blonde poker forum

Ok Its a Step 3 on the Stars EPT sats.

Its the first hand of the game with blinds at 10/20. I'm mid position with 2 limpers in front of me. Starting chips are 1500. I have raised it to 120 to go. It folds to the small blind who calls and the big blind who calls.The other two limpers also call giving us a five way pot of 600.
The flop comes down K Q T rainbow.. It checks to me and i decide to make it 260 to go. the small blind goes over the top all-in and it folds round to me. My thoughts now are that he has possibly two pair or an A and hopes to make the str8 and force me out.
I call after some thought and he turns over QQ giving him trips as well.

My raise of 120 pre flop was there to force out limpers and only a genuine hand would call. However with it being hand one people can make crazy plays online I dont think my 120 was an overbet but about right ..
My bet on the flop was designed to force out people chasing str8s and hopefully take the pot down there The all in i was not expecting and to be fair with QQ pre flop i would have expected a re raise which would possibly have made me lay down my TT..
As it was he reeled me in and i have to say his play was very good if a little risky.. I didn't put him on a set..

Any opinions on either my Betting or calling would be appreciated 

errrr, what did you have?

I'm guessing.... pocket tens?

Your pre-flop raise was fine and just unfortunate to get so many callers. After the flop you have to consider with the texture of the flop and with so many callers one of your opponents will already have hit a straight or hit a big part of the flop and willing to gamble on completing the straight by the river. I don’t like the c-bet on the flop of 260 I believe it to be the worse of the options available to you. I may well have checked the flop to see what action follows the board is just too dangerous even with a set against so many opponents. As played you were always going to get a caller or as happened a re-raise. You will then have committed a quarter of your starting stack and be in a difficult position with no knowledge of your opponent and deciding if you want to gamble your tournament life. Yes your opponent chose a very unusual and as you say risky way to play QQ. He was lucky not to have them cracked. You can always consider yourself unlucky when you lose set over set.

hmmmmm. that was a blonde moment.

sorry yes it was pocket Tens 

Alex I thought observation was a key skill to being a poker pro  ;whistle;

I would limp behind preflop, yeah i know im going to get stick for being an uber nit, but in the steps format (like sngs) putting alot of your stack in early is often a bad idea unless you have a v strong hand.

As played felt this flop every time, your line looks fine to me.

Fwiw don't show results it biases peoples responses.

Also as a general note about posting in PHA it is alot easier for people to comment if you just put up a hand history or use the cards and split each street up into paragraphs. It really was an effort to work out what happened in this hand.

You can basically never get away from a flopped set on the flop alone.

Raise pre is right, you should bet more into the pot cos it's draw heavy. Impossible to put the guy on any hand that beats you. Folding here would be bad play, it's just a cold deck...