Tournament Hand...was it a bad call?

[Spyder]

This is my second tournament. The tourney was a no-rebuy, No-Limit, and the blinds went up every 15 mins, we were at the 3rd level which was 15/30...so we were early in the tournament. I started with 3000 in chips and had dwindled to 2880 and hadn't really played a hand yet. While I wasn't the big stack, I was within 500 chips of him. I was playing pretty tight and had watched 3 people get put out and then replaced at our table. The short stacks were 1500 & 1800...everyone else had between 2500 & 3300.

I'm at EP2, A /images/graemlins/club.gif T /images/graemlins/club.gif , Big blind has slightly more chips than I.

UTG folds, EP1 folds, Hero limps (30), MP1 folds, MP2 calls (30), Mp3 folds, CO folds, Button calls (30), SB folds (15), BB checks (30). Pot has 135.

Flop: T /images/graemlins/heart.gif 7 /images/graemlins/diamond.gif 5 /images/graemlins/club.gif

Hero opens for 200 (I figure to buy it, right there). MP2 folds, Button Calls, BB goes all-in. Hero calls, All-in (after MUCH consideration), button folds. Results in white below.

Turn: 6 /images/graemlins/spade.gif
River: A : /images/graemlins/diamond.gif

Question: Should I have called? Why? Why not? What should I have been thinking about? Get as technical as you want...I can handle it /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Results:
<font color="white">
Big Blind shows straight, 4 to 8!
Hero shows Two Pair, Aces over Tens.
</font>

Spyder

[LetsRock]

Gotta love the blinds!

This would be a tough call. With a raggedy flop like this and the raise coming from the BB, you could expect him to have almost anything. Not having seen his play, it's hard to know how to react, but, unless I knew he shoved in on a gutshot draw, I probably would have let it go. TPTK could easily be behind here and the tourney is still quite young. If I'd seen the BB pull a similar stunt (shoving in with a longshot draw) I would have called in a heartbeat.

Not that this is part of your question, but you wouldn't have been too far out of line to raise this hand preflop. Hindsight makes it easy to expect that 84 would have folded from the blind with even a moderate raise. You need to be a little more aggressive in tourneys and a big suited Ace is strong enough to test the table a little. It's easy to say that you probably would have won the hand (now that we know what was going on) but you would have probably at least seen the turn card before having to risk your stack even if the BB would have been foolish enough to call your PFR and flop bet.

(You'll get more response in the tourney forum on this hand...)

[Spyder]

Yeah, I wondered if I should have raised that as first in. The blind would have obviously have folded at that point. But, that dovetails with my question in my other post. I'm never quite sure how much to bet. You initial answer helps a lot and I should have figured that out already.

I had seen posts here that say to fold ATs UTG and, at best, limp when EP. This is what was going through my head when I limped. I guess, in a Tourney, big cards go up in value pretty well....?

Spyder

[LetsRock]

[ QUOTE ]
I had seen posts here that say to fold ATs UTG and, at best, limp when EP. This is what was going through my head when I limped. I guess, in a Tourney, big cards go up in value pretty well....?


[/ QUOTE ]

As per the other post, it all depends. Folding preflop wouldn't be a horrific mistake most of the time. If BB shoved on his gushot draw, there's no guarantee he would have folded to a raise anyway.

He overplayed his hand and just got lucky, which is a very much employed tourney strategy. Some people want to either get a big stack early or get out and move on to the next game. Especially in freerolls and cheap multi-table tourneys.

[James Boston]

1) You should have considered raising pre-flop.
2) I wouldn't go all-in with TPTK that early in the tournament, unless I had a really good read on my opponent.
3) You actually made the +EV play, but lost. It happens.