Okay guys – I’ve been bubbling a ton of tournaments over the past few weeks, and self-diagnosed that the problem was being too tight during the middle stages.  So I decided to do some experimenting, and this hand came up.  At the time it felt retardedly spewy, but when I went back and reviewed I couldn’t find the point of the hand where my thought process was wrong.  Preflop is obviously speculative, but did I just get unlucky?

Don’t have any specific reads on villain, but I always OPR my entire table and knew that he was a weaker player, but not maniacal.

Thoughts by street…

Preflop:  I thought his stack size was awkward, and that he would therefore be playing pretty straightforward postflop.  The call was mostly looking for a good flop to make a move and take it away, or perhaps actually hit the flop.  I thought the combination of those two things made it high variance, but +EV.

Flop: I thought this was a great flop to go for a check/minraise.  The part of his range that likes that flop is QQ+, AQ, 99, and possibly KQ (but yay, blockers).  When weighted against his opening range, I thought I’d be getting a lot of folds.  At the time I didn’t put much thought into his small CB, since its going to be stuff like Ax a lot just trying to get a good price on a CB.  Perhaps it should have set off my spidey-sense, but considering my raise only had to work like 30% to be break even, I thought it was a really juicy spot.  Plus, we have a backdoor flush draw and some backdoor straight draws, so I also thought I’d be able to continue my bluff a lot.

Turn: His call was worrisome, but I didn’t think it necessarily meant he was committed.  The turn is obviously great, since I now have a flush draw+a gutshot straight draw.  At the time I didn’t think there was any other play other than just shoving it in, and I felt silly when he snap called and flipped over essentially the nuts.

But I went back and did the math, and worst case scenario, I’m a 3:1 dog against his calling range.  So he only needs to fold 3% of the time for the shove to be break even.

Merge Network $1,250 Guaranteed Freezeout No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t125.00/t250.00 Blinds + t25.00 - 8 players - View hand 1800962
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

UTG+1: t3766.00 M = 6.55
MP1: t20277.00		 M = 35.26
MP2: t2063.00		 M = 3.59
CO: t8275.00		 M = 14.39
BTN: t1838.00		 M = 3.20
SB: t7460.00		 M = 12.97
Hero (BB): t6106.00		 M = 10.62
UTG: t4517.00		 M = 7.86

Pre Flop: (t575) Hero is BB with 8 

 K 

1 fold, [color=red]UTG+1 raises to t662.00[/color], 5 folds, Hero calls t412

Flop: (t1649) 9 

 5 

 Q 

 [color=#336633](2 players)[/color]
Hero checks, [color=red]UTG+1 bets t500.00[/color], [color=red]Hero raises to t1000.00[/color], UTG+1 calls t500

Turn: (t3649) J 

 [color=#336633](2 players)[/color]
[color=red]Hero bets t2432.00[/color], UTG+1 calls t2104 all in

River: (t7857) 4 

 [color=#336633](2 players - 1 is all in)[/color]

I'd love to hear what you guys think.

And perhaps what you look for when making moves in the middle/awkward stages of tournaments.