Should i have done things differently?

I just got eleminated from a STT on a hand i'm not sure if i played right, so I came here looking for some help. I'll start with the relevant information. It was a $6.50 6man STT and we were down to the last 3 people. I am 2nd in chips with about 2100 the ss has about 1800 chips and the chipleader has more than 4000. The villian (chipleader) has been showing many of his hands through the tourney and we know he will raise with A-x along with good hands. Anyway, to the actual hand blinds are 75/150 and i am dealt pocket 9's on the button I limp in, sb (ss) fold, and bb (villian) makes a standard raise of 3bb to 450. Knowing that the villian probably has atleast one overcard i think to myself i need to make a move and this appeares to be a good spot to do so. I shove all in and villian calls shoing KdQs. Flop comes out 2c,Qh,Jc. Not good obviously, turn is 8d, which gives me a few more outs. River is a 5c. Game over i lose.

I have a few questions 1) Should i have even played the hand at all and waited to see if the ss would get busted out or was playing this hand a correct move? 2) Should i have raised instead of limped into the pot? 3) Should i have just called the raise instead of shoving? 4) Did i play this correctly and just get unlucky?

If you're gonna play the hand, raise it. You're down to 3, most likely at least one is gonna call for a limp. If you choose to play it he may be bullying you with that flop, so a call or fold is in order. With stacks this size and the big stck in the BB I would fold it. You're not really trying to pick on the big stack, you want the SS to lose chips, whether it's to you or the big stack. Raise when the leader folds with a wider range of hands,he's trying to hold on and hit a good hand.

lektrikguy said:

If you're gonna play the hand, raise it. You're down to 3, most likely at least one is gonna call for a limp. If you choose to play it he may be bullying you with that flop, so a call or fold is in order. With stacks this size and the big stck in the BB I would fold it. You're not really trying to pick on the big stack, you want the SS to lose chips, whether it's to you or the big stack. Raise when the leader folds with a wider range of hands,he's trying to hold on and hit a good hand.

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What?

I think this is a raise/fold to shove situation, though im happy to just shove preflop too.

You could have raised to 400 leaving you with 1600 chips behind, and if u had a favorable flop you could have gone all in, but the option of shoving preflop seems more correct.

1. Play the hand - SS has only a few blinds fewer than you so waiting for them to bust is not the way to go. 99 is good 3 way.
2. I don't mind the limp/shove play if you reckoned the BB would do the raising for you. BB raise was good as it put pressure on you and tells you that you aren't going to see cheap flops when they're in the BB. But their call isn't brilliant as your shove reaks of setting a trap with a premium hand. I don't know how they call it.
3. Calling the raise is tricky as you will usually face a cbet that commits you and you'll see a flop you don't much like.
4. You played the hands one of the correct ways and got unlucky (55/45). An open shove may have picked up the blinds, but we really want more value from 99. A raise/fold to shove is playable but to my mind just makes you bullyable and the shortstack.

WiZZiM said:

What?

I think this is a raise/fold to shove situation, though im happy to just shove preflop too.

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Isn't that what I said??

If you're gonna play the hand, raise it. You're down to 3, most likely at least one is gonna call for a limp. If you choose to play it he may be bullying you with that flop, so a call or fold is in order. With stacks this size and the big stck in the BB I would fold it. You're not really trying to pick on the big stack, you want the SS to lose chips, whether it's to you or the big stack. Raise when the leader folds with a wider range of hands,he's trying to hold on and hit a good hand.

I have been thinking some more about this hand because it is a fairly typical situation. It is frustrating to go out on the bubble and see the smaller stack take the second prize that we might feel we were more entitiled to. Did we really have to play that hand? might be the first question when that Q hits the flop. But this is all might-have-beens and we can't play poker on that basis.

I am sure we have all had the situation (I had it in a MTT last night) where we think about playing a marginal hand (mine was T8s in MP) but err on the side of caution and fold it. Then we see our dream board come down and feel frustrated that we could have tripled up against that AQ and KJ. A few hands later we shove with AJs and go out of the tourney to Q5o. We cannot let these results dictate our decisions.

In any tournament we are going to have to risk our life by getting all our chips in and ideally we want to have the better hand. That was the situation here - it just happened to go wrong, don't fret over it.

Perhaps the most telling thing is that you posted this hand at all. I'm not having a dig, these hands gnaw away at all of us; but I guarantee you wouldn't have thought about your strategy if you'd played the hand the same way but won it. We tend to forget the 55% we win, and beat ourselves up over the 45% we lose.

Or, you could look at it this way: your strength as a player could be in playing hands like this the way you did and getting to last 3; your weakness could be in some other area that meant it wasn't you with the 5K stack. I think a lot of tournament success comes from making the most of opportunities in subtle ways that get forgotten because they aren't that exciting. Again, we don't know whether you made the most of those oportunities to get to the last 3 or wasted them to only have 2K chips.

if got a pair in this situation and you intend to play it than commit totally.
i prefer to go allin with any pair in that situation because if no other higher
pair i always get a coinflip.
i do this because i want to win more than to get in the money.

in your situation you could expect the raise from the chipleader, because
he played aggressif a lot before as you said.
so in your sitiation i had gone allin preflop.

if you want to get in the money and not wanted to push your hand than you should have folded after the raise or even not limped at all because you knew he
would raise with any decent hand.

Thanks for all of the help and advice.

And pup i think your right, i probably wouldn't have thought about this at all if i had won. I think i was just frustrated cause i had been the chip leader a few hands earlier, and lost to the same villian. I made a good lay down (had KQo and had him til the river where an A came out and he shoved) so i guess i was mad that he got me twice.