did i do the right thing?

I cant get the hand history for this online tourney hand so bear with me here. Okay, hand before this mystery hand i raised 4x bb(400) in third position with QQ and got 1 caller in 1st position who just called my raise. then the flop comes x-x-K and i go all in with my QQ (probably not the ebst move) and he folds. My stack is now about 2600. Next hand I'm dealt 9 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] and raise once again to 4x bb(400) and the sb is my only caller after thinking a bit(pot=900). He won a lot of chips (stack=about 10k) off of two lucky hands which i wouldnt say he played wrongly, just was amazingly lucky to beat such bad odds (took out four on first hand with AA set and took out two four hands before this with QQ set against AA and suited connectors). The flop comes 7 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]8 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]5 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] and sb checks to me. I bet 400 with my high pair and he calls my bet after a small pause (pot=1700). Turn comes 5 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] and bet 600, which he again just calls after a small pause(pot=2900). River comes Q [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] and i bet 300 and then he puts me all in (pot=4800, 1300 of my remaining chips to call). I wait and think for a long time and end up folding my hand, even with decent pot odds, thinking he had something like QQ or 88 for the full house. I even told him "I swear to god you better not have chased with 2 overcards and hit a Q" and he told me "you will never know...unless you call". After I folded he didn't show his cards. Was I right in drawing the conclusion to fold my hand in the end? Also, what mistakes did i make throughout the course of the hand? This one really confused me, so any opinion would be greatly appreciated.

[RiverDood]

1. Preflop. There are many choices here, but your bet looks fine. Playing 99 HU against a big stack who may be a loose caller is appealing.

2. Flop. I don't like the 400 bet. You're almost certainly ahead here, but vulnerable if he's playing two overcards (KJ, etc.) Given his stack size, about the only way to protect your hand is to bet pot (900) or push. I'm not sure which I prefer. Each has benefits and risks. But I hate the smaller bet, which gives him great implied odds to chase his draw.

3. Turn. Same issue here. You're lucky that a blank showed up. You'd be in much worse shape if you were looking at an A, K, Q or J. But you're not capitalizing on it.

It's time to push -- and either take it down right here or get all your money to work with you as the overwhelming favorite. The 600 bet surrenders most of your wiggle room if an overcard comes on the river, yet doesn't give you any assurance of getting paid in full if you've got him beat.

4. River. The itty-bitty 300 bet is begging him to come over the top. You're saying: "I think my hand is good, but I'm not so sure anymore." Given his huge stack, he can fire at you with impunity, regardless of what he's got. Your chip-stack numbers don't quite add up, but let's assume that he's betting 1300 to take down a potential pot of 4800. If his bluff works only 30% of the time, it's +EV. Never give a big stack such tempting odds.

If you're truly nervous, check at the river. It projects the potential of a check-raise and actually is less timid. What's more, it saves you 300 chips if you're going to fold to any big bet from him.

But the hand never should have got this far. Push either on the flop or turn and hope he doesn't catch a 6-outer.

All that's said with the realization that if he flopped a set, any of my lines will bust you out. Whereas your line leaves you still alive but wounded. Overall, though, I think the aggressive route is your best hope of getting enough chips to play hard from here onward.

thanks i did think about betting around the pot size but since there were no apparent flush draws on the river or str8 draws (i doubt he would call a hand to give him one) i decided a probe sized bet was a better choice since i didnt need to push a flush draw out with bad odds. same thing on the turn, doubted he had a 5 and didnt think he had odds to chase a two-overcard hand since his odds of hitting from turn-river were only 46-6 or 7.7-1, and i didnt give him odds for that on either bet. I didnt think he had a pair over my 99 because he probably would have reraised me preflop given his previous hands played, and of course definitely would have reraised with QQ or higher since he had done it before. On the river I wasnt really nervous but in fact wanted to give him odds to just call the bet, not thinking he would ever come back with a raise. I actually thought he would keep calling bigger bets too thinking i was bluffing/being aggressive since the hand before i made someone fold with an all in and he might have thought i was just makin continuation bets so a smaller bet might be scarier since i was looking for a call(after finishing the tourney i now know he probably wouldnt have noticed that anyway). Bur all in all you are probably right, I should have tried to win the hand early as he was probably holding some over cards to my 99, but after thinking about it i would put him on 88.

but this was an important hand and got me a little confused whether i played it right or not (not like it matters in the end - out of 27 people i finished ahead of him in third and he got 5th)

[RiverDood]

Hey, glad to hear you survived this hand and placed well anyway. And on this hand, if you had approximately equal stack sizes, all your analysis would be on target. Villain would only bet out if the board improved his hand. You could count on that. All your odds analysis would be appropriate.

But he's got you so profoundly outstacked that he can bluff and you can't. So if he's got overcards -- or, heck, even if he's got 44 -- he can bet big any time the board looks scary and he thinks you might fold.

That's exactly what he did on the river. You went in thinking he had 6 outs, but actually there were 18 cards that were potentially scary to you. (Any A, K, Q, J, T, minus the presumed two that he held.) All of those become "surrogate outs" for him.

He couldn't know for sure that you had 99. He might have read you for A8s, TT or 77. But you bet the hand in a way that was very consistent with top-pair/good kicker -- or something close to it. In that case, he could be pretty certain that most Broadway cards were scare cards to you. Your small river bet on the Q clinched it.

Given that you didn't push at the flop or turn, check/check at the river would have been far better. You've essentially telegraphed your hand strength already, which is OK. But don't make a 300 probe bet at this stage. He knows pretty much what you've got -- and you don't know a thing about his hand.

So he will either fold at the river because he knows he's behind, or raise because he's pretty sure he's ahead, or raise because he thinks he can bluff you off the pot. All of those outcomes are bad.