I’m glad both of these are early levels, because in SNG’s, especially micro STT’s, these are the more equitable and misplayed SNG’s to be exploited.  Maybe some people don’t play as I do, and that’s fine, but I’ll try to help. 

Let’s start with the QQ hand.  Early levels I am not trying to play for my full stack without a huge edge in hand equity.  I understand they are QQ, I understand we’re beating all but 2 hands.  But when your money goes in the middle early in an STT, the winning hand gets about 85% boost to tourney equity(when you actually won 100% of the chips), the loser is obviously gone, but the real winners are everyone else at the table, who split up the remaining equity. In an STT (and this is CRITICAL), the MORE chips you have in your stack, the LESS each one is actually worth from an equity standpoint.  So, that being said……let’s do preflop first.  You chose the 3-bet line, which is perfectly standard tournament play here.  It also announces to the table that you’re preparing to play this hand for stacks.  But, you’ve bloated the pot now, plus, Devo has flatted your 3-bet (which shows crazy strength, or stupidity, and most of the time in micro STT’s, this isn’t always a stud hand).  You’re forced to play a hand for stacks that, while a lot of the time it’s ahead, a lot of the time it’s also way behind or coinflipping (and we don’t want to coinflip worse players early in tourneys).  In an early stage STT, I often flat EP raises with QQ.  This does two things.  One, it’s keeping pot size deflated when we’re not totally certain we have the best of it.  Two, when people behind us wake up with big hands, we can reevaluate. 

If we call the QQ here, Devo shouldn’t be flatting aces into a raise and call, because he’s now inviting more action when he wants aces isolated.  If he 3-bets, you can at least reevaluate.  Do I think you get away from the hand completely?  Maybe not, it’s a cooler hand, obviously, but if you’re initial thought is “how do I keep this pot small for value” instead of “how do I stack this guy,” there may be a fold to be had there.  Honestly, we are going broke here a lot as the hand played out, but it’s just a thought to remember.

Second hand is pretty similar, but this one can be gotten away from.  We have aces, we are happy, we would love to get it in preflop regardless of the stage of the STT.  My first critique here is bet sizing.  If you’re going to bother with a raise in a micro STT, it has to be min 3x at 10-20, 15-30, and honestly 25-50.  Anything else is going to have what happened here, 4-5 flats.  As it turns out, we are 4 handed to a flop of 549r.  We cont bet the flop pot sized and get 2 callers.  This goes back to pot bloating.  Why the full pot?  Half to 2/3rd’s here gives us the proper info.  Let’s look at the texture of the board.  Very dry, nothing scary, perfect for aces, and yet we have 2 calls to a roughly pot sized bet now.  As it’s played, my mindset is now not trying to get the aces in with stacks, it’s trying to get them to a showdown cheaply.  They have pieces of the flop or draws, and now, once again, the pot is starting to bloat.  The turn check raise is unnecessary.  What hands call you that you beat?  Top pair is a 9….a more profitable line here would be to check/call the turn and hope you get checkbacks.  The 55’s would probably lead out on the turn as they did, and you can evaluate.  Could you still be going broke?  Sure, happens all the time, and it’s not easy to get away from.

Both of these hands call out a mindset in early levels that I see a LOT of people playing micro STT’s making.  Overbloating pots and overplaying big pair hands early in tournaments.  The reason it feels like these hands get cracked a lot is because people commit themselves to them, and when the money goes in during the board runout, it’s because someone made a hand that beats one pair.  Win the tournament at the end, that’s where the money is.  Don’t try to catch these fish going bonkers early, be the guy/girl grabbing equity from their bustouts!  Good luck and run good!

Preflop: The raise with KK here is perfect sizing.  With 2 limpers in the BB, 5x is very reasonable sizing, and we should get good value.  We know exactly what we’re looking for here, can look to go hard with a good flop, if an ace falls, we can switch to pot size control and can cut our losses with resistance.

Flop:  This is one of those mixed bag flops with KK multiway.  There are a lot of inside straights and flush draws that hit this flop and will look to get lucky in a micro, so my continuation bet is going to look to price out those draws.  You went half pot here, which is fine, a little more wouldn’t hurt a lot (around 2/3rds pot) to define your hand a little more.  When I get call shove, we have to look at what makes sense here.  What are we beating that likely shows up?  Likely shoves here that beat us are sets, the flopped straight, two pair can show up in some weird ways.  We are ahead of top pair, pair and flush draws, inside straight draws, and air.  With a third of our stack in, and the extra equity from the 3rd tagalong, this is a rough spot.  I’ve called off in this spot before, and I’ve folded and kept going with my 1000 stack left.  I usually advocate folding early in rough spots, but I don’t think I can punish a call in this spot.