How would you bet this hand.

I was playing in the UB buy in tourney hosted by Cardschat and was at a table with 6 people left.

I was to the left of the BB and had pocket 9's. Being such early position I just did a min. raise. Ended up being multiple callers and the flop was KQ rag. It basically got checked to the river and the BB won with a pair of Jacks. BB played J3 suited.

In that situation should I have made a larger raise and if so how much?

jefnert said:

I was playing in the Ultimatebet buy in tourney hosted by Cardschat and was at a table with 6 people left.

I was to the left of the BB and had pocket 9's. Being such early position I just did a min. raise. Ended up being multiple callers and the flop was KQ rag. It basically got checked to the river and the BB won with a pair of Jacks. BB played J3 suited.

In that situation should I have made a larger raise and if so how much?

Click to expand...

I'm not a big fan of minimum raises pre-flop.

Since there were only six people left, you have to play the hand, but I think a more standard raise would have been appropriate. From middle position (which is essentially what you are on a short table), I like a 3x raise here more than a 2x raise (assuming most people, especially you, have a decent chip stack). You won't get as many limpers (hopefully) and you can more easily put the people who call on a hand.

99 is not the best hand in the world UTG (even at a short table), you don't want callers, especially not a lot of them.

I really dislike the min-raise in this situation. What's it supposed to accomplish? With a middle pair, the flop will almost always bring at least one overcard, making it important to thin the field by betting enough to encourage players holding hands like Ax, Kx, QT and JT to fold. Depending on the nature of the table 3x to 4xBB is generally a good bet size, or 2.5x if you're a smallball type and that's your normal bet first in.

2x is so small that it's almost mathematically correct for the big blind to call in the dark.

Like everyone else has said and will prolly continue to say, mini-Raising with 99 when your down to 6 is not the optimal play. Depending on your style you will need to either Limp or raise 3xBB+. The problem you faced (and what prolly forced you to throw out that mini-Raise) is that you were UTG and the entire table had yet to act. So your thinking goes along these lines...

"If I make a big PFR and someone comes over the top of me, I'm in trouble because I don't know if I'm up against a Bigger PP or something like AK or AQ."

As result you make a mistake and you ended up giving everyone odds to call (case in point, the BB was able to call with J3s because everyone else called and he prolly had 4-to-1 odds or better and he was already half investeded with his Blind). Moreover, you found yourself frozen out when over-cards fell on the Flop.

The key here is that your 6-handed and even moderately strong starting hands increase in value, so your 99 had a higher probability of being the best hand Pre-Flop. This is where you need to decide to either Limp in and hope to hit a set (but be prepared to Fold if Over Cards drop), or Raise it up to 4xBB+ in hopes of taking it down Pre-Flop.

Where did you finish in the Tourney?

Thanks for the insight. after playing the hand I felt maybe I should have made a larger bet. However my game has vastly improved since I started being more concerned with playing my positions. NuRelic you almost quoted my thoughts verbatim during the hand. Next time I will consider being a little more aggressive with my pre flop bet.

BTW I ended up winning the tourney. I hit quad 4's late in the tourney and took about 18k from the chip leader leaving him 400 chips. Bad part for him was that he flopped ace high nut flush, and i flopped trip 4's. He sorta slow played the flush and I hit quads on the river. of course i checked them and he went all in before the river with his flush.

jefnert said:

I was playing in the Ultimatebet buy in tourney hosted by Cardschat and was at a table with 6 people left.

I was to the left of the BB and had pocket 9's. Being such early position I just did a min. raise. Ended up being multiple callers and the flop was KQ rag. It basically got checked to the river and the BB won with a pair of Jacks. BB played J3 suited.

In that situation should I have made a larger raise and if so how much?

Click to expand...

I would have raised a lot more. if you descide that you shall play a hand like that you don't want callers and in youre case you had at least to, so i would have raised like 3-4 times the stack if you had that kind of money and hoped that nobody called.

Depending on my table image at the time, I would either limp and pray, (If I was getting called a lot) or more likely raise 4x. Probably the latter...

In my opinion, you should have raised more preflop. Pocket nines, even in early position, is a strong hand at a table with 6 players. I think raising more preflop would have solved all your problems with this hand. More people would have folded preflop, including the guy with J3.

Definitely raise more preflop, the people who had overcard/x will most likely fold.