$1.20 NLHE STT: $1 6Max SNG Pocket 5s

[Riemannian man]

Villian Stats (VPIP/PFR/AF): 67/44/50

full tilt poker $1 + $0.20 Madness No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t15/t30 Blinds - 6 players - View hand 1111799
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

BB: t870 29 BBs
UTG: t1095 36.50 BBs
MP: t1755 58.50 BBs
CO: t1590 53 BBs
BTN: t2220 74 BBs
Hero (SB): t1470 49 BBs

Pre Flop: (t45) Hero is SB with 5

5

1 fold, MP raises to t60, 2 folds, Hero raises to t180, 1 fold, MP calls t120

Flop: (t390) 7

7

T

(2 players)
Hero bets t390, MP raises to t1575 all in, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls t900 all in

Turn: (t2970) A

(2 players - 2 are all in)

River: (t2970) 9

(2 players - 2 are all in)





I'm quite new to poker, so here's my first hand posting, so please be critical. Only 9 hands in. His min-raise preflop put him in a large range I felt, because of his LAGish behavior. So I repopped from the small blind, really just hopping to take the pot and/or to narrow some ranges. On the flop I made a pot sized bet to push out flushes/straights and also for value, it seems likely that I was ahead and he could be drawing with big cards. He pushed all in and after awhile I called. I didn't think a 7 would push here, I think they might have milked it for a couple of streets. I kind of got lost in my thinking here what he could have. I was getting about 1 to 2.6 and I felt I might have been ahead so I made the call, but I'm really not certain that was the right move.

 

[liguolong]

Probably no reraise preflop here, since 55 is a very weak hand on flop as long as you don't hit 5 and that happens about 88 percent of the time. Also at medium position, min-raise still implies a strong hand mos of the time. and bets 390 on flop is far too much. And MP's all in looks very dangerous for you to call. He might have 7, since on low stake tables, people often play unpredictable. He might also have things like higher pocket pairs or 10. And with one over pair on table, 55 is really weak. Even if your opponent has AJ of diamond say, you will only have 40 percent chance to win the pot in that case.

 

[Riemannian man]

I like to repop with small pairs about 60% of the time, it masks my hand for a set when I do hit it, and helps bluff when over cards hit on the flop. I think the only 7 that would call my raise here would be A7, and TT+ probably would have 4bet me. 390 was probably a bit much looking back at it, probably should have gone with about 260, though I think the outcome would have been the same.
Also, on the immediately preceding hand the villain raised all-in post flop to a similar pot sized bet. I probably shouldn't have let this affect my judgment, but it definitely did.

 

[OzExorcist]

I like to repop with small pairs about 60% of the time, it masks my hand for a set when I do hit it, and helps bluff when over cards hit on the flop.

If I can make a suggestion, you're massively over-thinking for a $1 SnG.

Unless you have a specific note to the contrary pretty much every villain in a $1 SnG hand is willing to stack top pair and sometimes they don't even need that much. There's no need to "mask your hand" for when you hit a set because how you play has very little to do with how often you paid for your sets - almost all the time it's about what your opponents are holding, either they've got the pair they need to call you or they've whiffed and they're folding. Plus set mining isn't as big a deal in SnGs as it is in full-stacked cash games anyway.

There are plenty of sevens other than A7 that will call your raise here because (again) this is a $1 SnG. Less of them make the open raise but still, you can't discount everything other than A7. Tx hands are also possible, even 66+.

Villain doesn't have to have a seven to stack off here but at the same time he probably has something and there's very few hands that you beat - Ax bluffs are about it. I don't mind leading the flop since it's not an easy one for villain to have hit and it doesn't contain any obvious scare cards. I probably bet a bit smaller (say 270ish) though because it won't affect the amount of folds we get but we save chips the times like this where villain shoves and we're forced to fold.

 

[Riemannian man]

So you're suggesting the better play for these games is for the most part to limp/call smaller pairs, set mining? That's where I started out, but evolved into this play because I felt like I wasn't making much off pairs ≤88, and this fit my more aggressive style. I guess I probably should go back to that maybe 60% of the time, maybe more? Also, I believe at the time, I thought T8-TA probably would have just called the pot sized bet (which would have ended my betting on future streets).

I have noticed the amount of people that stack off so easily at this level (and for the most part exploit it).

So to sum, I probably should have only called preflop, then should have bet only 2/3 Pot and then folded to the push... Damn, three mistakes.

 

[OzExorcist]

Hitting a set and stacking someone is nice but it doesn't happen all that often and it's not really a strategy you can build a game around (like some cash game players do). It's perfectly normal not to make much out of these hands, or indeed a lot of other hands in the early stages.

In this hand blinds are small enough and stacks are deep enough that you can go ahead and set mine if you like. If blinds are bigger or your opponents' stacks are a bit shallower though it's better to play a hand like this as either push or fold preflop.

At these low levels there really isn't any fancy thinking required for SnGs - if anything it'll hurt your game. Until they prove otherwise assume that all of your opponents are drooling morons who've never heard of pot odds or most of the other basic game concepts. Play solid ABC poker (especially in the early levels), don't get too fancy and you'll avoid putting yourself in a lot of difficult spots. Where you'll actually make your money is making good push-fold decisions when the blinds get high and exploting the players that are too tight around the bubble.

 

[Riemannian man]

Ah, thanks for the advice.

 

[cjatud2012]

On the note of set-mining, by 3-betting you're making your implied odds worse... You want like 20:1 or so, and you're giving yourself less than 10:1 by 3-betting. I suppose that he's more likely to continue with his 3-bet calling range against a ragged board, e.g. he has JJ and flop comes 952r, he's gonna have a hard time folding most of the time. But still, most of the time we're gonna whiff the flop and be out of position. If we throw a bet in, we obviously can't continue to a raise, and now we've just thrown away half our stack when we could have just spent t60 to see the flop. And the extra t180 or so that we can win from turning our hand into a bluff really isn't going to affect our tournament equity at all at this point, and losing that much plus a continuation bet actually hurts us a lot.

Sorry if that seems a bit scattered, lol, but yeah, at this level you're looking for a cheap double up, that's what will help us later in the tournament.