Overpair on safe flop, no limit 6 max tournament
Game type: NL 6 max tournament, Full Tilt Poker
Your image: A little tight
Opponent’s image: Very aggro
Your hand: Q♠Q♦
The setup: You’re at a pretty active table in this tournament. This hand, UTG raises to 3x and change. You think about repopping when it gets to you, but you’ve seen the BB try pickup re-raises preflop several times, especially against the very aggressive player TUG who has been raising a ton of pots, so you decide to call. No luck - the rest of the table folds. You flop fine:
2♣2♥4♠
UTG leads for pot. What’s your play?
Loading …5.16.08 / 1am
Raise it. Flat calling and seeing an Ace or a King is just too annoying.
If he calls and the turns a blank, youve got a big pot that he wont want to let go, plus youve got a disguised overpair.
If you raise and he shoves, then its fist-pump time.
5.16.08 / 3am
I like to raise it up rather than get tricky. I like a smallish raise to like 900. Enough that a highcard hand folds, little enough for a medium pair to think it is a feeler and you migth fold it.
5.16.08 / 6am
In this case you have two things working for you. Your flat call preflop disguises the pocket pair since youd probably reraise an aggressive opponent with a pair, and your villains aggression (like the staff said) means he’ll expect you to play back with a much wider range. I voted raise. I expect him to come over the top with any pair or A/Q+ and he’ll probably call with a wider range then that to keep up face and fish for a lucky card.
5.16.08 / 10pm
Raise/Call - Either play is good! Can’t argue with that.
5.17.08 / 1am
I want to know which 1 idiot voted fold??? haha
5.17.08 / 5pm
This a perfect spot to just call, because you said that he raised the entire pot, meaning that he is probably scared and holding AK or a small to medium over pair like 99,10 10 or JJ. If it were checked to you then you would probably bet about 2/3 the pot anyways. Get agressive on the turn but let him bet into you here.
5.20.08 / 5pm
i dont see any problem with the probe raise or call here.. seeing an ace or king on the turn would be annoying but odds are you wont - this is a good spot to mix up your play
9.18.08 / 2am
I played a similar situation last night.
10 player table, fold around to my opponent who min raises (blinds are quite high at this point). I have QQ and call, everyone else folds.
Flop is 4 4 10 rainbow. Opponent checks, I chuck in a big bet (1/3 of his stack) and he flat calls. At this stage I put him on AK to A10 and pocket pairs 5 through 9. Turn is nothing scary and he checks to me, I put him all in and he calls, turning over AA. River is nothing and he takes it down.
I guess the difference is, I should have got more from his flat call on the flop - I thought he was just fishing and missed on the turn. I still don’t know if I would play that flop differently with my overpair, and at that stage in a tourney, play gets loose enough that I would probably still shove if I played it again
5.15.08 / 8pm
I get the urge to trap since you’re up against an aggressive opponent on a very safe flop, and you’re likely to get them to fire another barrel on the turn.
However, aggressive opponents expect you to play back against them somewhat light, and are used to committing a few more chips than they should with marginal hands. In this case, there are a lot of pocket pairs they could be holding that they might feel committed to (or at least more committed to than they should) because they’re going to reason that you’re likely to raise them light. I like a probe raise to a little under 1100 - something that leaves you with just a little over 2k and might create the impression that you’re leaving yourself room to bail to a third raise.
What actually happened: You called and the turn brought a 4. UTG checked, you shoved and they called with 33.