Party Poker MTT - How would you play it?

[pipster]

You are down to about half the average stack in a 375 person MTT which is now down to 19 people left. (Top 2 payout only as it is a points tourney). The table is fairly tight, lots of blind steals and very few hands are seeing flops.

Blinds are 200/400 average stack is 12K, and you have 6K.

You get dealt KK UTG. How would you play it?

- Limp/re-raise?
- Push?
- Min raise?
- raise it 3xBB or so?

I will post later what I did and what happened... but wanted honest opinions first.

[Artsemis]

Depends exactly how tight. If there haven't been any flops at all I would probably try limping in since a raise in early position may scare everyone out.

If there's been flops every now and then, I would min. raise and push on about any flop.

[woodguy]

Was the table full of serial limpers or were limps being raised?

Was the table full of loose passive calling stations?

Need good info on table texture for good responses.

Regards,
Woodguy

[sekrah]

Raise to 1000 sounds good to me, lots of action yet behind you.

[pipster]

Flops were getting seen about 15-20% of hands...

Table was full of serial limpers, it was not uncommon to see 4 people to the flop in a 9 handed game and then a flop raise take the pot.

Noone was really aggressive on the table except the big stack who generally fed off of weakness and called like a moron (saw him call 3 all-ins with Ace high and win all 3, 2 of them with a suckout and one cause the other guy was bluffing).

[woodguy]

[ QUOTE ]
Table was full of serial limpers, it was not uncommon to see 4 people to the flop in a 9 handed game and then a flop raise take the pot.

Noone was really aggressive on the table except the big stack who generally fed off of weakness and called like a moron (saw him call 3 all-ins with Ace high and win all 3, 2 of them with a suckout and one cause the other guy was bluffing).

[/ QUOTE ]

I probably just make my regular 2.5BB raise and see what happens then.

I wouldn't limp it if there was a good chance of it being limped around and having the SB stack me with 62o.

Regards,
Woodguy

[davidross]

Without reading any other replies

My first comment is don't pay any attention to the average stack or how many players are left...it will lead you to make bad decisions. Instead, compare your stack to the blind size, that should beyour only concern. You have 15 bb's and really shouldn't be changing your game at this point. How would you play KK here if you had more chips? Play it the same way.

[TheTimeIsUp]

Standard pf raise (2.5-3) works fine here.

[pipster]

I ended up min raising it (my standard raise would have been to make it 1200 to go from 400 BB) and pushing any non-Ace flop.

I got 7 callers to my min-raise, and the BB came along of course getting 13-1 on his money and closing the action. Flop was 2/3/3 and BB had J/3 and stacked me out of the tournament.

In hindsight, the min-raise was the worst possible idea. I either needed to push (probably a bad idea as all I get was the blinds and it was unorthodox for me so screamed big pair want to double up), or what I think was the best idea would have been a limp/re-raise which I really like in this position.

As it turns out, button had AK suited and would have definately raised if it was limped around to him. and I could have isolated with a reraise all-in to headsup and taken down a nice 15K pot.

Live and learn... the fine line between "extracting value" and screwing yourself over.

[Dave D]

Never min raise. I hate people who minraise. Seriously it's the biggest tell ever, especially UTG. I'm really surprised the AKs didn't go all in PF or something, I think I probably would have.

Imagine if the AKs or someone else had raised, then you come back all in or something. Biggest. Tell. Ever.