Size Does Matter

[bruce]

That's what my wife tells me!!

Bruce

[MLG]

I ended up raising to 4k and calling a push. He had A3 of diamonds, and I outflipped him to get a big stack. The whole hand made me feel pretty dirty though. Getting 70ish BBs in on this flop with TPTK just makes me ill. Generally speaking my instinct is to call here if I have a hand that I have to call a push with but wont be happy about. Thing is, when there are a lot of draws out there it makes it a lot harder to figure out the turn and increases the difficulty of your decisions on later streets. So, I took the easy way out. If I had a shorter stack I think its an easy raise, if I had a deeper one, its an easy call, 70x though I felt was right on the border, so I got sloppy and decided not to give myself any tough decisions. One of the main weaknesses of most tournament players is that they are uncomfortable playing the turn and the river. Thing is, the turn and the river are where big pots are won and lost. Thats why good cash game players will play tournaments and have excellent results, even if maybe they aren't quite as good at the nuances of medium/short stack play preflop and on the flop as tournament specialists.

[M.B.E.]

Great analysis, MLG, and interesting thread.

[MLG]

Thanks man. POST MORE DUDE.

[adanthar]

There's two reasons not to feel dirty about this hand IMO:

1)You have an ace;
2)You know that with your image you'll get played back at with far less than a 15 (12) outer.

You'd (I'd) play exactly the same with QQ there as (it turns out) a dog in the hand. 70 BB just isn't deep enough not to raise/call; I think the dividing line is higher than that.

[bruce]

Had you not raised I doubt u wind up getting stacked. When
he misses the turn he'll probably check and fold to a pot
sized bet. So it seems to me by playing this aggressively
you got all your chips in on the flop as a small favorite.
Tough to find too many better spots than that.

If I recall the threads there was too much emphasis on the
villian flopping a set or having an over pair. If he had
an overpair he probably would have reraised to make this
headsup. If we compare cominations with two diamond hands
vs two pocket pairs where'll have flopped a set it's more likely that he has a diamond draw.

Bruce