Tounament final table?

Question

am i play this hand right? im UTG with queen jack off suit, middle position raised 4x bb and the button called the raised. I folded my hand and flop come 98 ten, which i would flop the nuts straight if i had made the called. Both of the players went all in after the flop and they showed pocket Aces vs KK, i was happy that i fold preflop but couldn't help but thinking i would tripple up and take down the tourney. What do you think about my fold hands?

Answer 1

naw, you did good to limp. QJ off is not a strength hand.  If you had raised that utg, you would've been re-raised and you would've been odds commited.  Yeah, you would've flopped it but the odds of doing that are EXTREMELY low.  If you had missed you would've been out of position and in bad shape.  What if you flopped just an open ended (WJT9)? would you call? You think you have 8 outs but you only have 6 because 2 kings are gone. So instead of being @32%, you're only @ 24%.

And if the King flops, you better hope the board doen't pair. ( He'll have a 1 in 5 chance of boating.

Play enough poker and you'll fold many hands that would've flopped a nut monster, it's part of the game.  Limping is your best chance of seeing that kind of occurence with mediocre or weak cards.  

I once won a tourney by double busting the last two players because the A9 didn't raise my BB .  I had 24 off and flopped 249. Blanking the turn and river I busted the top pair/top kicker and I busted the other forced all-in who happened to have 88.

And I've floded 44 on a KJ6 flop because calling was a STUPID move.  The turn was a 4 and the river was a 4.  

That's poker.  Shake your head, chuckle and move on to the next hand.

Answer 2

in the long run, you should never play anything weaker than 9's or AJs from UTG. the mistake you made here was even coming in with the hand.

one caveat: on a short-handed table, what you did was correct.

on a table with 5 players or less, you should raise with QJ.

Answer 3

Have you ever seen a flop where all three cards come out the same?  Like 222 or 777.  Does that mean you should play 72 off suit, just in case?

In poker you have to make the right math decisions, along with all the other important factors such as position, table image, relative stack sizes, blind and ante levels, number of players in the hand, number of players left, where the bubble is, your 'M' and so on.

You never mentioned a lot of the details, but unless you were desperate at this point, QJ is probably not worth calling that kind of raise in early position.  You are too vulnerable to a re-raise here.  What if you call four times the BB, and then someone pushes all in, or re-raises?

In this case you have a raise, which could mean any number of things, but then you have a call of that raise.  Unless these people are idiots, calling a raise does tend to show some strength.  It is one thing to make the raise, but another to call it.

In this case if you where UTG, I have to assume that you limped.  Someone behind you raised to 4bb, and it was called.  You might argue that for 3bb it would have been worth seeing the flop as there were already 12bb and a SB in the pot.  So at that point it just comes down to your feel about what is going on at the table, and how much that call would hurt your stack.

So I think you made a mistake limping, but based on what happened next, you probably should have called.  You would have closed out the action, and gotten to see the flop with some nice pot odds.

If you were willing to limp, you probably should have been willing to invest 3BB under these circumstances.  If you were not, then you probably should not have been limping in the first place.

Answer 4

QJ offsuit is not the greatest hand. I might not even play it at all UTG. But if you choose to play it, you should raise with it in that position.

QJ will only beat AA and KK around 10% of the time so it is wise to fold no matter what the flop ends up being.