Early Tournament Strategy

[BahamaC]

AP $150k weekly

Early in tournament, 40/80 Blinds

My stack was slightly above average, 5400

I’m in UTG+1 with AA

I raise to 160, MP1 calls, all else fold

Flop: Kd 10s 3d

Pot is now 440. I bet out 320.
Villain puts all-in 4200.

My quick analysis: The table was playing fairly tight. Villain was fairly loose. Two earlier heads up hands with villain, I bet and he folded out. Based on his play, my only real concern was KK or TT. I thought it was unlikely and I put him on most likely Kx and call

He turns over Ad Kc

Turn: 7d

River: 4d

He takes pot with A high flush. I’m crippled with 800 and finish 614 out of 665.

I made the right read with the hand and had a bad beat, but am wondering if this early on in the tournament with an above average stack if it would have been better to lay this down to an all-in bet. I’m a fairly new and generally conservative player and try to avoid putting all my chips in early on in tournaments. I couldn’t seem to resist on this one. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[diebitter]

Helmuth would have laid down those Aces.


But you did the right thing. He was holding AK or KQ for sure the way you described his style. And accruing lotsa chips with your big hands rather than lots of little pots is the default preference for early play.

[GOONERCAM]

Firstly i would raise to 3 x BB unless u always double the blind. U dont want to (i) Let drawing hands get in 2 cheap.
(ii) Make it obvious u have a big pair
Apart from that i think u have done nothing wrong. would he move in there with kings or tens?? i dont think so, so ace king really fits the way he bet. U called, which is correct, he got lucky, thats poker. The point is u put ur chips on the line early but u were around an 85% favorite to double up and have a big stack. Dont judge theory on results but ur long term expectation, which in this case was positive. Bye the way u were still a 3:1 favorite on the turn.

[TEKEE]

i agree.

[BlackAndRed]

Absolutely correct call. You have a huge lead over almost every possible hand. You have to take advantage of +EV situations like this. It is arguable over whether to take a 50/50 early in a tournament, but you definetly have to take a 54/46, and this is much better than that. A few months ago someone did a seemingly convincing analysis showing that you should actively seek to get into coinflips early - even at slightly less than 50/50. Try the FAQ.

I don't like the UTG miniraise, unless you're miniraising many other hands from UTG as well. In which case you're probably miniraising too many hands. As it is, it's a flashing light saying "I have AA".

Villain is a moron and I think I need to come to AP.

[BlackAndRed]

[ QUOTE ]
(ii) Make it obvious u have a big pair

[/ QUOTE ]

Why would he want to do that?

[BahamaC]

Thanks for the replies. If this would have happened in the middle or near the end, I wouldn't give it nearly as much thought. Just unlucky. It just kind of bugged me because one of the questions I try to ask myself when playing a hand is whether I need to take this gamble to win the tournament. Of course afterwards, it seems like I didn't. I felt like I made the right read, but I also feel like I if I waited there might have been better opportunities. By gambling everything early, I didn't give myself that chance.

As I said I'm new to the forums and found a debate in another part of the forum about the same thing I was wondering about. Accumulating or surviving the beginning of the tournament. From what I've been able to read it seems like more personal style with no right or wrong answer. I wonder which players would usually come out on top or if it's a fairly even split.

[That Foreign Guy]

Moving on from your hand (I call, giggling as I do so).

I believe that most of us, absent a major $ev consideration, should take almost any +cEV situation whenever it presents itself. We're simply not good enough not to.

I also believe that this is especially true in the early stages. If you are a fairly skillful player You can get yourself in MORE +EV situations later when you have a larger stack.

Another argument is that I'd rather win chips from donks now than have them go to sharks who can use them properly against me.

There's also the old $ per hour argument as well.

For me, the early levels of a multi are clearly "you have to speculate to accumulate". I won't go out of my way to gambool, but it's a time to play for implied odds.