blonde poker forum

First hand is a $10 tourney on Stars. Started with 2600, down to final 60 or so. I am in about 15th place right now. UTG villain is fairly straight forward. The only people who can hurt me have both yet to act, the SB and BB.


Poker Stars, $10 + $1 NL Hold'em Tournament, 2,500/5,000 Blinds, 8 Players
LeggoPoker.com (http://www.leggopoker.com) - Hand History Converter (http://www.leggopoker.com/hh)

Hero (BTN): 138,265
SB: 138,952
BB: 267,168
UTG: 78,596
UTG+1: 60,256
MP1: 50,487
MP2: 123,911
CO: 151,552

Pre-Flop: (11,500) 9h 9c dealt to Hero (BTN)
UTG raises to 15,000, 4 folds, Hero ??? what do I do?




2nd hand is 17.5K guaranteed on Full Tilt. Started with 1200 players, down to 30. I am in 15th spot or so.

Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold'em Tournament, 2,500/5,000 Blinds, 600 Ante, 8 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

MP1: 244,021
MP2: 198,531
CO: 124,438
BTN: 173,619
SB: 42,206
Hero (BB): 84,882
UTG: 41,711
UTG+1: 116,484

Pre-Flop: (12,300) 7c 7s dealt to Hero (BB)
UTG raises to 41,111 and is All-In, 6 folds, `Hero??? what do I do?

1st hand - smooth call, see what he does on the flop.  Fold if sb/bb re-shove pre.

2nd hand - fold

1st hand - I'd smooth call as well, pretty obviously a solid player raising UTG will be strength most of the time but laying 99 down with position post-flop and a stack of chips would be a bit tight.

2nd hand - i think this is an easy fold, you'd be calling away half your chips with a hand that's likely to be 50/50 at best. Although he's short-stacked you'd have to be real sure the player would make that move with a wide range such as Ace-rag suited to a smaller pair to justify a call. You need to gather some chips as well but I'd wait for a better spot where you can get the money in first.

Hmmm tricky spots, these are both read based as they are both quite marginal.

Hand 1- I hate flat calling here, he is putting a 1/5 of his stack in pre. Unless you are telling me he never c-bets a missed ak/aq here, calling is suicidally bad as you will never know where you are post flop. Both stack are perfect for restealing its just a case of preflop ranges, if he is a positionally aware nit i pass. Against most opponents i reshove, reckoning im ahead of his range and have some fold equity.

Hand 2- The better our opponent is at playing a shortstack the more I like a call. As in his spot he should be shoving wide here, but alas villan rarely is here and it is probably very close. Hell i really need a read here, against an unknown find a coin in your house and flip it.

I'd agree with both of the above. Flat calling the first one is very..very wrong. Get them in there for me.

Second one..I can go either way..fold or call...depends on oppo really..call most of the time as it's my BB.

Hand 1 rrsing seems a bit marginal vs what should be a genuine hand.  I don't mind calling and hope one of the big stacks calls as well for some set value and to make the utg a bit wary of c-betting.

Hand 2 depends a bit on the payouts - is there a big jump at last 27? What after that? Are there some microstacks ready to go out?.  You should be racing against his range so it might be worth a gamble and if it doesnt come off just hang on for the next jump in prize money.

I'd fold one. Flatcalling is bad because his range should have us in a lot of trouble; we sometimes create a multiway pot where we have bad equity - and those two factors taken in tandem with the effective stacks mean that we make a lot of mistakes. By this I mean we fold the best hand a lot; or stack off to a better hand a lot on a range of flop textures.


I'd call two. Fuck that. It's an 8 BB push with 2.5BBs in the middle and we have a pair. The good thing about our stacksize is that you can still blind off up a payoff spot if you call and lose. And you can still shove next orbit of the table if folded to you in late position and have FE. 

I fold them both.

I'm sure you can put your chips to better / easier use.