1. I think calling is bad here. Pushing moderatly better possibly. It is a hard fold but I would like to think I would have laid this down. BEST case scenerio you have a 50/50 flip which I am not a huge fan of. If he has overs you are practicaly drawing dead.

Your down to 16 players. You are short stacked but you have enough chips to be dangerous. I would rather wait until you have the chance to be the aggressor and/or you have a monster starting hand like AA/KK. If the situation was reversed and you were first to act I would not hesitate to push all in. I think the person left to act after you is a non-issue as they only represent 1/8th of the pot. If you beat the primary aggressor then your in good shape.

All of the above is my "In-General" opinion. It sounds like the only reason you made the call was because of your read on the player. From that stand point I am very much a fan of going with your gut instincts. In this case they were dead on.

Posted at 2:53PM on Feb 9th 2006 by SirFWALGMan

2. Personally JJ has always been a rough hand for me. After my personal experiences I would rarely call if it would put me in an all in or close to all in situation with that many players left. The Js are too easy to beat. I love to play them but only if I can get in for cheap and then hope I either catch one or there are no higher cards out. It is tough. You had the best hand pre flop but like you saw if a Q, K, or A comes you are dead. It is a tough call and based on your read of the villain you did the right thing, however I hate putting my tournament life on the line with JJ preflop.

Posted at 1:07PM on Jan 12th 2006 by Dave

3. I say it's a good call. You made the correct read for the situation and the cards beat you. You said yourself that the WINNER moved on, no one else. That said, you had to play to win the tournament. The move you made was a good decision based on that. That said, jacks are rough, and there are situations where folding would be correct, but against that sort of player in that sort of tournament - good call.

Posted at 1:24PM on Jan 12th 2006 by RandomSam

4. In this situation, I might move all in with JJ if I was first to do so. However, I'd fold once someone else moved all in.



I'd read the first to move all in as having AA, KK, or AK/AQ, maybe AJ. Possibly a lower pair, but that AA/KK would terrify me and I wouldn't want to see an A/K/Q hit the board killing me. At this stage in a tourny, I would not call an all in bet with JJ; I'd want to be first in.



Perhaps you could read him playing rags, and I'd never move in with Q8 suited, but JJ is just too weak in this situation.

Posted at 1:32PM on Jan 12th 2006 by Amb34

5. I think you have to go with your read. Even if it turns out to be a learning experience. ;) In this case, your read was correct, as your opponent went all in with a questionable hand as well (Q8h - gotta' love the live bar tourneys)

I hate Jacks for just this reason - it's really a tough hand to lay down. A quick simulation shows you 48% to win, they're in the mid to high 20%. A good chance to triple up.

Posted at 1:45PM on Jan 12th 2006 by Sparky

6. You made the correct play. You had the villain beat and even when the BB called you were leading in the hand and getting more than the correct pot odds (2-1 when you're 44% to win or so). Although purely based on the facts of the situation you could make an argument for folding, I'm guessing your intuition about the villain's hand was also important and as it turns out, you did have him beat nicely. The BB calling obviously decreased your chance to win the pot but at the same time increased the size of the pot if your hand held up.

Posted at 1:54PM on Jan 12th 2006 by Jamin Gray

7. If I have less than 10x the big bind, all of my chips are going in pre-flop with JJ. Sure, I'd be happier to push than to call, but only 3 hands have you already beat. You only have enough chips to last 6 orbits, so what other hands are you going to choose to make a stand with? Will you get blinded down to nothing waiting for AA, KK, or AK? You may never see those hands and you're likely to be making a stand later, with less chips, with a far inferior hand like any naked ace or king. You made the right call here, IMHO, you just got unlucky.

Posted at 2:24PM on Jan 12th 2006 by Darzog

8. In a normal tournament against sane opponents, this is a borderline fold, I'd say. Depends on other stack sizes at the table and your position relative to those stacks and their skill. A sane range for raising all in with 8xBB and the whole table minus one to act behind you basically includes only hands you are behind or coin flipping against, plus maybe 99-TT.



Of course, this is not a normal tournament. You're playing for first here, and so you can't give up small edges as much, and you're already read the player as loose. Now, loose might mean he could push 88 here, or it might mean he could be pushing Ax, Kxs, JTs+, 22+ here. If it's the latter, this is an instacall. The fact that he was pushing Q8s certainly shows that he was that loose (looser, in fact! Q8s suited is worse than that entire range of hands - just behind K2s).

Posted at 3:30PM on Jan 12th 2006 by Matt Wallace

9. Thanks for posting this hand, to get a wider variety of opinions. I was in on the discussion last night, and Amb34 came to one of the same conclusions we did...if you were the first to act, or the first to raise, JJ is a solid bet. Out of position, it's a tougher call. Even though our player said that he wasn't analyzing the situation enough, I think his analysis of the villain was solid...he'd played a lot of marginal hands and was certainly willing to try and steal the blinds. And the read was right...Q8 is far from a great hand...not bad, but I wouldn't go all in with it. You just got unlucky, first with position, and second with the cards. I think you played it correctly. Like Darzog said, if you wait around for a stronger hand like KK or AA, you might just blind yourself out and have to push with a weaker hand.

Posted at 4:08PM on Jan 12th 2006 by iamhoff

10. quick note -- You're much better that 48%. You're 48% to win the _whole_ pot, but you're 66% to win the larger side pot of 12k (vs the Qs 8s). Your actually equity is this: 66% of the time there's no queen so you get at least 12k. 66% of the times when there is no queen you also get an additional 6k, but that's just icing. You're really only dodging one over-card.



Given your analysis I think it's a clear call. Also I find in free-rolls, or extremely loose tourneys like this if you want to win you have to push and take any small edge. And this wasn't a small edge, it was a large one.

Posted at 5:28PM on Jan 12th 2006 by thathmew

11. I appreciate everyone's comments. Although the vote seems to be going toward my call being correct, it wasn't an easy one for me at the time. Reading those who think that folding would have been the right move gives me some consolation, because I came very close to doing just that. At least I know that I wouldn't have been way off base by doing so. JJ is one of those hands that, for me, really needs good position to be played right, and I didn't have the position I would have liked in that situation. But it certainly makes for some lively discussion, doesn't it?

Posted at 6:44PM on Jan 12th 2006 by Dave Westbay

12. You're at the point where the size of your stack is more important than your cards. As Darzog pointed out, you've got enough chips for only 6 more orbits. You're in trouble and you need to find a hand to push with. A decent pocket pair like JJ is huge at this point.



You made the right call on the villain's hand. You got your money in the pot with way the best of it. Couldn't have played it better. That you were unlucky with the way the cards fell... well... that's pokah, baby! Not that it means much, but the only way I'm folding in that situation is if I read the villain as very tight. Otherwise, I'm all-in every time.

Posted at 6:36AM on Jan 13th 2006 by Patch

13. You staying in the pot pre-flop was definitely the right move. With the info you gave us about one player having marginal hands and the other having near nothing throughout the match you should always see the flop with any pair as long as the you can afford to. If you had a pair of deuces you should have made the call to at least see the flop as long as it did not cost you much or the game to do so. The one person caught a Q on the Turn.



You only posted the small blind. Why? With a pair of J's pre-flop you should have bet more chips. It may have prevented the other personfrom going all-in and catching their Q. Your mild play gave them confidence that the Q was strong.



You could have easily caught the J on the flop (or a deuce based on my example) and would have wopn the hand or you could have caught the J on the Turn and in this case you may have even caught the J on the River and won. You had many chances of winnnig the hand but in this case you just didn't get the cards that hand. That was good play.



jicici



(Here's a lil funny...As the Poker stars would say "come play with me on partypoker.com")

Posted at 7:32AM on Jan 13th 2006 by jicici

14. Granted, I am not a stellar no-limit player, let alone tournaments, but I'm learning. :) I say good call. Those who are advocating folding are probably correct under certain circumstances, but I don't think those circumstances apply here. Your stack-to-blind ratio and your read on your opponent are very compelling reasons to call in this spot. I, like others, am in Darzog's camp. Why would you fold here? To wait for a better hand? Better hands than this are very few, and the odds say you won't last long enough to get them.



It's important not to be influenced by bad results when you're looking at whether you made the right decision. Think of it this way...imagine that all your opponents turned their cards face-up on the table before you had to make your decision. Would you have called? I would...in a heartbeat! Your read was good, your decision was good...even your flop was good. It was just the turn that was bad. You'll get 'em next time! :)

Posted at 11:01AM on Jan 13th 2006 by Bobby the Worm

15. jicici, to clarify: the person who went all-in acted before me; I hadn't acted at all in the hand yet since I was in the forced blind and this was preflop action. I certainly would have raised or pushed all-in if I had been first to act with pocket jacks. Since he got in the pot first I had to decide whether or not to call with virtually all my chips, and you read the results. Thanks for your comment!

Posted at 9:07AM on Jan 14th 2006 by Dave Westbay

16. I think you were correct to play the hand, Dave, but I would have pushed, rather than called. If you'd pushed, you may have gotten the BB to lay down AQ, AJ, maybe even AK depending on chipstacks and playing styles. By calling, you announce that you have a medium pair and you're hoping to get some help from the board. It's also a mistake to leave yourself 900 behind, because you're crippled if you lose, and the folding equity you gain from the push is significantly more valuable than the one hand you'll be forced to play before you're all-in on the next SB.

Posted at 5:42PM on Jan 14th 2006 by wil

17. Wil, at the time I hadn't thought about the player to act after me (d'oh!), so the fold equity part of the equation hadn't occurred to me. As I was deciding whether or not to call, which looked like it meant going all-in anyway, I was trying to figure out how close I was in chips to the villain. Yeah, I probably should have just announced that I was pushing myself, but I don't think it would have made any difference in that particular situation. The BB only had 2000, and 1000 of them were already in the blind, and she had AJ, so I think (in hindsight) that she was going to go all-in no matter who she was calling. I don't think her call was the best move necessarily, since she had two pushes in front of her which should have indicated at least one hand stronger than her AJ, but the way she acted makes me think she was going to try her luck at doubling (or tripling) up, whatever else happened in the hand. If she had had a bigger stack, I might have paid more attention to her and taken her into consideration when deciding whether to call or reraise all-in myself. Lastly, since I had both of them covered, I was going to be left with those 900 chips if I lost and there wouldn't have been anything I could have done about it. But, all of the points that you and everyone else have raised in this discussion will help me the next time I have a decision like this to make, and I hope it helps others too.

Posted at 6:44PM on Jan 14th 2006 by Dave Westbay