Hi! I'v got a question:
MTT, buy-in: 1$. Blinds 15-30. 9-handed table. I raised 4BB in EP with AKoff. Player in MP called. We had the same amount of chips. Flop: AT8 rainbow. My potbet was called. On the turn: 9. Pot: about 1000 chips. My all-in(1000)was called, river:Q, and player with JT won the pot. And question: My play was good?? Schould I played differently??
czwak

We see a lot of these as first or so posts... They are not overly welcome, in that they are a somewhat thinly vieled beat post. Theres a forum for that, and we all know AK loses way more hands than it should when it flops the "nuts" (TPTK).... that said a few constructive comments for you:

Do we raise preflop with AK, and is 4bb an ok size? - Yes, we raise AK preflop from EP, and 4bb is ok, although personally i stick with a consistent 3xbb, until the stage in the tournament where 3bb raise is no longer effective.

Second, do we bet pot at a innocuous looking flop with an ace in it? - Yes we do. You probably dont need to bet a full pot here, seeing that a trashy middle pair calls a pot size bet, thats just fine, we want to bet as much as a trashy middle pair hand will call. You got called, thats great. If we suspect opponent will play a big hand passively, and since theres only bad draws out there, half pot should do the trick as much as full pot. We win when they whiff or have a weak draw, and we get loose calls from hands we are ahead of.

The nine hits on the turn, do we bet again with TPTK and a board of AT98 no flush. Well mostly yes, we do. Sometimes we might check and call to entice AQ or AJ to bet again. Sometimes we might check and call to entice a hand like JT to bet, where they might fold to a push. Do we check fold because now the trashy gut draw came in, no, probably not. Do we bet less than pot and then fold if he pushes, probably not.

And finally, is the Queen the most obvious card in the deck for a river? Roger that houston, but a ten would have been fine as well.

You will note tho, that a raise to 3xbb, followed by half to two thirds on the flop, allows a half pot bet on the turn, and we can maybe get away by the river.. although it really depends on your opponent and his range.

Your post showed no indication of the thought process you went through to establish the range of our villain. How often has he been playing. What does it mean that he calls our preflop, calls on the flop. What hand range would we assign him on the flop after the call? Some opponents we are desperate to go broke with TPTK, other opponents I wouldn't. We are playing a pretty middle stack of something like 50bb preflop, and thats usually a stack size where I am ok going broke with TPTK.

Good luck to you and welcome to the forum

4Card

Always include stack sizes for yourself and other players at the table in your posts. At the early/early middle stages of online MTT's, I don't like to play AK too aggressively, esp at loose table. U have a good/bad situation here w AK, you've raised and got one caller (that's good.) You're also OOP (which makes it a little tougher.)

Postflop, u have to think about a couple of things when you make a pot-sized bet on the flop. On a AT8r flop there is no need to announce "i have TPTK/Top2 pr here." Taking down the pot here is not a bad result for u, but there are a lot of hands in caller's range that you want to call here as well. I like a 2/3 pot-sized c-bet here.
As a default play...i will check the turn here, even if the board is 2-suited/3-to-a str8. IMO, controlling the size of the pot is worth the risk of giving a free card (i'll get flamed pretty hard for this here...lol)
After i checked the turn, i would block a safe river cards for about 1/2 of the pot, and check scary cards like the Q here. River block gets value from worse hands that would check behind, loses less than c/calling bigger bets against better made hands, and takes the opp to bluff away from the caller.

As played u got you took an agressive line and got your money in on the turn as a 70% favorite to win (55% if his cards were suited and the turn gave him a FD as well.)

Just something to consider next time your dealt bigslick in EP.

Hi 4Card, can you elaborate here? I had always thought it was standard to ratchet down to ~2.5BB when it is late and we are getting in stealing mode, the idea being that 2.5 will do the same job as 3 and won't cost as much if we are restolen. And, of course, when stack sizes are such that there's not enough behind to bet later streets properly, a raise turns into a shove.

But you seem to be implying that your standard raise goes up later in the tourney because 3bb stops being effective. This is a bit different idea.

What are you doing with your pf raises later in the tourney, and why?

Your correct, and just misread what I meant to type :> I too will drop down to 2.5 or so when the field is cleared of most of the morons, and the players left respect a 2.5 the same as a 3. And when stacks get sufficiently short, I just open push.