Call all my chips w/ top pair early in Party $30 929-entrant tourney?

[Ulysses]

900+ entrants. 600 left. Avg stack 1500 or so. I have 1080.

Blinds 15/30

2 limpers to me. I limp in CO w/ KcTc.

Flop 5d 9s Ts

105 in pot. First limper (970) bets 90. Next limper (3000) calls.

What now?

OK. I raise to 400. First limper re-raises all-in. I decide he could do this w/ any ten and plan to call. Limper in the middle now surprises me and calls.

What now? If I fold, I have 650 left and while short-stacked, feel like that's plenty of ammo to wait for a hand or steal some chips w/ blinds at 15/30. If I call, I will be essentially all-in. If I lose, I'm done, but if I win I'll triple up and have double the average chips at this early stage.

Should the caller in the middle make me less willing to call because one of them likely has me beat or more willing to call because of the better odds I'm getting?

[Paul2432]

I would call, but my decision would consider the opportunity cost of playing in the tournament. If there were no side games available, or these tournaments did not take so long I would probably fold.

Paul

[DougBrennan]

Ulysses,

I have a mantra I try to follow which is:

Top pair-top kicker-all in-no good.

By which I mean, calling an all-in bet, particularly if a raise was involved, with top pair-top kicker usually leads to disaster. In this case, since you don't even have the A, I would fold without hesitation,

[Che]

[ QUOTE ]
Should the caller in the middle make me less willing to call because one of them likely has me beat or more willing to call because of the better odds I'm getting?


[/ QUOTE ]

In this case, less willing IMHO.

If you were playing a big draw, the more players in the better since your return is higher when you hit.

However, your hand here will only improve if you hit another T or if you pair your K (I'm ignoring the small possibility of the runner-runner double-gutshot straight draw). So, you need to be able to win the pot unimproved.

The question I would ask is: what hands would the allin caller have that I beat? My answer: very few, if any. The initial raiser may have had a weak T or a flush draw, but the caller should have at least TPTK, if not two pair or a set.

In most cases you're probably up against something like: initial raiser has As Js and the caller has either 9h Th or Ah Th. You've got about an 8% chance of winning either way.

Even if you're right that the initial raiser has a weak T, the play is still negative EV if my assumptions about the caller are correct.

[Ulysses]

I pretty much thought what Che posted. With an all-in and a call, I felt like one of them likely had AT or better. Best case, one guy had JT and the other guy had a flush draw. Other than that, I couldn't figure any other scenario where I beat both players.

Turns out that the all-in guy had QT. The caller in the middle had nut flush draw. Blanks on the turn and river and QT takes it down.

In retrospect, I agree w/ Paul's post. I think I should have called this because at this early stage it's still pretty much a complete crapshoot and I don't really care if I bust out, but tripling up at this point will really help my chances.

[Che]

Looks like you had a 44% or 37% chance of winning if you had called, depending on whether the nut flush draw's kicker was higher or lower than T.

In this instance, folding was an FTOP error but I still think this will be true only a small minority of the time (and 37% isn't really all that big an edge on a 3-way allin, of course).

Moral of the story: I've got to start playing at Party. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[BogeyWan]

Ulysses,
just curious, were you able to come back and contend later and where did you finish?

[Ulysses]

No such luck. I was done somewhere in the middle, 440th I think, when my 99 ran into both QQ and KK behind me.

[BogeyWan]

There's nothing quite like a bitch slap from the poker gods.
[img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]