New to Poker

[Ian Newcombe]

Here is the link to my hand: http://mysmp.me/h_kZ9

Entered a $200 local tournament, relatively new and was wondering if it were possible to fold this hand? Had just moved to this table so had no info on the players except that he was young. Earlyish stages of the tournament (not close to the money). Everyone acted surprised when I called it off on the turn and was saying ‘big call’. Is this too loose?

[John S]

I don’t hate the call, but I don’t like it either. I think this should be a fold here a lot of the time, especially this early in a tournament. There will be better spots. Against certain players you can make this call, which is why I don’t hate it, but against like 95% of players this is probably a fold.

I’m not much of a tournament player, so maybe someone else will chime in, but this is my take on the hand. 3-betting a UTG raise from the small blind is really strong. He can call medium strength hands at a discount, so he should have a very strong range here. TT+, maybe AQ+, but probably higher than that. Given that range, what do you beat? JJ and AK, and how often is he betting flop and turn with those hands.

Maybe if we expand his range to include KQ he takes this line and you can beat that. Even then though, I think he’s got more hands that beat you than hands that you beat. I just think it’s pretty optimistic to think that he’s bluffing or has KQ here and not value betting a set or overpair.

[Han]

Wow what a rough hand. People don’t normally fold top pair in tournaments, and you managed to get top-top on a fairly connected board. Villains donk-bet out of position is usually a top-pair hand. I don’t hate your call, but the pot-size shove on the turn must’ve been a difficult call.

On the turn, we lose to KK, AA, Q10, J9,maybe even weird 108. We only win versus a weaker queen or a bluff. I don’t fault you for calling here from a 50BB stack.

Given that it was early, was there a rebuy or reentry available?

[Author]

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