This is a $24 regular speed tourney on FT. There are 54 players left from a field of ~250, money starts at 27. Villain is a 35/25 and opening a ton of pots from all positions. My feeling is he's some kind of aggro reg but probably not a very good one. Wondering if my 3-bet size is too small here given stacks are kind of deep?

On the flop my plan was to get this in by betting smallish over 3 streets. When he min-raises (really fast) I don't see much option other than to stick it in with sets being a small part of his range. Expect to see 99-JJ stuff, draws and bluffs way more frequently. Thoughts?

[converted_hand][hand_history]Full Tilt, 200/400 blinds, 50 ante No Limit Hold'em Tournament, 9 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite. View Hand #14876491

MP2: 51,791 (129.5 bb)
MP3: 14,140 (35.4 bb)
CO: 39,884 (99.7 bb)
BTN: 23,054 (57.6 bb)
SB: 6,844 (17.1 bb)
Hero (BB): 21,876 (54.7 bb)
UTG+1: 7,986 (20 bb)
UTG+2: 7,203 (18 bb)
MP1: 11,596 (29 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Q Q
3 folds, MP2 raises to 1,000, 4 folds, Hero raises to 2,400, MP2 calls 1,400

Flop: (5,450) 8 3 4 (2 players)
Hero bets 2,500, MP2 raises to 5,000 Hero? (16,900 behind)

jam, nh. embrace the variance.

2.7K pre jam flop

nh. ez get in otf.

call/call or click it back!

I like closer to 2800 pre but that doesn't change his flat range that much and I'm shipping otf. NH.

Yeah I maybe go 2755 or 2925 or something preflop, depending on how we think villain is likely to react and what kind of image we have. If we've been pretty active too and have 3bet him before then I like going a little smaller to perhaps induce more 4bets.

On flop, pretty much a fistpump get it in.

id make it bigger pre and smaller otf. someone said cib but you dont really have room to do that with your sizing. if you bet like 1875 or even 1500 then you have way more room to cib and let him spazz.

as played i think its a shove bc you said you expect him to be capable of having 99-jj and raising/getting it in. i personally wouldnt expect that but if you think so id call bc it looks like a wa/wb spot but if you think 99-jj is in his range then you want to get it in now bc there are plenty of action killers vs those hands ott. plus if you think he has FD's in his range you're pretty much letting him determine whether or not chips go in on the turn which basically results in you getting owned when that could have been avoided by getting it in on the flop.

edit: lol wow that was a big ramble i hope it makes sense.

Thanks for responses guys. I definitely thought my preflop sizing was a bit too small. I don't think with then history we had that 2.8k will change his range at all and it makes mining with a bunch of hands a good bit worse. He had a set here which was annoying. I'm pretty much a 100NL 6 max cash reg transitioning over to tournies for a change of scene so all your input is really valuable at this stage

Still getting to grips with the added variance, feels a lot more extreme than at cash.

pre is std
nh, gii and hold against Axdd, or facepalm against sets

unlucky nh

lol

I mean, As you can see I think most agree that we just dont make most of our monies trying to guess/make hero type folds which is what you want someone to tell you because he flopped a set or got there on you ??

bet/3b-call gii OTF gg... UL m8 etc etc

Wasn't looking to be told to make a hero fold, more just for reassurance that this was standard as I figured it was, thanks guys :-)

I apologize and I did not mean to be condescending but your hand is really a bit standard. I know some people do not have a lot of sample in online MTTs where as some of us have 10k - 15k or more played online so we get used to people flopping sets on draw heavy boards vs our QQ+ and they get to rep it all and we cant do a dam thing except to reg another

The best grinders in the world go on 150+ BI downswings on the reg so as my old friend Bmac would say "embrace the variance"

Yeah, I often wonder if I might be crazy switching to from cash, where I have been a decent winner for a number of years to MTTs. I guess the thing is I just don't enjoy the robotic grind of cash much these days and enjoy MTTs a hell of a lot. It's easy to stagnate when you're not interested in improving at your game.

The variance of MMTs is pretty damn scary, but I'm up for embracing it. Glad there's such an active forum here on 2+2, which as you can tell from my post count is a place I never frequented when I was learning how to grind cash. You guys may see a few threads where I'm not shovelling enough monies into the pot until I get acquainted with MTTs properly. Sorry in advance if I post anything seriously standard!

BTW, and on the topic of huge downswings etc, what sort of bankroll strat would you recommend? I'm currently multitabling stuff from $5.50s to $44s with a roll of around 5.5k, already I'm feeling the hit of the variance with this roll.

Your Roll should be fine if your abi is $15-$20 as most MTT players play slightly under rolled or a lot of us play staked so we can play games that we otherwise could not play.

And yes it makes sense that you would have that cash game thought process as really good cash game players routinely fold over pairs when NITS rep sets because they just almost always haz lol But in MTTs its a bit different. Not saying we dont ever pot control and fold later streets its all spot dependent and stack dependent but 50bb effective with QQ in your hand I doubt many of us ever fold flop and we not deep enough too call his raise and fold turns if he fires 2 shells.

As a winning cash game player you should definitely have most of the skill set and ability to adjust and succeed fairly easy at MTTs. As far as variance just expect that even at the low/mid level expect routine -$2k to $3k swings especially if you play on major sites Stars/FTP with larger fields and do not game select.

My suggestion:

- Get a coach (either staking/coaching or even a coach/mentor who would not charge up front but perhaps base a deal on results IE you win, he gets paid you lose he works for free) Hit me up on PM and we can talk if you are serious as I have a study group on skype if you are interested.

- continue to set aside time for participation on these strat forums. Post hands as well as read/comment on others hands. Take everything into consideration and nothing too literally or personally as ego is the biggest factor in limiting a poker players ability to improve.

- Get a sub to PXF or join some sites with free Vids and watch INF hours and follow the same approach/formula as the forums.

- DO NOT "shot-take tilt" and start direct buying games out of our buy in range. It is THE BIGGEST destroyer of bankrolls there is! Game select a bit and play capped GTD's and smaller softer fields and find a comfortable multi table level where you feel you play your best and then play as much as you can volume, volume, volume

- Work, Work and work some more and learn to remove your emotions from your short term results and expect downers and embrace the variance and understand what our expectation should be. $15 abi @ 25% ROI = $3.75 per/game so even if we assume at least $4/game and play 150 games/week we can expect to make $600 a week or somewhere around $2k - $2.5k/month depending on where we run in terms of EV its always best to estimate on the conservative side.

Here is my blog I usually post simple and solid advice for MTT players and it may help... Enjoy

http://samuraiplaya.blogspot.com/

Thanks very much for the advice, PM sent