and if there are overcards, you don't know what to do either. It's a really hard hand to play post-flop.

My advice is to wait until you can be first in, or have a bigger hand to come over the top with, QQ, KK AA or AK. You're in 2nd place here, patience will probably move you up a couple of places before you have to make a desperation play, which is what I would consider your play.

[Scooterdoo]

He said solid player, not tight player. What solid player who made it to a final table would not open raise for 2.5x from MP in a short-handed table with a large range of hands? I just don't see NOT playing 99 strong here unless there is some better indication that the MP has a really strong hand. A 2.5x standard opening bet does not appear to say much at all. What am I missing?

[davidross]

I think if we ran numbers against all the hands he might have we would find that 99 is a big favorite against very few (88 and 77) and dominated by more (TT-AA) and a toss up against the rest. I think his folding equity is negligible, and this is the chip leader, 2 places from cashing. I would want a better hand, or some indication that this guy is likely to fold anything but a monster before risking it on 99.