double or nothing

amxvulcan

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Dealt pocket KK at a 10 person double or nothing sit and go. How should these be played?
 
Raggamuffin

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Hey Amx,
Welcome to CC :)
That depends on a lot of things really like what kind of table is it? Tight/loose
What position you are in? Ep/Lp? How many BB you have got & how does you stack compare to the other players etc.
Usually I'd open up with a 3 bet & go from there.
If it was very early in the DON though, it usually goes one of two ways.. either you shove PF & get an all in from someone who feels like gambling (usually holding Ax) or you 3bet & it folds around to you & you barely get paid (I hate when that happens!). But I rather take the blinds than flat call/check & end up losing to a limper playing rags! If your looking for a more in depth answer then I suggest you post the hand in the "Hand Analysis" thread & get some help from the CC experts! :)
All the best!
 
Dlew123

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^^^^^ Muffin had a very good way to play the hand i would almost play that hand the same way 100% of the time

3 bet hand forsure
 
dmorris68

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Yeah, not really enough information here to provide any solid advice.

DONs require a different strategy than regular SNGs. Until the bubble, especially several spots away from the bubble, I'm happy to get AIPF with KK. On the bubble, it depends on a number of factors as to whether I'm willing to risk the game on a single hand, even AA. Yes, in a DON (or satellite) it can be correct to fold AA preflop to a shove on the bubble when you have a stack that virtually guarantees you a win. So you'd have to be specific about the situation before we could recommend how to play the hand.
 
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With that hand independent of your position and if you need to double , i think that you should go all in ...It´s a big hand so u don´t have to be afraid :)
But is my opinion :D
 
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I've been playing a lot of these at the micro stakes ($1, $2 and occasionally $5) and what I have been doing with KK (and AA, QQ and JJ) early when the blinds are low is raising to 5x the BB in unopened pots and re-raising all-in in pots that have been opened. Most of the time you will only get the blinds but occasionally you will get a guy with a lower pair or AK, AQ, AJ or even ace rag to play. Sometimes you might even get someone with less than that who likes to gamble.

The only exception would be if you have a lot of information on the table and all of the players left are very nitty (10% VPIP or less). Then I am usually making a standard raise and hoping to get the same hands listed above to call. Since there are a fair amount of really tight players in these this situation occasionally pops up although most of the time you will have at least 3 or 4 guys in the 30-50% VPIP range.

I don't mind winning just the blinds even with KK since the point in a DoN isn't to accumulate chips but rather to simply survive half the field going out. I usually end up playing less than 10% of the hands dealt and sometimes on an especially active table might fold every single hand and still be able to cash due to the presence of loose gambling players who knock each other out and occasionally draw out on the tight players.
 
TeUnit

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hard to say given the limited information but early in the game raise to 3x or pot usually dependent on the villians

in late game play you can get fancy with them, but it really puts you in a difficult spot when an ace hits on the flop
 
dino

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usually raise 3-4 BB and go from there.
If no one call, pick up the blinds, if someone else raise, it's usually with Ax and hope to not get that A on the board, :)

DON's are great to make some BR starting up, but I do agree, you need to adjust your strategy for them.
 
PokerFunKid

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I would raise 2,5-3bb if no one raised before me. Depends on what position you sit. If people limped i would add 1bb each limp. If a raise before me i would re-raise 2,5-3 x his bet and try to get as many chips in pre flop. After the flop it really depends on what the position is you're playing in and what the flop/turn/river is. And what your opponent is doing ofcourse.
 
BigSlickBaby

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I have had some success in DONs by limping with these big hands. Especially early in a DON. If you 3bet, you're simply announcing to the whole table that you have KK+ and they will either fold out or you'll just get a shove from a guy with AA.

I'm really hesitant to raise hands in DONs preflop. I don't see much of advantage to it. Instead, why not just wait and see if you hit the flop before you start shoveling money into the middle?
 
dmorris68

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I have had some success in DONs by limping with these big hands. Especially early in a DON. If you 3bet, you're simply announcing to the whole table that you have KK+ and they will either fold out or you'll just get a shove from a guy with AA.

I'm really hesitant to raise hands in DONs preflop. I don't see much of advantage to it. Instead, why not just wait and see if you hit the flop before you start shoveling money into the middle?

This is a really big leak.
 
Propane Goat

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I have had some success in DONs by limping with these big hands. Especially early in a DON. If you 3bet, you're simply announcing to the whole table that you have KK+ and they will either fold out or you'll just get a shove from a guy with AA.

I'm really hesitant to raise hands in DONs preflop. I don't see much of advantage to it. Instead, why not just wait and see if you hit the flop before you start shoveling money into the middle?

The problem with this approach, and it's not just limited to DoN's, is that you're letting people outflop you for cheap and then since you were too passive preflop, you have no idea where you stand and no way to put your opponent on any kind of range.

This kind of play is a recipe for getting it all in on the flop or turn because you have an overpair to the board and you think you're good, only to find out that your opponent has some crappy hand that flopped two pair or a straight. What makes it worse is that often you know he would have folded pre if you had raised.

I just made a similar mistake in an MTT today, I min-raised KK from UTG with about 12BB behind but I didn't take the antes into account, so the BB had odds to call with just about ATC. The flop was 858, suffice to say we got it all in on the flop and he turned over T8o. Giving people cheap cards to beat you is not one of the best things you can do in poker.
 
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These don's require different play because half get paid. I play to win no matter the situation. There are always lucky donks that just try to get it in, I would limp if in early position, and raise big if in late position, and then go from there. Very rare that aa vs kk will happen on hand one in a tourney.
 
BigSlickBaby

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The problem with this approach, and it's not just limited to DoN's, is that you're letting people outflop you for cheap and then since you were too passive preflop, you have no idea where you stand and no way to put your opponent on any kind of range.

This kind of play is a recipe for getting it all in on the flop or turn because you have an overpair to the board and you think you're good, only to find out that your opponent has some crappy hand that flopped two pair or a straight. What makes it worse is that often you know he would have folded pre if you had raised.

I just made a similar mistake in an MTT today, I min-raised KK from UTG with about 12BB behind but I didn't take the antes into account, so the BB had odds to call with just about ATC. The flop was 858, suffice to say we got it all in on the flop and he turned over T8o. Giving people cheap cards to beat you is not one of the best things you can do in poker.

Let me clarify - What I wrote about limping is only, and entirely, limited to double or nothings. I am in no way, shape, or form advocating limping with premiums in any other situation.
 
BigSlickBaby

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This is a really big leak.

See my above post. I was talking about DONs and only DONs. As another poster just wrote, these games require a completely different strategy and approach. There are games where you have to do absolutely nothing to win and then there are games where you have to do extremely unorthodox things to get into the money.

Raising 3x pre with KK is not at all a standard approach to DONs on any of the networks I play on. The competitive players just don't do it.
 
BigSlickBaby

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These don's require different play because half get paid. I play to win no matter the situation. There are always lucky donks that just try to get it in, I would limp if in early position, and raise big if in late position, and then go from there. Very rare that aa vs kk will happen on hand one in a tourney.

That's pretty much it. Let the donks knock a couple of each other out and wait until you really have something to play with. I tend to stay in position and play pots conservatively until I really have a made hand on the flop or turn already. The bad players are looking to play for stacks early and often and you don't need to raise with QQ or KK pre to GII with them. The only thing you're doing then is getting it in with them preflop when you're an 80% favorite most of the time. Why risk your buyin on that when you can sit back and play hands with virtually 100% equity while villains knock each other out?
 
DonV73

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You can start off with making a preflop raise of 3 bb's. Unless if you are under 10 bb's yourself , I would shove. If you don't shove, then depening of the type opponents and their reactions you can do a lot of things. To broad to give a specific answer. Try to read some basic betting strategies. There are enough of them out there :)
 
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It depends. You can call or raise. Depend on many things-table dynamics, your image, etc.

For sharks, they can just call and know when theyre beat postflop and fold. But for starters, have to bet early on.
 
dmorris68

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See my above post. I was talking about DONs and only DONs. As another poster just wrote, these games require a completely different strategy and approach. There are games where you have to do absolutely nothing to win and then there are games where you have to do extremely unorthodox things to get into the money.

Raising 3x pre with KK is not at all a standard approach to DONs on any of the networks I play on. The competitive players just don't do it.

I don't know where you play or at what stakes, but DONs are my bread and butter. I pointed out before you posted here that DONs require a different strategy, but that doesn't mean you open limp premium hands. I've been playing almost nothing but DONs for the past few years, and have cashed out thousands of dollars in DONs alone. I have thousands of these games under my belt, and I play against regs that I've recorded thousands of hands against each. I think I have the strategy down pretty well, and nobody open limps KK unless they're trying to induce an aggro-tard to shove over them.
 
BigSlickBaby

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nobody open limps KK unless they're trying to induce an aggro-tard to shove over them.

Yes, and in $1.50 and $3 DONs, who do you think a lot of the villains are?

Raising from 20 to 60 pre in a $1.50 DON isn't accomplishing anything. What, are you raising for value? 40 chips?
 
dmorris68

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Yes, and in $1.50 and $3 DONs, who do you think a lot of the villains are?
Don't believe I've ever played a DON that low, in fact I've rarely ever played any games at those stakes unless I was experimenting or trying to setup a HUD or something. So maybe things are different there, but I kinda doubt this is as widespread as you make it out to be.

Before Lock virtually killed the Revo network, and before that when Merge still ran 6-max DONs, I played the $33-$80 DONs. Now due to the lack of liquidity, the highest 6-max that run on Revo are the $15 DONs, so that's all I play (sometimes will throw in a $6 when they fill just to get more tables going). I can't tolerate 10-max DONs anymore, haven't for a long time. But I can assure you at $15 and up, almost nobody open limps premiums.

Raising from 20 to 60 pre in a $1.50 DON isn't accomplishing anything. What, are you raising for value? 40 chips?
What does the buy-in have to do with bet sizing? Whether it's a $1.50 or $150 game, the object (especially in a DON) is the same: accumulate chips. If I can do that 40 at a time, I will (and do). If you have loose players who will call with a wide range, then you should be happy to get them to call your raise when you have KK. OTOH, if everybody nits up and folds to every raise, then I'm stealing them blind with a super-wide range and building my stack slowly but surely. But I won't be playing limped multi-way pots with premium hands that lose much of their equity multi-way. That's just terrible poker, period.
 
BigSlickBaby

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^^ Well, of course you're right in the end. I mean, yeah - these are nanostakes that I'm playing. Things are a little different here but I guess I overstated how often this should be done. I just generally, when it's early on and I want to get a read on someone in a micros DON, might occasionally "limp" with a big QQ+ pocket pair to get a read on some of the other players behind me since players tend to be so shove happy early on in DONs. That looks and sounds much better. I will never open limp with these though and you're right, that's insanity. I don't really open limp ever with anything.

I'm not very experienced. I just started playing this summer. I started with cash games and quickly got involved in the tournaments. I love them. I play DONs, SNG/STT's, and MTT's of all different kinds. I still play the cash game but I have quickly come to prefer tournament poker for a number of reasons. My goal is to get as good as I possibly can at both though. I also understand that there's a crossing over between the two styles of play that will compound my growth in both. Hopefully.

I guess in part due to this thread I wound up raising after a few limpers so far tonight in tournaments where I typically would have just called and it worked out well. Obviously, it's all about momentum, building the pot when you have equity, and giving yourself more than one way to win the pot postflop. I'm learning.
 
Propane Goat

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Yes, and in $1.50 and $3 DONs, who do you think a lot of the villains are?

Raising from 20 to 60 pre in a $1.50 DON isn't accomplishing anything. What, are you raising for value? 40 chips?

It accomplishes a lot more than you think, because you're going to get a lot of value from much worse hands that will definitely call when blinds are low. I've played a fair number of $1 DoN's on Carbon, not nearly as many as dmorris has and certainly not at those stakes, but in the micros there are so many people willing to call a sizeable pre-flop raise with not much at all then stack off when they pair their Q or J.

You're not required to lose a ton of chips with KK, if you raise and someone calls, an Ace flops, and the villain won't fold to a resonable c-bet then move on and find a better spot.
 
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It really depends of the dynamics of the table and all the things mentioned above, just never slowplay kings, because is better to take any pot, than losing from flush on the river for example. In the bubble you even can fold Kings against larger stacks.
 
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