getting gun shy or learning my lesson?

[jaydoggie]

playing in a 20$+2 PL tournament on holdem.

I found myself folding these hands to a small raise when blinds were 75/150 - 150/300.

1 ep raise, i hold KQo in MP. fold.
1 ep raise, i hold KTs in MP. fold.
1 lp raise, i hold KJs in co. fold.

smart, or scared? let me have it :|

[fnurt]

All of those sound like pretty good folds. The last one is the only close call.

The key in tournaments is that you want to minimize the number of hands where you put a lot of money into the pot. Especially when the blinds get big, you can maintain and improve your stack just by winning the blinds, without ever having to get involved in a potentially expensive postflop situation.

You might have had the best of it with KJs, but it's unlikely you had the best of it by very much. And the more hands you invest a lot of money in, the greater the chance you will bust out.

Now if you were short stacked, so that you had to make a stand, or the raiser was short stacked, so that they didn't pose a serious threat to your stack (and they might be raising on lesser values out of desperation), then the answer might be different.

With equal stack sizes, and no real rush to take a stand, wait for better hands than these before you invest a lot of money in battling a raiser.

[Sarge85]

I'd definately muck the off-suit, but that KJ could be playable. KT i'd muck to the raise, but i'd limp with it.

[Rickfish]

Question to anyone who advocates calling on any of these hands - what are you going to do if say the flop is king high and the raiser bets?

[cferejohn]

Exactly the problem. I think the KQ and KT are obvious folds since the raise came from EP. KJs from the LP raiser is closer. I'd still usually muck it unless I knew the raiser was very aggressive. If I was going to stay in I'd probably raise pre-flop to see how serious he is. If I get popped back, I'll probably lay it down, if called, I will feel better about raising him if he bets on a K high flop.

However, notice how playing this hand makes you have to make some questionable decisions (raising preflop with KJs, either folding top pair or raising it with a marginal kicker vs. someone representing a big hand. Now, you'll have to make tough decisions at some time or another in any tournament, but why go out of your way to put yourself to more than you have to?

[Ignatius]

For crying out loud: please post stack sizes before asking questions like this. The amounts of the raises would also be nice.
.
When the money is deep enough, I'd probably call a 3 BB open-raise by a LP player with KJs from the CO. Also there are (rare) circumstances where calling in the other two cases can be justified. Factors that tend to favor a call: the money is very deep, the EP raiser is a maniac, the blinds are likely to fold, the EP is all in (i.e. needed to make a stand), there are other callers.

[jaydoggie]

maybe i didnt clarify that "small" raise meant 2-3x the blind.

[slogger]

W/o knowing anything about your stack size, this looks pretty good to me.

If you were the big chip leader, you might take a shot at a re-raise with KQo, but I must say that I usually get into trouble playing that hand.

I suppose you could just call, but I might be more inclined to just call a small raise with a suited hand like KJs, and then only if I was in late position. From there, I would fold unless the flop hit me hard (and no A appeared).

[Copernicus]

If its early and Ive won a few small pots I might limp with the suited hands, but I would fold them to all but a maniac or possibly a 1x big blind raise.