Final talbe of MTT, hand I busted on

[skiier04]

Final table of the $2 NLHE tourney on stars, 646 entrants. I busted in 9th place on this hand. Dont have the HH but reconstructed it along with my thoughts the best I could.



I was UTG+3 with 88, and blinds were 6k/12k. I raised it to 26k with my eights, and was called by 1 person who was to my left. The flop came out 57T, which was a great flop for my hand. At this stage in the tournament, I doubt he would call a raise that big with a hand with a T in it, except of course TT, although AT was a remote possibility. I checked, in plans of check-raising all in on the flop, since I was confident he would bet a lower pair or overcards if checked to him. He indeed came out firing with a 36k bet. I highly doubted he had a set, as he would probably have checked behind in hopes of a big card hitting the baord. I already explained why he probably didnt have a T, so the only hand I'm worried about is 99. I go through with my plan and raise him all-in, he quickly calls and shows 99, the board brings no help to me, and I'm out in 9th place. Would anyone have played this hand differently, maybe fold preflop and try and wait for a better hand???

[skiier04]

Forgot to mention chipstacks, I was in 4th chip position with around 125k, and my oponent had me slightly covered with around 140k.

[500apm]

Dude, don't "explain" things to the fish. Nobody likes a tablecoach and the fish is much better being totally clueless.

And maybe you should be more careful of your stack with only about 10bb's and in 4th place. But I'm no good MTT'er so take it for what it's worth.

[zambonidrivr]

need info on players, chip stacks, etc. any reads?

[nightlyraver]

A few things to consider:

First, despite the fact that you are in 4th chip position, you only have slightly more than 10BB's. That said, you should know that any raise will commit you to any flop so you might as well push and be happy if you only pick up the blinds and antes.

Second, a raise of only slightly more than twice the big blind is not a big raise. If you're not gonna push, you better raise it to 30k-40k and at least discourage callers.

Third, since you did not raise big enough, there is chance enough that villian does in fact have a ten in his hand. HOWEVER, stacks are not big enough to find out! You must play it as if you are ahead.

Fourth, had you raised it properly preflop, you should not check-raise this flop with these stacks. If you raised it to 30k, the pot would have been ~80K and you have about 95K. That's just enough folding equity to knock out two big cards like AK (which we really want to see fold). If you check and he bets 50K, the pot is at 130K and you move all-in making it 210K. He must now call only 45K to win 265K and he would be correct in doing so with anything that he would call a raise with. You must beat him into this pot if you want to maximize your chances of winning it.

As it turns out, he had you beat from the beginning and given the short stacks I'm sorry to say that you were doomed to bust out on this one. However, that is being results orriented and I would play it out as stated above. If stacks were nice and deep you could check-raise and release if he calls or comes over the top, but that's not what the case was.

Should you have ditched the hand from the get go? This really depends on the other stack sizes and the payout structure of the tourney. As an extreme example, say that the top 3 players get tons of money and the rest get very significantly less AND there are several players that are very short stacked. In a case like that you can certainly wait out the desperation moves by the real short stacks and re-evaluate your position.