New tournament player seeking help on five hands

RyanUSF · #1 06-02-2007, 11:25 AM

Hi everyone! I've been out of poker for over a year now, and have never been much of a tournament player. I was a winning short-handed player over a couple hundred thousand hands, and now that I'm playing again I'm looking to just play in the occasional tournament in my spare time. My biggest weakness in tournaments has been me playing a generally unimaginative, weak-tight game.

Last night I let go of my inhibitions and made a FT, but I can't help but feel I played quite a few hands poorly. I'd like to get some feedback from you guys who obviously have much more experience than I do in these situations. Anyway, I thank anyone ahead of time that bothers to read this fairly long post [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Hand #1

UTG+1 is a solid player from what I can tell, hasn't been involved in much but has shown down some good hands. Button is an unimaginative weak-tight player, and the rest of the players pretty much limp with any two cards. I was unsure what to do with 5 limpers to me with this hand, I'm guessing I should've made a bigger raise (5-7x BB) to thin the field, but UTG+1s limp scares me somewhat, and I was pretty sure calling station 1, 2 and 3 were seeing a flop no matter what.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t50 (9 handed) internettexasholdem.com

saw flop|saw showdown

MP3 (t3099)
CO (t3187)
Button (t2820)
SB (t4260)
Hero (t2650)
UTG (t490)
UTG+1 (t2610)
MP1 (t3895)
MP2 (t3120)

Preflop: Hero is BB with A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], Q[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img].
1 fold, UTG+1 calls t50, MP1 calls t50, 1 fold, MP3 calls t50, 1 fold, Button calls t50, SB completes, Hero raises to t150, UTG+1 calls t100, MP1 calls t100, MP3 folds, Button calls t100, SB calls t100.

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Hand #2

Looking back at this one I think I should've raised PF. My table image here is extremely tight thusfar, I've been pretty much carddead. UTG in this hand was very loose-passive and played poorly postflop, and MP1 was said weak-tight unimaginative player who limped with a pretty wide range of hands (but never big ones). Calling again was probably the worst out of the 3 options for me here, so is a 4-5BB raise standard here? Does anyone fold?

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t50 (9 handed) internettexasholdem.com

saw flop|saw showdown

UTG (t2008)
UTG+1 (t6699)
MP1 (t2057)
MP2 (t4060)
Hero (t2425)
CO (t415)
Button (t2335)
SB (t3445)
BB (t2687)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], T[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img].
UTG calls t50, 1 fold, MP1 calls t50, 1 fold, Hero calls t50, 2 folds, SB completes, BB checks.

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Hand #3

Play at this point had tightened up considerably. UTG was the loose-passive player from the previous hand, and I felt by raising I could probably isolate him and get him heads up on the flop. SB was unknown to me, he had just joined the table and I wasn't going to get involved with him with a mediocre hand. Anyone folding here instead of initially raising?

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t150 (9 handed) internettexasholdem.com

saw flop|saw showdown

UTG (t2816)
UTG+1 (t5774)
MP1 (t1316)
MP2 (t672)
Hero (t2575)
CO (t11230)
Button (t1160)
SB (t3478)
BB (t886)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with 9[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img].
UTG calls t150, 3 folds, Hero raises to t400, 2 folds, SB raises to t1675, 1 fold, UTG folds, Hero folds.

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Hand #4

UTG+1 is the loose-passive player. MP1 I wouldn't classify as solid, or terrible, but somewhere in between. His limp here doesn't really scare me though. With an M of 7.75, is this a standard push? And for that matter, what is the general push range for M=7 or 8?

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t200 (9 handed) internettexasholdem.com

saw flop|saw showdown

UTG+1 (t2966)
MP1 (t4214)
MP2 (t8437)
MP3 (t2115)
Hero (t2325)
Button (t8880)
SB (t5752)
BB (t5153)
UTG (t4835)

Preflop: Hero is CO with J[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], T[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img].
1 fold, UTG+1 calls t200, MP1 calls t200, 2 folds, Hero raises to t2325, 3 folds, UTG+1 calls t2125, MP1 folds.

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Hand #5

This hand actually ended up being the turning point in the tournament oddly enough. One of my biggest weaknesses has always been blind play, not so much defending, but stealing. BB here had played pretty tight thusfar, nothing out of line. I'm putting him to a decision more or less for all of his chips so he's not calling with a very wide range of hands here. What does everyone else do in this situation?

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t800 (9 handed) Ante=t50internettexasholdem.com

saw flop|saw showdown

MP2 (t7402)
MP3 (t12770)
CO (t8675)
Button (t1480)
Hero (t5476)
BB (t7860)
UTG (t10375)
UTG+1 (t18119)
MP1 (t22510)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 6[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], 9[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img].
7 folds, Hero raises to t5426, BB calls t4626.

Flop: (t10452) 9[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 7[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], 3[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] (2 players)

LSgambler · #2 06-02-2007, 11:40 AM

Hand 1: your raise with all the limpers is way to small, you should have raised to about 400-500.

Hand 2: if the limpers really limp with a huge range then you could raise to about 250.

Hand 3: you preflop raise is to small. (usuall standard raise is 3x+1 per every limper) You need to raise to at least 600.

Hand 4: dead money in the pot, quite a lot FE and the hand that when you get called you will have live cards very often. Depends on the limpers too, but I like this move.

Hand 5: pushing ATC is good in this spot.

skiier04 · #3 06-02-2007, 11:55 AM

Raise more in hand 1 as said, I probably go 350 or 400.

Hands 2 and 3 I fold preflop.

Hands 4 and 5 are good

LSgambler · #4 06-02-2007, 11:57 AM

Hand 3: i thought you had 99 for some reason. A9 it's an easy fold.

JesseB_11 · #5 06-02-2007, 12:05 PM

Hand 1: Your raise needs to be a lot bigger (350-400 seems about right)

Hand 2: I'd raise or fold. If I raised it would be to 250.

Hand 3: I fold this preflop. But If i raised it would be to atleast 500

Hands 4 and 5: I play it the same way

RyanUSF · #6 06-02-2007, 03:54 PM

Everyone is saying fold hand three preflop. I'm curious as to why, given the read I had on the lone limper and the way the table had been playing. Is it because there are 4 players still to act behind me? Or is that hand just too mediocre to get involved with in that position?

Thanks for the responses too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

FortunaMaximus · #7 06-02-2007, 05:34 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Everyone is saying fold hand three preflop. I'm curious as to why, given the read I had on the lone limper and the way the table had been playing. Is it because there are 4 players still to act behind me? Or is that hand just too mediocre to get involved with in that position?

Thanks for the responses too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, they're suggesting you're behind too many Ax hands that have you dominated.

With a limper and you raising, a reraiser's range without shoving with that stack size has A9dd pretty much a decent dog versus his range.

Stacks would have to be significantly deeper for this to even make it a flatcall to see a flop OOP here, and even so, it's generally a fold.

RyanUSF · #8 06-02-2007, 06:43 PM

Oh I wasn't talking about the fold to the SB, that was a given. I'm just talking about the initial raise with a bad limper in EP and me raising to hopefully isolate him.

FortunaMaximus · #9 06-02-2007, 06:49 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Oh I wasn't talking about the fold to the SB, that was a given. I'm just talking about the initial raise with a bad limper in EP and me raising to hopefully isolate him.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I don't have an issue with the smallball raise, however, you may not be getting maximum value out of it in a tournament situation. If you're making raises that are designed to fold to resistance, your raises do need to be a bit bigger.

Say the hand rolls differently, and UTG flatcalls, you fire a c-bet and meet resistance. Is that a spot you would like?

You have to also take into consideration that the SB, and more likely the BB will feel compelled to see a flop cheaper. It's OK if you don't mind playing multiway pots. You do have to be careful with TP type hands here tho, so you're resigned to a higher-variance line by creating those situations PF.

RyanUSF · #10 06-02-2007, 06:58 PM

Points taken. I definitely need to raise more than 3-4x the BB in this hand, if I'm going to play it. If I'm called by anyone but UTG in this situation I'm going to be very concerned.

I don't expect resistance from UTG though, he does nothing but call and pay people off with any sort of hand. He had called an all in bet for 1/4 of his chip stack earlier with something like 62s preflop. It's just unfortunate that SB picked up a hand d: