Stars $200+15 hand.

[Metnut]

This was a big hand for me yesterday, and I really don't see any other way to play it, but I'm hoping maybe someone here might have some good thoughts on it.
Stars 200+15, 2490 or so players, we are down to 85 players, the money goes up once we hit 81 (another $300 or so), I have 91K in chips which is the most at the table, I've also been stealing my share of pots and although not going crazy I suspect I might have a LAG image. Blinds are 4K/8K with an ante of 400. A player busts, and I am UTG in an 8-handed hand. I have 88 UTG. What is the move? 2 of 3 the other big stacks at the table are directly to the left of me and the third stack with some power is only in mid position. None of the blinds have more than 25K.

[shaniac]

22.5K to go, see what develops behind you, or limp.

Shane

[Metnut]

No one else?

[Roman]

just throw in your standard raise. Depending on who comes over the top, I most likely call a push too unless its from a 70+k stack,

[IgorSmiles]

Limp. Since you;re under the gun, your opponents may think you have As or Ks and fearing a reraise, will let you see a flop. Then you can make your next move based on the flop. Raising here is great if you take down the blinds, but if you get calls you've got a tough hand to play. A lot of higher mid pairs will smoothcall your 3X BB preflop raise and if a rag flop comes, you may think you're good, only to be up against a pair of 9s or 10s that wont go away. Also, any ace or paint card on board is going to scare you.

There;s nothing wrong with taking the lead here, but you are going to have to fire any flop and if you get called, youve got problems.

[Metnut]

I guess in hindsite limping seems to be a good idea. I pushed and got called by overs and lost. The table was playing so aggresive, and I felt any 3X raise or limp would be pushed allin, and then if i called a short stack all of my other raises would lose value since people would think I wouldn't raise a good hand.

[JohnFR]

I know I am new to this forum, but I thought this was a very interesting hand so I have thought about it for some time, and I kinda wanted to brainstorm some ideas in a post, these ideas are of course solely mine and anybody that wants to disagree with them, I would love to hear some counterpoints as discussion is the best way to learn.

So you have pocket 8's as the biggest stack on the table, the problem is you have 88 UTG, which is a lot different from around back. I think this makes this hand one of the hardest to play in this position, 22-55 is an easy dump, TT-QQ are easy raises, all other hands are fairly easy, so that makes 66-88 possibly the hardest hands to play in this position.

I believe that you have exactly 5 options, and each of these options has its own benefit. Options: Limp, minraise, standard raise, all in and fold. I want to talk a bit about each of these options.

all in- I know this is what you did, but to me this seems like a mistake, this is only going to get called by JJ-AA and AK, possibly AQ. You are allowing yourself no chance to be up against a hand that you dominate with this method. I doubt severely anybody is going to call with 22-77, and therefore the BEST possible scenario with this is going to be a coinflip, well the best scenario besides stealing the blinds. But in this case you are risking a TON of chips(you never mentioned how much you had the other big stacks covered by, but I will assume at least 1 or 2 of them had ~80k stacks.) and you are risking it to win 15k chips or so, I don't like risking 80k to win 15k from UTG, this seems like a huge -EV play especially at this point in the tourney.

Standard Raise- this would be ok, but you mentioned that people were being fairly aggressive and you thought that somebody was probably going to come over the top of you. The question is if somebody does come over the top of you are you going to lay it down? If you won't lay it down going all-in would be your method of choice, but I think we have kinda ruled that out as the best possibility, and if you make a standard raise and get called are you going to fire out on the flop? If you do you are basically pot committing yourself and unless there is an 8 on the flop I don't like this move either UNLESS the flop comes T high or so, and then it is ok, but I the flop comes T high less than half the time. So you will probably have to check and fold tons of flops especially ones with an A K or Q. The other option when making a standard raise is if somebody comes over the top of you and you will just fold, that leads me to the next option

minraise - if you are willing to lay down the hand after making a standard raise I think a minraise will pretty much accomplish the same thing, except the BB will have some decent odds to call with some questionable hands, BUT I think this may actually be a really really good thing, if only the BB calls because he is getting 4 to 1 or so on his call, any flop that contains a A K or Q you can probably fire out on and take down the pot, and those flops that might hit him, may hit him real low like a pair of 6's or 7's if he called with something like 56 or 67 or 79 or something of this nature allowing you to possibly extract some chips from him if the right situations occur. I still think this might be a slight mistake though because it is going to be hard to put the BB on a hand for the most part and even if the flop comes 7 high he could have connected or 1 gapped cards that make 2 pair and he won't release them, so this comes to the next option.

limp - In some games the limp UTG looks like the scariest thing in the world, it could mean anything from 55-AA AK AQs etc. some people might give you respect for a big hand, but this could also be great because it could gain you some information, because they make make a nice raise and this allows you to release the hand without making much of a committment to the pot. They will need a pretty strong hand to raise and UTG limp for fear of the reraise, and this allows you to get away from the hand with almost no chip commitment to the pot.

Folding - In a tournament when I am a healthy stack I am looking to steal blinds from around back with decent hands(KJ,KQ, AJ-AK, 66-AA), and if I am going to play a big pot I want to have at least some chance to have a dominating hand, this doesn't mean I always want QQ-AA or AK, sometimes if I feel somebody is making a play on me that may mean I want to play a big pot with AJ, because I have a feeling he has A5-AT or KJ or QJ etc. Basically what I am saying is I am always thinking in the back of my mind that I want to have at least a possibility of having a dominating hand, instead of always looking for coinflips, and I think with 88 UTG the best possible situation will be a coinflip, I don't think somebody goes all in here after you have shown some strength with 22-77, so although it seems weak-tight I think this is my favorite option is folding, I just don't see how the extra 15k chips is going to help you get to the final table, but I can see how losing 50k-80k from your stack will definately keep you from going, and since there is almost no chance I will be dominating in this particular instance I don't see a reason to put any money in this pot.

If your stack was 40-50k I think all in is good and if you had more than 130k and could raise and drop if neeeded this would be a good option, but I think the fact that you are UTG, with 88 in a solid but not dominating chip stack makes this either a limp or fold situation.

Just my 2 cents though, would love to hear some feedback,
John

[CardSharpCook]

excellent post, JohnF. Welcome to the forum. I usually take the line of standard raise, see where the pressure comes from. If it comes from a small stack, I call, large stack, fold. You gave an interesting case for the limp, but I think perhaps the min-raise might be best. Risk fewer chips, get the "scary UTG play" credit, and possibly take down the blinds on the cheap.

I might consider folding this hand in this position with fewer chips, but for me, it is tough to turn down any hand with which I wouldn't mind going heads up with a small stack AND which always has a good shot of taking the blinds uncontested. UTG raises get a lot of respect.

CSC