NL O/8 newbie question

Played in my first NL O/8 last night. I made several mistakes - quite a learning experience and I'm looking forward to more of these.


My question: 25 players left (out of 55) in tourney that pays 9 places - about $2,800 1st place. Blinds are 1K-2K. I'm bb with 4K (below average stack at my table) left after posting. I have JT98 and check after 5 players call. Flop comes AJ7 rainbow. Checked to UTG who bets 5K and gets 3 callers to me. I hear a voice that reminds me of a post I saw on 2+2 "NL is not a drawing game" but I call anyway. I figured with 9 outs for the straight (although the T wouldn't be the nuts) plus the possibility of another J, I was getting pot odds for my straight draw, I also considered that if I fold, I am down to only 3K after posting my sb while if I hit my straight, I am in decent shape to make the final table.

Is this a fold or a call, all in?


Thanks for your comments.

Looks like a call to me. I count 26 or 27K in the pot, and 4K to you for the call. You're pretty likely to only win half that pot, so even then you're getting 13:4 on the call.


However, it may be that you still lose high a lot even when you catch one of your 9 outs that it's a bad call. Plus you will split high a more than small portion of the time as well with this many folks in there after the flop.


As an aside, these must be a really weak group of players, if you're getting this many players in NL O8. They can't all have sets, wrap straight draws, and nut low draws, so you know some of them are calling with pretty weak hands.


Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

Greg - thanks for the response - yes this was a pretty weak field,nowhere near as stong as the players I ran into when I was in SoCal. One of my mistakes was to overestimate the strength of the field. It was close to a full moon, so maybe that affected the decisions & the cards /images/smile.gif People were playing hands like 9776r utg at the 500-1k level - and hitting their boats (and scooping!) like they expected it.


I did not expect a scoop on this hand - and as you said, even if my straight comes on the turn, there are a lot of other cards that would still beat me on the river.