draws good in tourney?

[Dylan Wade]

Hi [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

At 11th place so far out of probably 70 starters, everyone on the final table get's paid out but I'm not there yet. I get:

J [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]10 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

everyone folds to MP (2nd place) who raises, I call (button), BB folds
Flop comes:

8 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]3 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

2nd place bets, I raise, 2nd place raises, I cap.

Turn is:

J [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

2nd place bets again, I call (all-in).

5th card is rags, end up losing to J [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

He waves to me and says "bye bye". [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Maybe I'm just posting because I feel I got sucked out [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img], but I also wonder if one should generally go for awesome draws in tourneys?

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

I'll assume this was limit, it sounds like it. In NL, go all-in on the flop.

Without knowing his cards, you were a favorite to win (15 outs twice). As it turns out, you were actually a bigger favorite (18 outs twice), and easily getting the best of it from the pot to call with one card to come. If you knew that he understood the gap concept, your preflop call was OK, too.

You were a 8-5 favorite(6-5 not knowing his cards) to have the best hand by the river. After the turn, you're a 8-5 dog (2-1 not knowing his cards) and you're getting (I think) about 11-2 on your call. The only place you can rationally give up this hand is preflop.

You got unlucky. Such is life in tournaments.

[DaNoob]

Kurn,

2 questions:

1) Would you make this call PF given how close to the money you are?

2) Would you raise/reraise once the flop hit or just call him down unless you hit your draw (because you are still on a drawing hand)?

Bad luck, yes. Avoidable? I think yes again.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

1) depends on stack size, limits, etc. The way this hand played out, I can infer my stack size to be at a level where I muck this preflop.

2) Limit I would just call on the flop as long as I could call the turn and still have 3 or 4 big bets left if I lost. If not, I'd probably play it as it was played.

[Copernicus]

I'm not quite understanding your tournament position. I must not be getting enough sleep. You are in 11th, there were 70 starters, but how many are left at this point?

What are the stacks immediately ahead of you and behind you?
What is the prize structure?

I think the general answer is yes you go for awesome draws like this, but there are exceptions as noted by DaNoob.

There is no way I touch this hand pre-flop against a bigger stack if the bottom of the prizes is still good money and the stacks ahead of me arent that far ahead. If all three of those arent there, I'm all in on the flop.

[M.B.E.]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi At 11th place so far out of probably 70 starters, everyone on the final table get's paid out but I'm not there yet.

[/ QUOTE ]
We need more information (as Copernicus noted). When you get to a stage of the tourney when you're almost in the money, and shortstacked, you should look carefully at the payout structure, and at the stack sizes of the other players who are shortstacked, and how those players are playing. Then based on these factors you have to decide whether you want to play to squeak into the money, or to hit a big payoff. If your aim is to squeak into the money you'll often be able to do that easily just by folding every hand -- but then you'll have hardly any chance for a really big payoff.

If you decide to play for a big payoff, the risk is that there's a decent chance you won't finish in the money at all.

Often there's no "right" answer to this -- it will depend on your personal preference for risk vs. reward. But sometimes the payout structure will be so skewed that there is, in fact, a "right" answer. To take an extreme example, suppose the top nine places got paid, but 6th through 9th only got $20 and 5th got $400, with 1st through 4th even higher. Then it would be pretty foolish to play really conservatively when you were in 11th place, trying to sneak into the money.

So to answer your question -- if you've decided to maximize your chance of doing really well (say, top 5), then you've got to gamble a bit and play on with a draw (often play them aggressively but it depends). On the other hand if you're mainly trying to squeak into the money, but you also wouldn't mind a higher payout, then fold your drawing hands like JTs preflop, and concentrate on pocket pairs and big aces.