Hey, everyone! I'm having a little trouble with a couple types of hands that often cost me a lot or knock me out of the SnG:



In the first hand, I was unsure what to do when he went all in on the turn. I had a lot of outs but was really confused as to what he was holding. I thought maybe he either had a jack and wanted to push out any flush draw by raising me or possibly already had a weak flush. I ended up folding, but was this the right move with so many outs? Maybe I would have called if the turn would have been a different card (or maybe not; I was just quite confused). I suppose if he had a weak flush or even a jack, I didn't have as many outs. Thoughts?

The second hand may or may not seem a little obvious to some of you. Usually I figure I'm playing hands like these mostly correctly and just getting bad beats, but lately I've been getting knocked out of SnGs fairly often in situations like this, so I'm starting to wonder if it's possible that I'm playing this poorly and don't realize it.

I'm fairly new to poker, if that helps explain anything at all. I started playing around June or July, I think.

Thanks, in advance, for your help!

Hand 1 : I would fold. you will be playing every street oop and the hands villain raises with usually has you dominated. Tangling with another chip leader who can hurt you while playing oop wit a weak hand needs to be avoided.

Hand 2: Shove turn. Shoving pre may be acceptable.

Good luck playing poker. Keep posting hands on this site and you will improve in no time.

hand 1: fold pf. Play oop sucks.

hand 2: shove turn.

Many poker books call KQ/KJ "trouble hands" - so you're not the only one that has trouble with them. they often make second-best top-pair type hands that cause you to lose a lot of chips.

From a blind, if you have no reads on the original raiser, this is a fold. Posters earlier are exactly right - you're playing the rest of the hand out of position. Playing too many hands from the blinds is one of the most common mistakes of beginning players. One easy way to stay out of trouble early in your poker career is to play NOTHING from the blinds unless:

1) it's cheap/free, no raise in front. (and even fold your small blind if you have junk in these cases), or
2) or you're going to raise limpers or reraise a raiser.

Hand 2 isn't really a bad beat - someone hit a well-disguised set on you and took a ton of your chips. It happens. Tip your cap and move on. Note that even if you shove the turn as posters suggest (which is a good suggestion), you're losing all your money on this one.

I don't agree with shove Pre - why bet 14 BB to win 1.5? You made your standard raise with a premium hand - nothing wrong there.

One other note - I don't like villain's setmining call with 55 here, This is -EV$ (effective stacks are too small). But it worked this time.