Just played a tourney on tinternet there and bit dissapointed with my exit.
I played quite well for the first 2hrs, very tight and only got involved in one showdown had slowly built my stack upto 14k and then the following happens. I am on button with 88 two early position limpers so was happy to see a flop and hopefully ping a set as it happens the SB set himself in for approximately 3k more blinds where 150/300 so there was 1350 in the pot plus the 3 k making the pot just short of 4.5k - now I'm probably about 4th place at this point and its just over 20% of my stack to call.
I hummed and hawed for all my time and then decided that I should call after the other EP limpers passed. I was certain that I was racing and I thought the odds might be in my favour. As it turned out the AI player had AQ off, the flop came T 7 9 rainbow could have hoped for much better unless and 8 popped up inevitably the A hit on the river and I lost the hand.
For the next hour i can count on one hand the pots I got involved in again on the button i pick up 77 I have done some serious damage to my stack now by getting blinded away. Presently have around 6.9k and in need of a double up I was sitting in about 23rd place out of 47 players left UTG who has a monster stack and is in top 3 flat calls he has shown himself to be very aggressive and hit miracle cards to knock players out left right and centre eg he was almost down to the felt when I was table captain and called a re-raise for all his stack with T 4 the flop came A 2 3 he was up against A K and hit a 5 on the river total luckbox and this was the player I had earmarked for my double up.
Another EP player also called he to had a monster stack and was in top 3 as well. another 2 callers before it comes to me with my 77 the table had been pretty weak/passive due to luckbox raising every pot and making it peoples full stacks for them to go. I found this guy very difficult to play against because there where times he'd push with monster and times where he'd slow play them and times he'd just play absolute mince holdings and somehow manage to get lucky.
My question is this should I be pushing here or calling and hoping o hit the set? I was sure I could get the MP limpers to pass I'm sure one of them would have stuck in a raise with a big PP or a Big A. Ideally I want to take the pot now without even going to a flop. If I call and its a scary flop I am sure to be facing an all in for my tournament life, I don't want to get into a position where I am hanging on hoping to squeeze into the money I want to get to the FT at least. TBH I think I am happy to take on another race, but I just don't seem able to win any.
Anyway I decided to push and true to form the LAG called with QQ - huh just my luck to run into a monster. Everyone else passed but there is some saving grace here in that the flo came down A K 9 all clubs I have the
and matey doesn't have a C so I have picked up extra outs needless to day I missed them all but was the push correct? I'm thinking now I could maybe have gone another few rounds of the table and hoped to pick up QQ+ before pushing. But I am also weary that the blinds are now 300/600 and about to go up I don't want to make it an auto call for the BB when I loose another 2k or so in blinds.
So basically middle road pairs where my downfall, the best hand I picked up in almost 3hrs of play was 99 I'm not sure if the lack of decent hands contributed to my downfall as I was becoming pretty frustrated that my decent sized stack was wittled down by blinds. And a bit of bad luck in a coinflip.