yea, very complicated hand and i keep questioning myself on it (including my miserable bet on the flop), but here's what i think of the possible answers:
FOLD- no shame in this. there are three very real possibilities that the hand is already lost (flush, aces, trips), not to mention that he's currently holding a lower pair to queens but also has a flush and straight draw (about 34% chance of hitting either with one card to go). by folding you live to fight another day and still have six+ BB's to contend with, something that any poker person should be up to the challenge for.
ALL-IN -good reasons mentioned above, plus the fact that in almost any tournament it's arguably worth taking the risk of going all-in when you have an average stack and decent odds. after all, you're not going to go far in the tourny anyway unless you've managed to double up in the early-to-mid going.
RAISE- why? so many reasons that it's not justified, he's not bluffed, and if you're wrong you've basically crippled your stack.
CALL- can't say if it's 'right' or not, but this is how i played it (push the "play" button below):
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(full size-size version
here)
in this hand i was kind of proud of myself even though my play wasn't the best. normally i only get a bunch of chips involved unless i'm quite sure that i have the best hand, but this time i tried to use the clues of my opponent's actions to figure out what he had. the reason i'm going in this direction is because my standard play which wins against pokerbots and free-chip noobies is not good enough to win against the next rung up, ie i can't expect to always limp in to a bunch of low-cost flops with straight / flush draws, looking to hit killer hands and bust people.
so why did i keep calling as he continued to bet? after all, his bets very well could have been value-bets, meaning i would have been doing nothing but contributing to the charity of his made hand.
first of all, i guessed that if he had really hit his flush then he probably would have checked or bet less on the turn in order to entice me to hang myself. second, his turn raise didn't 'smell' right in order for him to have an ace. betting less than a third of the pot doesn't make much sense when you're as short-stacked as he was. then the weak raise on the river all but confirmed this- he wanted to push me out of the hand but felt scared to risk all his chips to do so. i felt like i had the hand won before even seeing his cards, and fortunately i was right.
side-note: IMO his hand (suited connectors) is a perfectly good hand to make money from, and there's nothing wrong with trying to steal the blinds when half the table before you has already folded. also, his 3x BB preflop raise is extremely standard and no particular indication of strength. almost any poker pro will tell you to raise that much in that situation or risk looking weak.
POINTS: give yourself a full point if you said "all in" or "fold". lots of good reasons for doing either IMO.
