Discussion about pot control ( MTT's only)

As some of you may or may not know its important to control the pot in no limit hold em, a lot of good players at the beginning of a tourney play their top pair top kicker hands a lot more passive since they don't want to lose their stack early on. With that being said I want to discuss few situations many of us run into quite often.

So I don't hear my favorite answer, it depends, I will make up the examples.

For this discussion let's say we are avg stacked vs another play that also has an avg stack.

Example:

A) you are holding AKs in late position, lets say CO, a solid tight player raises from mid position, you re raise (3bet) and make it 3 or 4x his raise him and villain calls, flop comes 10s 5h 3d villain checks, hero? a1) villain bets 2/3, hero?
b) you raised with AKs from early position , tight solid player re raises 4x, from late position, what do we do? b1) good laggy player re raises 3x, what do we do?

B) this is a continuation of example A, let's say in example A you checked behind and turn is 7s so the board is 10s 5h 3d 7s a) villain bets 2/3 of the pot, what do we do? b) villain checks, what do we do? c) villain bets 1/3 of the pot, what do we do? d) villain bets pot, what do we do? villain bets min bets, what do we do? e) villain goes all in, what do we do?

C) you are holding 99 in late position, solid tight player raises from mid position and you re raises 3x or 4x, villain calls, flop 10s 5h 3d, villain checks, hero? c1) villain bets 2/3 hero?
C1) same as C vs laggy player

D) you are holding 99 and raise from mid position, good solid tight player re raises and you call, flop 10s 5h 3d, what do we do? 1) vs laggy player, pre flop do we call behind or re raise/ if we call what do we do?
E) continuation of D, let's say you bet 2/3 and are re raised, what do we do vs tight solid player, what do we do vs laggy player?

***by good laggy player, I mean someone who is good post flop, and knows how to bluff good and stuff like that.***
***by good tight solid player, I don't mean some nit, I mean somebody who knows how also knows how to play position and knows when to bluff.***
***our table image is TAG***

The point of this thread is to discuss situations when you are holding two over cards and missed the flop and when you are holding pp with one over card and to help out some players to understand how to take control of the pot. I'm sure I could make up millions of examples, but I think this is good for now. With the given information, what would you do in each situation, reminder, this is early in MTT and blinds are fairly small.

I forgot to mention, I will post what I would do later, I just don't want bunch of people saying " I agree". I want to everyone's opinion in those situations.

i agree

I knew I would get a smart azz to post in here.

Well it depends...JK
I think pot control is a weakness for me but here are my answers any way
Im just gonna anwser in red inside the quote

Well it whouldnt surprise me if i picked the worst option in ever example but atleast its a nice discusion post .

Ok tyvm sindri, will give this few days before I post my opinion.

It depends.

How deep are stacks? In cash games you pot control to avoid playing for stacks. If you check a street, its hard to get in by the river if everyone has a deep stack.

In a tourney, you're rarely 100 bb's deep...

This is an mtt, and that's exactly what this thread is for, to teach people to avoid big pots with weak hands. I see so many people posting hands where they lost a TPTK hand vs a str8 flush draw and they complain why they lost and how could villain call on flop. Of course if we control the pot, we can get away from those type of hands, and also in tourneys I like to build up slowly and not play those type of hands aggresively until we are deep and I think few people don't understand that.

For this example lets say you have 3k with 40/80 blinds. Basically you have enough info to figure out the type of players everyone is but its still very early.

Early in deepstack tourneys youre 100BB deep...but your right

That's a pretty rare situation, and you're only 37.5 big blinds deep.

So lets say you and villain have 3k stacks each.

See, in this situation, the pot is about 1750ish and you have 2160 left behind. There's no pot controlling in this pot, because with 1-2 bets, villain can get all in. So even if you check a street, villain can force you to play for stacks.

Pot control is a lot less applicable in 3-bet pots. If you want this to be a thread about checking behind more instead of c-betting, then by all means its a good topic. But I don't think these examples are gonna be all that applicable to tourneys.

my math sucks I admit it and I'm kind of tired, what I meant was lets say, we and the villain have around 10k each with 40/80 blinds.

Okay, so we've found the deepest deep-stacked tourney ever. ^_^

Situations:

A) Check Behind
A1) Fold would be the default move. But with reads I'd either bluff raise or float depending on if we have a runner flush draw. Against the better players who are able to shove over our flop raise, I'm gonna be floating instead of bluff-raising.


B) Call, leading any Q/K/A/flush draw flop or 4-bet preflop, could go either way.
B1) instantly 4-bet large

In most of these spots (except the weak bets) we should be calling. Obviously fold to a shove.


C) Checks behind every time.
c1) Calls
C1) Checks/Calls

Calls become folds if villain has the ability to fire 2 barrels. And with 99 in EP, its a fold to the TAG unless I'm getting set odds. The LAG, I don't mind 4-bet bluffing here.

None of these are really all that much about pot control :P We just have bluff catcher or a weak draw in most of those situations. Weak draws you obviously wanna use the extra equity to bluff with if you think you have some fold equity. The bluff catcher... well, you catch bluffs :P. Its easier to do in position, and you certainly don't do any raising.

I know my examples weren't that great since they were just quick ones and kind of while I was playing 4 or 5 tourneys and right now I'm to tired make more examples but if you want you can make some too, or we can talk on aim/msn/yahoo tomorrow and make some together, oh god that sounds wrong but you know what I mean.

Hero 10,000 in chips holding
Villain has same stack size

Blinds 60/30

Hero raises to 100 from the cutoff, villain calls from the small blind.

Potsize = 260

Flop:

Villain checks, Hero has 9900 left behind.

So by "pot control" I assume you mean holding onto the bong with both hands. JK

just curious, how did u make the cards look like that

Click more under smilies.

oh ok ty.

(bookmark)

KD, you can do that by selecting "Thread Tools", then "Subscribe to this Thread", although that has the disadvantage that you are invisible whereas using your method shows us that you are reading/monitoring.

Bob, I`m sorry I have things I need to do and don`t have time to analyse each of your examples separately, so I will talk general principles:

Early in a MTT, there is nothing I can do that will win me the game but there are many ways that I can lose it.

I don`t want to be playing for any large amount of chips with borderline hands or with hands where I am not sure where I am.

I am not exactly advocating being a supernit and playing nothing in the first hour (although that is an approach that some pro and competent amateur tournament players do suggest). However, it is important to realise that it doesn`t make sense to stick one`s neck out and risk one`s stack for a pot that (although it looks large now) will be the equivalent of one big blind in the later game when things get serious.

My goal in the first hour is to win small pots and safely stay around average stack. I don`t want to play a big pot unless I have a big hand (which does not usually mean TPTK), or unless I have a solid read on villain and can be confident he doesn`t have the hand he is representing.

So, in most of your examples (to the extent that I understand them from a quick scan) I am folding.

cheers ET, i thought you could only subscribe to a thread by posting in it, the other forum I belong to(non-poker) works that way.
ty