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QQ UTG Mid-Tournament Stages - Min Raise? Larger Raise? What After That?

radialmammal8

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September 19, 2016 - 2:35 pm

OK – Feeback appreciated. Here’s the situation from a $150 Live tourney this weekend:
Blinds: 200/400/100 Ante
Hero: 24k
Villain: 15k

Hero (UTG): QQ raises to 800
Button (18k): Calls
SB (25k): Calls
Villain (BB): 3 Bets to 3600
Hero: Shoves
Button & SB Fold
Villain Thinks for about a minute – then calls. Shows AdKd

My question is – what would you do here? Did I play this right?

Villain is a regular and we have played quite a bit together in tourneys at this casino. His range is definitely wider for a 3-Bet than just AA-KK and I had a pretty good read that he was not 3-betting either or those hands.

Was the min-raise appropriate? More? Just limp? How could I / should I have played this differently. My table image was very tight as for the first 2 hours of this tourney I had VPIP maybe 5 hands total. (It was a bad run of hole cards for a while).

Foucault

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September 19, 2016 - 4:52 pm

I think it will be more helpful you if you try to articulate for yourself why you think you should have (maybe) played it differently, what your other options are, and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

radialmammal8

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September 19, 2016 - 5:11 pm

Great way to phrase the question. Here are my options (other than the way I played it) as I see them looking back:

1) Limp / Shove

-PROS: I disguise the strength of my hand even more. I may get a better idea of strength I’m up against.
-CONS: I get 4 callers because everyone is trying to disguise and I have no true idea of where I’m at in the hand or what I should be worried about on the flop. Also – now I’m playing post-flop vs. pre-flop and not truly able to put any leverage on anyone and am dealing with 2 more significant stacks than I could be.

2) Open Bigger / Shove

-PROS: Maybe I signal a stronger hand to the SB and he folds his AKs to my shove?
-CONS: I’m putting more chips at risk to more hands with a LOT of players left to act behind me

3) Open/Call 3-Bet
– PROS: Gives me a chance to get away from the hand post-flop and lose fewer chips. In this particular instance I would have stacked it off to him anyway given how the board came out. Overpair to the board + 4 to the flush after the flop.
– CONS: I’ve now ceded a pot potentially that I could have taken down. In this case, that’s a 9k chip swing which isn’t insignificant.

4) Open/Fold
– PROS: I don’t see any unless I have an amazing read that the 3bet is AA-KK?
– CONS: I probably should quit poker if I’m going to play this way

5) Fold
– PROS: I never put any chips at risk
– CONS: I probably shoud quit poker if I’m going to play this way

Did I miss any?

Foucault

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September 19, 2016 - 6:27 pm

All of these options are phrased as though you knew he had AK at the time that you had to act initially, which of course you did not. They’re also phrased as though you knew you were going to lose the flip. You can’t just retroactively analyze a hand with knowledge of the results and then try to determine how you could have avoided losing given the cards you ended up seeing. You have to do your best with the limited information that you have. Of course QQ is an extremely strong hand, and you should be happy to raise with it (mostly in order to get worse hands to put money in the pot, an advantage that you don’t explicitly mention and the major disadvantage to limping) and reasonably happy to get your money in against a re-raise as well. Sometimes your opponent will have AK and you’ll lose a flip. Sometimes he’ll have AA and you’ll get your money in really bad. Neither of those things means that you made a mistake or should have done something differently.

The Riceman

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September 20, 2016 - 2:36 am

I’m not sure there are many attractive options other than how you played the hand.

It’s unfortunate those pesky callers came along for the ride or I’d have been taking a flop IP every time.

There isn’t room to 4 bet non all-in, and so unless you want to play your Queens V multiple villains, I am shoving here.

Interesting hand though.