On the bubble

This was a really difficult decision I got myself into. It was hand-for-hand in a satelite for $215 seat. I called the raise preflop and was check raised, took 50 secs of my time bank and finally erred on the side of caution and folded... What do you think? My thought is a call there basically means an all in, and we were close in chips. The last thing I want to do near the bubble is go all in with TPTK, and I have a decent stack still if I fold (10th place). Top 15 get seats.

My ideas on his holdings: I know he doesn't have the Kd, so hands like KdQd or AdKd aren't his. But AK, KQ are, 99, KK, AA, AJd... What do you think?

Hand history converted with the TexasHoldemForums Hand History Converter
SB/BB: 100/200
Preflop:
BigBett0r is on the button with ,
flyinghun folds, MonkeyCowboy folds, kickned raises to 600, monnetti folds, BigBett0r calls, xo_Sexy folds, SJCX folds.

Flop: , ,
kickned checks, BigBett0r bets 600, kickned raises to 2000, BigBett0r folds.

Final Pot: 2875

Winner: kickned

Starting to really hate AK...

Hand history converted with the TexasHoldemForums Hand History Converter
SB/BB: 200/400
Preflop:
BigBett0r is CO with ,
MonkeyCowboy folds, kickned folds, monnetti folds, BigBett0r raises to 1200, xo_Sexy folds, SJCX folds, flyinghun calls.

Flop: , ,
flyinghun bets 800, BigBett0r folds.

Final Pot: 2775

Winner: flyinghun

15th place with 17 left, then this hand came - vaulted me to 7th, now I should be a sure lock... He waited 50 seconds before folding, got my heart going

Hand history converted with the TexasHoldemForums Hand History Converter
SB/BB: 300/600
Preflop:
BigBett0r is big blind with ,
xo_Sexy folds, SJCX folds, Bejamin1 folds, EltonCz raises to 2400, flyinghun folds, kickned folds, monnetti folds, BigBett0r raises to 4761 and is all-in, EltonCz folds.

Final Pot: 5500

Winner: BigBett0r

Two hands later...

Dealt to BigBett0r: 99 (folded preflop)
Next hand AJ cracked JJ on the river, one more person to go...
Next hand BigBett0r: 1010 (folded preflop)

400/800 blinds with a player at 1k chips and 1 to go until the money, I will not play another hand.

In the Money
Short stack folded until forced all in by the blind, 4 players call and checked it down, she lost to a rivered queen high flush, $215 from $39 like cake.

See my post on $39 Satelite Strategy (Satelite MTTs - An Untapped Gold Mine)

first hand :
its hard to say because we dont know his style. He may just be very agressive and hit the flop with KQ and raised because he thought you were trying to steal the pot (after all you just called his raise so maybe he thinks the flop didnt help you)

other than that all i could put him on is a set or a good flush draw
im not sure if folding was the best move...simply because we dont know his style or the chip stacks etc

second hand :

your coninutation bet didnt work so folding was probably the best move there

third hand :

not sure what EltonCz was raising with but surely he had a good enough hand to call (ie. if it was good enough to raise to 2400, it was good enough to call another 2000 considering the money in the pot)

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The key to the first hand and third hand was the fact that it was satelite MTT and it was on the bubble. With 2 or 3 more people to drop before you're guarenteed $215 you don't throw caution to the wind.

In the first hand had I gone all in and was called, winning doesn't improve my situation that much. With $6,500 chips after folding I was still in great shape (regardless of the fact that I would late be down to $4,000 because of a second AK) to make the money, and being at $12,000 instead is little difference. In my eyes the benefit of being at $12k over $6k no where near outweighs the risk of losing 2 from the bubble.

Same thought process, but backwards, for the third hand. It's possible he had a low pocket pair (that's what I'm leaning towards) or a dominated ace. He could've said to himself, "Shit if he has a higher PP I'm screwed, and at best I'm a coinflip - It's just not worth risking." and I would be forced to agree with him. While its only 2k more to call, that call (assuming he loses the hand) puts him in the Danger Zone under 4k in chips, then he becomes a big target.

The guy who check-raised me when I had AK ended up losing on the bubble, while the player that folded to my reraise of AQ made it through. Most good poker players will say "get aggresive on the bubble!" but it is the opposite when it's a satelite.

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Steven ["Toothlus"] Vorholt