[Spaceman Spiff]

Not really a bad beat, just kind of a wild hand. I forgot to get the history, so a recap will have to do.

Playing in the Stars $2 tourney. I'm absolutely card-dead, played about 4-5 hands in the first 4 levels. Blinds are at 50-100 and my stack is about 1,300, so already in the Orange zone.

UTG limps, UTG+1 limps. Fold. I'm next and pick up Gretzky (99). Table had tightened up and was folding to big preflop raises, so I pop it up to 500 basically trying to take it down right there or at least get heads up. Then it got ugly.

Butoff calls, button raises. OK, no big deal. Then SB raises all-in. BB calls all-in. Limpers disappear. At this point, my 9's aren't looking so good, but I've got about 800 chips left and the pot is already over 4k. I'm getting the odds to call. I know I probably need to get lucky, but if I do, I'm right back in the middle of things, so I make the call. Cutoff calls and the button also calls.

Great, I'm all-in against 4 players with freaking 9's. Surprisingly, I'm not in horrible shape. SB and BB both have AKo. Cutoff must have put the crack pipe down long enough to call all of this with 78s. The big problem is the button who found QQ. A Q pops on the flop and it's bye-bye for me.

I don't think I could lay down the 9's there. The odds were huge and if I fold I'm down to all-in or nothing plays. After how quiet the table was though, I just couldn't believe all the action once I finally picked up a decent hand.

[jojobinks]

fold it.

you've got 4 opponents? you're in bad shape. if there's no overpair, than you've got 5 or more overcards to fade.

this hand was no good for you. seems like an easy fold. there's a good chance a coupla guys get knocked out or crippled, and being down to a shortstack isn't so bad.

eh...that's what i woulda thought.

[boondocker96]

I would have made the same move.
You went in with what could have been the best hand, just had the bad timing of being up against pkt ladies.
And who knows, maybe you make your set instead of his Q hitting, and your right back in it.
Thats poker baby.

[dad604]

With all that action, I am surprise that there was only one big pocket pair. I might have folded it.

[Dwight87]

I would've folded. With 2 possible eliminations and another cripple, I like my odds for getting lucky with the next few hands and getting in the money rather than holding Gretzky against a tight table.

[SpaceMonkey]

Yeah, I think I fold here, and then go into push mode with any two cards as long as I'm the first one to play.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Guess I should have been more specific. There were still 500+ players in at this point. My choices were to fold and hope to get lucky on a short stack to get back into it or get lucky right now and move up to more than double the average stack. I decided to basically try and quadruple up.

I probably should have paid more attention to the two limpers before me. That reduced my first-in equity, but like I said, the way the table had been playing I thought I would be able to get the table to fold with my raise. I just didn't expect to run into 3 premium hands and 1 nutjob.

How about some analysis earlier in the hand? I'm trying to think of what I might have done differently. I don't think folding initially is an option. I'm facing 2 limpers in 4th position, but I think 9's are a decent enough hand to play here. I can kind of see a reason to call here I guess and hope to flop a set. We had had quite a few hands that got limped around, so in a normal case the odds were probably going to be there. In reality though, there was no way this pot was getting limped around considering all the hands involved. I think the only other play might have been to do the standard 3x raise. After all the action, I think I could have more easily folded with 1000 chips remaining. I'm still Orange Zone, but at least I still have some room to try and find a better place.

By the way, I love these topics.

[KYBill]

F O L D

[jojobinks]

yeah, space, with that stack and two limpers it's a tricky spot, i agree.

500 is indeed the standard raise here, of 3xbb plus 1 bb for each limper. the problem is that you don't really have enough chips for the standard.

500/1300 is about 40% of your stack. another rule of thumb often used is that if you're going to make a bet that's 40% of your chips, you should just move in. with the raise you made, if you got only one caller (and it was one of the limpers) the pot would have been 1250, and you'd only have 800 left. so you wouldn't have enough to make even a headsup opponent fold, necessarily.

as my least favorite tv poker guy, mike sexton, likes to say, "middle pairs are the hardest hand in NL texas holdem to play." and i think this hand shows why. folding seems pretty weak. pushing woulda gotten you broke also. but maybe then you wouldna gotten called by 78 and even the AK (depending on the order of the hands, i forgot). maybe folding is right at this stage...if you get a caller you know you can't be better than a coinflip.

i love strat threads too. don't tell anyone, but i get tired of chip-related threads sometimes.

[scottoc]

It was a $2 tourny. I know your supposed to play the same no matter the stakes, but I think this is different. Super low stakes tourny's have people doing a lot of double or drops. Take the 5:1 odds. Your either right back in or you can drop another 2 bills and try again.