AA hand - 3bet MUCH bigger pre, 250+ here OOP, if you 3bet bigger pre stack to pot ratio is closer and makes it easier to get it in, as played you make a pot bet which is too much imo and even with that strength two players still go all in before you so clearly have something it could just be two draws but against both I don't think you're ever gonna be that big a favourite. You have 60bbs if you fold which is plenty so I think you can cut your losess here, obz if just one oppo goes all in you have to call it off but two makes it really hard for you to be ahead especially as that flop hits their calling ranges quite hard. Posted by Dudeskin8
+1
Cheers Dudeskin, you've saved me twenty minutes of typing.
I have to say I disagree with alot of your assessment, ******. I appreciate you putting in the effort to explain your logic, though, as it really gives us a chance to properly discuss our differences.
I don't think that the raise to 200 (which appears to be 3x due to Sky's confusing system for betting in the blinds) is enough. Facing a raise and a call we stand to be able to get more value from someone who will call a bigger raise or possibly see the initial raiser 4-bet us. More importantly a bigger raise gives us more chance to isolate one opponent to play the hand heads-up. Playing out of position on any flop is really difficult with any hand and seeing a flop three-handed with AA makes us less than 50% to win. Saying that we're in a great spot when our smallish 3-bet is called by two players that have position on us is not something I could agree with.
I also have to disagree with the range of hands you're putting our opponent on when the flop comes down. There is almost no chance that either player would call our pre-flop 3-bet with AA, KK, QQ or AK. All of these hands are almost certain to 4-bet, partly to get value for their hand and partly because they don't want to play a flop three-handed either. These are hands that want to build big pots, pre-flop and the play in this hand means that these big hands are the least likely hands to be in our opponents' ranges. Smaller pairs, suited connectors, QJ, KJ, JT, etc are all far more likely than big pocket pairs at this point.
So if we're to analyse their ranges we have to put them on good hands but not great ones. This means we're thinking about hands like KQ, KJ, QJ, JT, JJ, TT, 99 and lower pairs. If that's the range of hands we're putting our opponents on then this flop looks really bad for our hand. There's no reason before any betting takes place to believe that we're definitely behind but after we've led at it and the other two players have both gone all-in, we really have to think we're behind. One could certainly be playing a draw but, with two players all-in, a draw really is the weakest we'll face and one of the two, at least, figures to have us beat.
The last point I would make is about the bet size on the flop: Since it's such a dangerous flop for our hand we've bet far too much by making it a full pot bet. If our opponents have no hand at all they'll fold to a more standard, half-pot bet. If they're drawing we'll extract more value from them with a half-pot bet and can lead on any blank turn. Also, if our opponents have us beat here, we can get away from our hand for 305 instead of 610 when the flop is raised and re-raised.
Having put in the 610 bet it is difficult to fold for the remainder but we really do have alot of information to say that we're beat and, even though we're getting pretty good pot-odds to make the call, we could be drawing virtually dead against a straight or drawing to one out against a set + a flush-draw or to five outs against two-pair + a flush draw. We're in really bad shape and should fold.
The 2nd hand is unlucky, but the call in the 1st hand is pretty horrible, I can't think of 1 possible hand you're gonna be happy to see him turn over. Posted by Lambert180
i agree with the above post any tricky player may have flat called you with aa kk qq and although you would expect a raise with jj it would all depend on how they percieved u as a player. If i believed you are rasing alot of pots there i almost certainly repop you preflop. However if I percieve you to be tight then i would see a flop and reevaluate depending on what you did. Calling an all in with ak is not a profitable play in the long term unless you have connected.
With your 3rd hand I would personally be folding here, although its tough when you have Aces, the board is pretty wet. I can see why you've bet the pot to get people off the hand and represent a draw/set/straight, but with your opponent pre flop raising he's showing strength. With a raise and an all in I just cant see how you can call it. Easy to say when its not in the heat of the moment I know.
Player Action Cards Amount Pot Balance rainbow_x_ Small blind 300.00 300.00 18350.00 JCB50 Big blind 600.00 900.00 23610.00 Your hole cards A J ClintonH83 Call 600.00 1500.00 5525.00 Gullyman Fold rich2010 Fold dbowkid1 Fold rainbow_x_ Call 300.00 1800.00 18050.00 JCB50 Check Flop 10 8 J rainbow_x_ Bet 600.00 2400.00 17450.00 JCB50 Fold ClintonH83 All-in 5525.00 7925.00 0.00 rainbow_x_ Raise 9850.00 17775.00 7600.00 rainbow_x_ Unmatched bet 4925.00 12850.00 12525.00 rainbow_x_ Show J 8 ClintonH83 Show A J Turn 7 River 4 rainbow_x_ Win Two Pairs, Jacks and 8s 12850.00 25375.00 Posted by ClintonH83
am i just a shocking player or unlucky? i need help
the 2 big stacks were calling anyones pre flop all in and winning, so got AJ and thought shud i call or go all in?? decided to call and see what they did? anyway flop comes 10 8 J and i decide to go all in, she has J8
i know i probably should of gone all in pre flop but i didnt really wanna go all in AJ and any raise they were going to call anyway! maybe shud of folded if i wasnt going to go all in? i dunno?
I think being UTG you should have shoved as you had around 10BB, and by calling your showing a cheap flop to the small blind, who would have a wide range in this position. Yes they've got lucky and hit 2 pair but I think you've gotta shove and stop them from getting to that stage. If they'd called your all in pre flop i'd say you were very unlucky and you played it right, but allowing them to see the cheap flop they've unfortunately capitalised.
Also with the flop being wet they could have easily hit the flop hard if they're playing with a wide range.
I think being UTG you should have shoved as you had around 10BB, and by calling your showing a cheap flop to the small blind, who would have a wide range in this position. Yes they've got lucky and hit 2 pair but I think you've gotta shove and stop them from getting to that stage. If they'd called your all in pre flop i'd say you were very unlucky and you played it right, but allowing them to see the cheap flop they've unfortunately capitalised. Also with the flop being wet they could have easily hit the flop hard if they're playing with a wide range. Posted by mitchell89
Player
Action
Cards
Amount
Pot
Balance
bar38
Small blind
100.00
100.00
3110.00
ClintonH83
Big blind
200.00
300.00
2955.00
Your hole cards
A
10
dilshan
Fold
schorah21
Call
200.00
500.00
1083.75
bar38
Fold
ClintonH83
Raise
800.00
1300.00
2155.00
schorah21
All-in
1083.75
2383.75
0.00
ClintonH83
Call
283.75
2667.50
1871.25
ClintonH83
Show
A
10
schorah21
Show
K
J
Flop
5
2
7
Turn
J
River
2
schorah21
Win
Two Pairs, Jacks and 2s
2667.50
2667.50
this is what i was worried about with the AJ hand! i know for a fact they would of both called my all in
With the AJ, you have 10BB and pick up AJ utg, six handed. It's a straightforward shove. Most of the time everyone folds and you add 15% to your stack. Limping in is bad for many reasons, reasons that are magnified enormously when we're playing only 10BB. The biggest problem isn't what happens when we hit the flop but our opponent hits it harder and stacks us: The biggest problems are that a) most of the time we miss the flop completely and dribble off 10% of our stack and b) sometimes someone shoves over the top of us pre-flop and we either fold without seeing the flop or call our stack off. Calling our stack off only gives us one chance to win. If we make the raise we have two chances to win.
So your mistake in the first hand was limping.
Your mistake in the second hand, with the AT, was... well you didn't make a mistake. You got all your chips into the middle and were a favourite when you did so. More importantly, you made the raise and put your opponent under pressure. (To be precise, you had to make the call of a small amount, but it was your raise that effectively put your opponent all-in. He would have known that his decision was for his stack) One thing that has to be said, though, is that your opponent with the KJ was never likely to fold as he'd already put in nearly 1/6 of his stack.
It does concern me a little that you didn't actually set him all-in because it suggests that you hadn't paid attention to his stack size. Awareness of the size of our opponents' stacks is one of the most important elements of poker. I can't emphasise that enough.
Now, all the hands you've posted so far have been hands that you've lost. If you'd like us to truly evaluate your play then you'll need to post some hands you've won as well. The mistakes we make when we win are just as costly as those we make when we lose. So if you'd like to post some hands you've won, we can give you a better idea of whether you are "just a shocking player or unlucky" as you put it.
It would be good to post some hands that you won playing through the streets as well as hands that you won getting it in pre-flop or on the flop. Post some of these on the clinic and you might get a better idea of leaks in your game and of areas of weakness that you're not aware of.
With the AJ, you have 10BB and pick up AJ utg, six handed. It's a straightforward shove. Most of the time everyone folds and you add 15% to your stack. Limping in is bad for many reasons, reasons that are magnified enormously when we're playing only 10BB. The biggest problem isn't what happens when we hit the flop but our opponent hits it harder and stacks us: The biggest problems are that a) most of the time we miss the flop completely and dribble off 10% of our stack and b) sometimes someone shoves over the top of us pre-flop and we either fold without seeing the flop or call our stack off. Calling our stack off only gives us one chance to win. If we make the raise we have two chances to win. So your mistake in the first hand was limping. Your mistake in the second hand, with the AT, was... well you didn't make a mistake. You got all your chips into the middle and were a favourite when you did so. More importantly, you made the raise and put your opponent under pressure. (To be precise, you had to make the call of a small amount, but it was your raise that effectively put your opponent all-in. He would have known that his decision was for his stack) One thing that has to be said, though, is that your opponent with the KJ was never likely to fold as he'd already put in nearly 1/6 of his stack. It does concern me a little that you didn't actually set him all-in because it suggests that you hadn't paid attention to his stack size. Awareness of the size of our opponents' stacks is one of the most important elements of poker. I can't emphasise that enough. Now, all the hands you've posted so far have been hands that you've lost. If you'd like us to truly evaluate your play then you'll need to post some hands you've won as well. The mistakes we make when we win are just as costly as those we make when we lose. So if you'd like to post some hands you've won, we can give you a better idea of whether you are "just a shocking player or unlucky" as you put it. It would be good to post some hands that you won playing through the streets as well as hands that you won getting it in pre-flop or on the flop. Post some of these on the clinic and you might get a better idea of leaks in your game and of areas of weakness that you're not aware of. Posted by BorinLoner
ive put some hands on, see what u think? i appriciate you all helping with your advice cause i love playing and would really like to up my game
i think i worry to much about losing, with the AJ i shud of gone all in and been like its a fair hand to go out with but im always thinking is there a better hand or position to wait for so i'll just call
with the A10 i seen his stack so thought if i raise it just below his stack he'll call, all in might scare him off??
Hey listen, the bad players are the ones that aren't trying to improve their games. You aren't one of them. They're the players that lose every time they sit down but still think they've got the game sussed out. These are the players we like to see. Make them feel welcome at the table. Make them feel loved.
There's a theme in some of these hands: You raise with your big hands - AK, JJ, TT - and limp with your weaker hands - AJ, A8, 89. Limping is almost always bad as we don't give ourselves a chance of winning the pot pre-flop. It's also very important that we balance our range. This means that we need to raise with weak hands as well as strong hands; otherwise our opponents will be able to know when we have strong hands and when we don't.
I see what you say about the hand with the AT. You need to understand, though, that the ideal situation for you in that hand is for the opponent to fold. What we want in tournament poker is to win as many chips without going to showdown as possible. We can never lose when our opponents fold. On this particular hand there are 500 chips in the middle that we'd be happy to win - they represent a potential 16.7% increase to your stack. That's dead money and it's important to understand its value. The benefit of shoving here is that some of the time we take that dead money down without a showdown. In fact, AT is not such a strong hand that we want to be called very often. It's not a long way ahead of many hands - We're about 60/40 against any King high hand and 70/30 against any Ace below A9, but pocket pairs below TT are flipping with us.
So don't be worried about scaring our opponent off with a shove; That's a good thing. (Although, in this case, as I say, there wasn't much chance of forcing him to fold since he'd put such a big proportion of his stack in already)
I'll go over some of the hands you posted individually in a little more detail shortly. Bear with me.
On the JJ hand: You played it by the book. Not a single thing wrong there. 3x pre-flop and you don't fall into the trap of checking your hand on the J,T,A flop.. You figure to get value if someone has called with an Ace here so there was no reason to slow-play and by betting now you avoid the risk of a scare card - a King or Queen - coming to kill either your action or your hand on the turn. Betting half-pot is perfect, as long as it's the same bet that you make as a bluff when you miss.
With the AK: I think you raised too little pre-flop. In tournaments there's a standard model for opening raises that is pretty reliable: Make it 3x if you are the first to enter the pot or 3x plus 1x for every limper that's entered the pot in front of you. So in this hand you should be making it 5x because of the two limpers. So you'd make it 300. This is because it's much easier, and therefore better, to play heads-up on a flop than multi-way. So we need to bet enough to try to get at least one of our opponents to fold. Even the more experienced players that would make a 2.2x opening raise would use this model. They'd add an extra blind for each limper onto their raise, so if it's good enough for them...
On the flop you lead for a full-pot bet. I'd prefer a half-pot bet here because a full-pot bet looks like you're trying to get it all-in on this flop. It looks strong and it is strong but that's not good. We don't want to make ourselves so easily predictable. In fact, by making this pot-sized bet we're guaranteeing that weak hands like Jacks and weaker draws don't carry on in the hand. That means we lose value from weak hands while making sure that only strong hands continue in the hand with us. (Even though the short stack chooses to go all-in with bottom pair here. This player shouldn't have been in the hand at all and we can't base our long-term decisions on the basis of this one player's mistake)
The A8 hand: I think this is the hand you played worst of all. We're under the gun with a raggy Ace and 7BB. With so few blinds left we have to make a simple decision: Do we shove or do we fold? We can't limp for the reasons I detailed in my earlier post. As it plays we limped, flopped top-pair and got the double-up from 77 but with unpaired cards we'll miss the flop 2/3 times, we'll have just Ace high and will usually be forced to fold. We'll have frittered away 1/7 of our stack without ever raising and therefore without ever giving ourselves a chance to win the pot. With this hand and only 7BB left, this should have been a shove pre-flop. When the raise gets through we add 1.5BB to our stack and if we get called we're a 30% chance, at worst, against any hand other than AA. 30% isn't great but it's not terrible either and more often that not we won't be called.
On the TT: I can't see stack sizes or bet sizes so I can't say much, but it looks like you played it fine and your opponent is a bit mad playing 95.
On the 89: Again we limp into the pot. This time we're in late position and if we raise, most of the time the blinds just fold and we add them to our stack. We never really need to play 89 but there's no reason not to in the early stages of the tournament, as long as we're not calling raises with them or limping in. If we look at what our opponent shows down in this hand, we can see that we could have just taken the pot down with a raise pre-flop. That's usually the case when we're in late position as, with only three players to act behind us, there's not a great chance that they will have a strong or even moderately strong hand.
It's important that we not be results orientated when we play poker. On this ocassion we limped in and ended up winning a big pot, but in the long run we will lose more than we win by limping.
The interesting thing about this hand is what happens on the flop. The flop is 3,6,5 and it's checked to us. The interesting thing about it is that this is when we choose to bet. We've missed the flop and now we're betting. Our opponents have shown weakness by checking it to us but we only have a gutshot and two over-cards. Right now we figure to not be holding the best hand since Ten-high is beating us. So if we're willing to bet with no hand on the flop, why not raise it pre-flop? Besides that, we've bet full-pot again here and that's more than we need to. If neither opponent has anything they'll fold for a half-pot bet just as often as they'll fold for full-pot, but the full-pot bet costs us more on the ocassions when they don't fold. The turn is just an incredibly lucky card for our hand since it makes us the nuts at the same time as making a really strong hand for our opponent.
Basically I think it's really important that you start raising more often pre-flop. Every time you think about limping in, try raising instead. I can practically guarantee that you'll see better results. Raising pre-flop makes it easier for us to play through the streets - we can raise with any hand but our opponents need a real hand to call, meaning we can define our opponents' ranges more easily - as well as giving us a chance to win the pot pre-flop.
It will be interesting to see what other people think. I'm pretty knackered now though. Hope I've been of some help.
I don't just want to simply put the same as everything above, because that would take away everything Boris has taken the time to excellently analyze, and I wouldn't be able to comment in depth as much as that yet, but everything Boris has put I can relate to and agree with.
I think the main things you've got to remember in a nutshell are to keep an eye on stack sizes at all times, work out how many BB's you have in relation to blinds and also to keep an eye on the pot level pre flop. Once ante's start to come into play you have an excellent chance of taking say a 1k pot just by shoving and adding to your 8-10BB stack, which will help a lot.
Always think one step ahead of your opponent. If you raise, will you call if they shove or are check raising?
There's a bit which I find contradicting, but Boris might explain. Theres the theory that you raise a standard 3x so you don't give away the strength of your hand, but then the flipside is that people raise more UTG as there is more people to go through, where as in the blinds you raise 2.5x. Which can be misconstrued as different bet sizes to strength of hand? I prefer to always make a standard raise anywhere between 2.5-2.9x as the raise is still showing strength, but if you get called, miss the flop and end up folding, you've used slightly less chips as you would have done if you'd have raised 3x. Similar to the small-ball kind of play Negreanu uses I think.
Obviously every hand is different so this isn't gospel for me haha.
Overall I think your play is getting better the more hands you've shown us, and obviously you'll learn from the mistakes you've made on the winning and losing hands.
So good luck and I hope to see you at the tables or at an SPT .
It took me an hour-and-a-half to write all that and now you're giving some bloke called Boris all the credit! I'm not even a tory...
You've hit upon one of the big pitfalls of varying your raise size with position: Your opponents can misread it as being due to the strength of your hand. This can make it impossible to make reliable decisions through the streets since your perception of their reasoning has been off from the very start of the hand...
The second major pitfall behind making bigger raises from early positions is that it inevitably means that when you play through later streets, you'll be playing big pots when you're in a poor position and smaller pots when you're in good position. That's absolutely the opposite to how we should be playing. It's much easier to play this game when we can see what our opponent does before we act.
The idea of varying your raise size for position is a pretty common mistake that beginners make. It doesn't help that some more-experienced, but poor players also advocate it. Basically you're right to think that you should make the same raise regardless of your position. The thing that should change with position is the strength of the hands you play. For example:
JT on the button is a good hand to open the betting with. JT under the gun is a hand we should almost always be folding. (At a full-ring table - 9 or 10 handed - assuming we're playing a standard tight-aggressive range)
Comments
Cheers Dudeskin, you've saved me twenty minutes of typing.
I have to say I disagree with alot of your assessment, ******. I appreciate you putting in the effort to explain your logic, though, as it really gives us a chance to properly discuss our differences.
I don't think that the raise to 200 (which appears to be 3x due to Sky's confusing system for betting in the blinds) is enough. Facing a raise and a call we stand to be able to get more value from someone who will call a bigger raise or possibly see the initial raiser 4-bet us. More importantly a bigger raise gives us more chance to isolate one opponent to play the hand heads-up. Playing out of position on any flop is really difficult with any hand and seeing a flop three-handed with AA makes us less than 50% to win. Saying that we're in a great spot when our smallish 3-bet is called by two players that have position on us is not something I could agree with.
I also have to disagree with the range of hands you're putting our opponent on when the flop comes down. There is almost no chance that either player would call our pre-flop 3-bet with AA, KK, QQ or AK. All of these hands are almost certain to 4-bet, partly to get value for their hand and partly because they don't want to play a flop three-handed either. These are hands that want to build big pots, pre-flop and the play in this hand means that these big hands are the least likely hands to be in our opponents' ranges. Smaller pairs, suited connectors, QJ, KJ, JT, etc are all far more likely than big pocket pairs at this point.
So if we're to analyse their ranges we have to put them on good hands but not great ones. This means we're thinking about hands like KQ, KJ, QJ, JT, JJ, TT, 99 and lower pairs. If that's the range of hands we're putting our opponents on then this flop looks really bad for our hand. There's no reason before any betting takes place to believe that we're definitely behind but after we've led at it and the other two players have both gone all-in, we really have to think we're behind. One could certainly be playing a draw but, with two players all-in, a draw really is the weakest we'll face and one of the two, at least, figures to have us beat.
The last point I would make is about the bet size on the flop: Since it's such a dangerous flop for our hand we've bet far too much by making it a full pot bet. If our opponents have no hand at all they'll fold to a more standard, half-pot bet. If they're drawing we'll extract more value from them with a half-pot bet and can lead on any blank turn. Also, if our opponents have us beat here, we can get away from our hand for 305 instead of 610 when the flop is raised and re-raised.
Having put in the 610 bet it is difficult to fold for the remainder but we really do have alot of information to say that we're beat and, even though we're getting pretty good pot-odds to make the call, we could be drawing virtually dead against a straight or drawing to one out against a set + a flush-draw or to five outs against two-pair + a flush draw. We're in really bad shape and should fold.
the 2 big stacks were calling anyones pre flop all in and winning, so got AJ and thought shud i call or go all in?? decided to call and see what they did? anyway flop comes 10 8 J and i decide to go all in, she has J8
i know i probably should of gone all in pre flop but i didnt really wanna go all in AJ and any raise they were going to call anyway! maybe shud of folded if i wasnt going to go all in? i dunno?
So your mistake in the first hand was limping.
Your mistake in the second hand, with the AT, was... well you didn't make a mistake. You got all your chips into the middle and were a favourite when you did so. More importantly, you made the raise and put your opponent under pressure. (To be precise, you had to make the call of a small amount, but it was your raise that effectively put your opponent all-in. He would have known that his decision was for his stack) One thing that has to be said, though, is that your opponent with the KJ was never likely to fold as he'd already put in nearly 1/6 of his stack.
It does concern me a little that you didn't actually set him all-in because it suggests that you hadn't paid attention to his stack size. Awareness of the size of our opponents' stacks is one of the most important elements of poker. I can't emphasise that enough.
Now, all the hands you've posted so far have been hands that you've lost. If you'd like us to truly evaluate your play then you'll need to post some hands you've won as well. The mistakes we make when we win are just as costly as those we make when we lose. So if you'd like to post some hands you've won, we can give you a better idea of whether you are "just a shocking player or unlucky" as you put it.
It would be good to post some hands that you won playing through the streets as well as hands that you won getting it in pre-flop or on the flop. Post some of these on the clinic and you might get a better idea of leaks in your game and of areas of weakness that you're not aware of.
ive put some hands on, see what u think? i appriciate you all helping with your advice cause i love playing and would really like to up my game
i think i worry to much about losing, with the AJ i shud of gone all in and been like its a fair hand to go out with but im always thinking is there a better hand or position to wait for so i'll just call
with the A10 i seen his stack so thought if i raise it just below his stack he'll call, all in might scare him off??
There's a theme in some of these hands: You raise with your big hands - AK, JJ, TT - and limp with your weaker hands - AJ, A8, 89. Limping is almost always bad as we don't give ourselves a chance of winning the pot pre-flop. It's also very important that we balance our range. This means that we need to raise with weak hands as well as strong hands; otherwise our opponents will be able to know when we have strong hands and when we don't.
I see what you say about the hand with the AT. You need to understand, though, that the ideal situation for you in that hand is for the opponent to fold. What we want in tournament poker is to win as many chips without going to showdown as possible. We can never lose when our opponents fold. On this particular hand there are 500 chips in the middle that we'd be happy to win - they represent a potential 16.7% increase to your stack. That's dead money and it's important to understand its value. The benefit of shoving here is that some of the time we take that dead money down without a showdown. In fact, AT is not such a strong hand that we want to be called very often. It's not a long way ahead of many hands - We're about 60/40 against any King high hand and 70/30 against any Ace below A9, but pocket pairs below TT are flipping with us.
So don't be worried about scaring our opponent off with a shove; That's a good thing. (Although, in this case, as I say, there wasn't much chance of forcing him to fold since he'd put such a big proportion of his stack in already)
I'll go over some of the hands you posted individually in a little more detail shortly. Bear with me.
On the JJ hand: You played it by the book. Not a single thing wrong there. 3x pre-flop and you don't fall into the trap of checking your hand on the J,T,A flop.. You figure to get value if someone has called with an Ace here so there was no reason to slow-play and by betting now you avoid the risk of a scare card - a King or Queen - coming to kill either your action or your hand on the turn. Betting half-pot is perfect, as long as it's the same bet that you make as a bluff when you miss.
With the AK: I think you raised too little pre-flop. In tournaments there's a standard model for opening raises that is pretty reliable: Make it 3x if you are the first to enter the pot or 3x plus 1x for every limper that's entered the pot in front of you. So in this hand you should be making it 5x because of the two limpers. So you'd make it 300. This is because it's much easier, and therefore better, to play heads-up on a flop than multi-way. So we need to bet enough to try to get at least one of our opponents to fold. Even the more experienced players that would make a 2.2x opening raise would use this model. They'd add an extra blind for each limper onto their raise, so if it's good enough for them...
On the flop you lead for a full-pot bet. I'd prefer a half-pot bet here because a full-pot bet looks like you're trying to get it all-in on this flop. It looks strong and it is strong but that's not good. We don't want to make ourselves so easily predictable. In fact, by making this pot-sized bet we're guaranteeing that weak hands like Jacks and weaker draws don't carry on in the hand. That means we lose value from weak hands while making sure that only strong hands continue in the hand with us. (Even though the short stack chooses to go all-in with bottom pair here. This player shouldn't have been in the hand at all and we can't base our long-term decisions on the basis of this one player's mistake)
The A8 hand: I think this is the hand you played worst of all. We're under the gun with a raggy Ace and 7BB. With so few blinds left we have to make a simple decision: Do we shove or do we fold? We can't limp for the reasons I detailed in my earlier post. As it plays we limped, flopped top-pair and got the double-up from 77 but with unpaired cards we'll miss the flop 2/3 times, we'll have just Ace high and will usually be forced to fold. We'll have frittered away 1/7 of our stack without ever raising and therefore without ever giving ourselves a chance to win the pot.
With this hand and only 7BB left, this should have been a shove pre-flop. When the raise gets through we add 1.5BB to our stack and if we get called we're a 30% chance, at worst, against any hand other than AA. 30% isn't great but it's not terrible either and more often that not we won't be called.
On the TT: I can't see stack sizes or bet sizes so I can't say much, but it looks like you played it fine and your opponent is a bit mad playing 95.
On the 89: Again we limp into the pot. This time we're in late position and if we raise, most of the time the blinds just fold and we add them to our stack. We never really need to play 89 but there's no reason not to in the early stages of the tournament, as long as we're not calling raises with them or limping in. If we look at what our opponent shows down in this hand, we can see that we could have just taken the pot down with a raise pre-flop. That's usually the case when we're in late position as, with only three players to act behind us, there's not a great chance that they will have a strong or even moderately strong hand.
It's important that we not be results orientated when we play poker. On this ocassion we limped in and ended up winning a big pot, but in the long run we will lose more than we win by limping.
The interesting thing about this hand is what happens on the flop. The flop is 3,6,5 and it's checked to us. The interesting thing about it is that this is when we choose to bet. We've missed the flop and now we're betting. Our opponents have shown weakness by checking it to us but we only have a gutshot and two over-cards. Right now we figure to not be holding the best hand since Ten-high is beating us. So if we're willing to bet with no hand on the flop, why not raise it pre-flop? Besides that, we've bet full-pot again here and that's more than we need to. If neither opponent has anything they'll fold for a half-pot bet just as often as they'll fold for full-pot, but the full-pot bet costs us more on the ocassions when they don't fold. The turn is just an incredibly lucky card for our hand since it makes us the nuts at the same time as making a really strong hand for our opponent.
Basically I think it's really important that you start raising more often pre-flop. Every time you think about limping in, try raising instead. I can practically guarantee that you'll see better results. Raising pre-flop makes it easier for us to play through the streets - we can raise with any hand but our opponents need a real hand to call, meaning we can define our opponents' ranges more easily - as well as giving us a chance to win the pot pre-flop.
It will be interesting to see what other people think. I'm pretty knackered now though. Hope I've been of some help.
You've hit upon one of the big pitfalls of varying your raise size with position: Your opponents can misread it as being due to the strength of your hand. This can make it impossible to make reliable decisions through the streets since your perception of their reasoning has been off from the very start of the hand...
The second major pitfall behind making bigger raises from early positions is that it inevitably means that when you play through later streets, you'll be playing big pots when you're in a poor position and smaller pots when you're in good position. That's absolutely the opposite to how we should be playing. It's much easier to play this game when we can see what our opponent does before we act.
The idea of varying your raise size for position is a pretty common mistake that beginners make. It doesn't help that some more-experienced, but poor players also advocate it. Basically you're right to think that you should make the same raise regardless of your position. The thing that should change with position is the strength of the hands you play. For example:
JT on the button is a good hand to open the betting with. JT under the gun is a hand we should almost always be folding. (At a full-ring table - 9 or 10 handed - assuming we're playing a standard tight-aggressive range)