This hand completely crippled me when I was doing well without cards for the first hour and a half. This was the first hand I had played in the second hour. This guy was a complete calling station and I knew I had him beat preflop and on the flop. I ended up busting the next hand all in preflop with AK as I was short stacked.

These are the plays that have been busting me out of tournies for the last couple of weeks, I'm feeling very unconfident in my play recently. I just need to know if I'm doing the right thing.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t600 (10 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx

UTG+1 (t6898)
UTG+2 (t18851)
MP1 (t5909)
MP2 (t7641)
MP3 (t18058)
CO (t13384)
Hero (t14610)
SB (t44693)
BB (t24190)
UTG (t13480)

Preflop: Hero is Button with , .
1 fold, UTG+1 calls t600, UTG+2 calls t600, 4 folds, Hero raises to t2000, 2 folds, UTG+1 calls t1400, UTG+2 calls t1400.

Flop: (t6900) , , (3 players)
UTG+1 bets t4898, UTG+2 folds, Hero calls t4898.

Turn: (t16696) (2 players)

River: (t16696) (2 players)

Final Pot: t16696

Results in white below:
UTG+1 has 8s 7h (flush, king high).
Hero has Kc Ac (one pair, kings).
Outcome: UTG+1 wins t16696.

If you have UTG+1 as a calling station, I'm half tempted to put him all in with my PF raise, but I'd say you need to call the flop.

I agree here. This situation calls for a 5 or 6x BB raise. You'll know after people stay or not whether or not you've got a good hand. If one person stays, and the flop comes as it does, push. If you were up against AA or KK they would come back over the top PF.

Its about 4900 to call to win a pot of 11800
You need to win 30% of the time to be EV call

Lets say 10% of the time he's betting with no spades and you win 90%
and 30% of the time he has 2 spades and you are drawing nearly dead
and 60% of the time he has 1 spade and you win about 65%

.1 * .9 = .09
.3 * 0 = 0
.6 * .65 = .39
You would still be 48% to win. Good call.

In fact, you would need to assume that he has 2 spades at least 60% of the time (1 spade 30%) for this call to be EV-.

I feel like I have HoH open on my computer screen!

Good mathematical reasoning

In lamence terms, for someone like me, he's basically saying you made a justified call.

So raise that AKs as high as I can against calling stations and eventually I will win one of these.

Originally Posted by manifest

So raise that AKs as high as I can against calling stations and eventually I will win one of these.

My thinking is this.... and I tend to bust myself by being a little too aggressive sometimes, so take it for what it's worth. Calling stations that tend to make it fairly deep into MTT's seem to get there by limping in and catching flops. At this stage of the tourney UTG+1 is one of the shorter stacks at the table, without a raise PF I'd tend to think I have the best hand at this point. A big raise here dosen't allow your calling station an opportunity for a lucky flop, it'll make him think about whether or not he want's to gamble his stack with whatever he's holding.

UTG+2, might be doing the same thing, but a big raise from you makes him think about whether or not he wan't to butt heads with you for a large chunk of his chips. If he has half a brain at all (and that can be a big IF) he also may pick up on the fact that you're trying to eliminate the smaller stacks at the table who are just limping and hoping for a flop that fits them.

It seems that when the blinds and antes get big this tends to work a little better, people have invested alot of time into the tourney and unless they're total fish to begin with they'll play a little smarter. I find when the blinds are small peeople don't respond as well because even a 5-6x BB raise "seems" like only a few chips when the blinds are small and everyone calls because everyone has high M's. But in the later stages if I have chips and a short stack wants to get lucky, I try to make him decide before the flop hits if he wants to risk his stack.

If anyone has any input on that strategy I'd appreciate if they think that line of thinking is a good one to use or not.