Tournament hand, could I have played this differently?

SixgunSam · #1 10-22-2004, 07:41 AM

Hand from the $30 tournament on Stars. There's not much to it on the surface, but something in my gut tells me I played it all wrong. One thing that seemed odd PF, this guy raised 4x the BB instead of his standard 3x raise. With 99, I'm probably not going to get a flop where I am holding the overpair and with him first to bet and the raiser, I expect him to bet at any flop. I call a raise here for nearly 20% of my stack and if I'm looking for set value, that seems a little overpriced. With one overcard, which is not an ace, should I have risked coming back over the top here? If this guy had AK, wouldn't there be a good chance he would check-raise with this flop? Should I have folded this thing preflop? Should I have re-raised pre-flop? Read on this player - solid, but definitely not tight and he was betting flops where he brought it in for a raise.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t600 (9 handed)

SB (t14497)
BB (t13294)
UTG (t3812)
UTG+1 (t20430)
MP1 (t11860)
Hero (t13205)
MP3 (t3610)
CO (t17465)
Button (t10961)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with 9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], 9[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img].
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to t2400, MP1 folds, Hero calls t2400, MP3 folds, CO folds, Button folds, SB folds, BB folds.

Flop: (t5200) 3[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], 5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] (2 players)
UTG+1 bets t3000, Hero folds.

Final Pot: t8200

Results in white below: 
No showdown. UTG+1 wins t8200.

Ryner · #2 10-22-2004, 08:59 AM

I dont know, seems to me if you were going to auto-fold to a single overcard, you should have just folded in the first place. You have a solid player raising from early position with more than their standard raise, which is scary, but if you're going to play, knowing they're going to bet the flop no matter what, you have to be prepared to play back at them.

I think it would have been best to either fold before the flop, or raise after. In my opinion, a non-standard, early raise from a solid player would probaly be too scary for me to call with nines.

SixgunSam · #3 10-22-2004, 09:28 AM

I agree with you that I either should have folded pre-flop or played this hand more strongly with only one overcard on the board. I honestly thought his raise was fishy and something about it told me he wasn't that strong, but I wasn't sure if my 9s were actually better than his hand or not. I did put him on PP. What bothers me the most, I think he would have checked that hand with an AK. There is really nothing threatening on that board and he would have to expect that I would make a bet at the pot if it was checked to me, which I certainly would have done, but I couldn't muster the courage to re-raise all-in. We were relatively close to the bubble and I had horrible cards the entire tournament, which is probably a large factor in a) why I played the 9s and b) why I played them weakly. This guy was the table captain as you can tell by his stack size, so I don't think he had to have a hand to bet here.