Re: First hand of a $2.20MTT pp99 Too aggressive?
 

(grunch) Let me first start by saying I have an extremely tight range on the first hand only because people do crazy 'double up or join another' strategy in these cheaper tourneys.

Preflop: I like it as played.

Flop: I would consider a 2/3 pot bet here. Taking it down now is not a bad result. I would prefer not to see a turn, particularly if an overcard shows up.

Turn: I generally split the smaller stack in half, so that I have some behind for my river bet. A bet of ~600 would give you the same information as your AI, that it would not be called/raised unless you were beat.

I'm curious on how others would play this.

Re: First hand of a $2.20MTT pp99 Too aggressive?
 

I still think the math favors check-calling if he never calls your shove worse. If he bets two-thirds of the pot on a non-ace river, you're getting 2.5:1 to on a call, and you're easily good enough of the time (30 percent would be needed) there to call it, versus the 75-80 percent of the time he needs to not have an overpair to shove profitably. Keep in mind that if he has AK, he probably just didn't call the flop to peel a card -- he likely decided to try to take it away on the river it if you showed weakness on the turn and he didn't make the winning hand.

Re: First hand of a $2.20MTT pp99 Too aggressive?
 

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I still think the math favors check-calling if he never calls your shove worse. If he bets two-thirds of the pot on a non-ace river, you're getting 2.5:1 to on a call, and you're easily good enough of the time (30 percent would be needed) there to call it, versus the 75-80 percent of the time he needs to not have an overpair to shove profitably. Keep in mind that if he has AK, he probably just didn't call the flop to peel a card -- he likely decided to try to take it away on the river it if you showed weakness on the turn and he didn't make the winning hand.

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I agreed with a lot of what you said up until this point. I think you are giving our opponent way to much credit, there is a very slim chance that he is good enough to be playing this way to try and take the pot away from us on the river. I like TKO's point on betting 2/3 pot on the flop which is how I would have played the hand. He could have an overpair but he could also have AK, AQ, AJ. If I was called I probably would have checked the turn, because his call of a 2/3 pot bet narrows his range down to something like KK or AA. A hand like TT, JJ or QQ probably would have re-raised our bet. By betting so small on the flop we give our opponent good odds and we are unable to define an accurate range. As played, however, I like a check behind on the turn, overpairs are not folding and our line looks really weak, which means we can induce a bluff from alot of hands on the river, AJ+. Which means we can get value out of a hand like that an minimize our losses, by not losing our entire stack.

Re: First hand of a $2.20MTT pp99 Too aggressive?
 

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Actually this being a $2.20 the 3-bet doesn't look all that scary. These guys are capable of this with A3 soooooooooooted! [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

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This is true^^^ I've final tabled two of the $2.20's and shipped one of them FTW. The early stages are just horrible; the logic of the micro MTT players is that they have not commited a lot of time to it yet so they may as well go broke or be chip leader before the first break. I think you played it well based on the betting of your opponent here. I'm surprised he didnt call your all in with AJ actually!