Couple marginal hands $5+.5 Stars

[SomethingClever]

Point taken that this flop is more likely to have hit at least one person.

However, two other things to consider.

1) This is literally the first hand of the tournament.
2) I don't believe people make quite as ridiculous calls on Stars as they do on Party at the $5 level. Since I just started experimenting with the 1TTs the other week, I've flopped a lot of sets, bet out, and had everyone fold.

I think I could have gotten away with somewhere between a min bet and 3x the bb, but, really is it worth possibly an extra 20-120 chips (depending on how many callers I get) versus the risk of everyone folding? If someone makes a 2nd best on the turn or river, I can get their stack.

[SomethingClever]

Results:

Hand 1: SB had KJ. So in this instance, I took his stack. Trying not to be results oriented, but I still think slowplaying is correct when the only thing I'm really worried about is a backdoor flush.

Hand 2: I read this as a standard blind steal for Button in this situation, and thought he would fold most hands to my push. Unfortunately, he had a legit hand, AQ, called, and took half my stack.

Hand 3: SB called the river bet and flipped over AT, no flush draw. I think I extracted pretty close to the max given his holding.

Hand 4: MP and BB both called. I was ok with that because I had both of them covered so much. I was up against A9 and AK, and my TT held up.