[ballen]

I Playing in a small ( 15 ) tournament there are 9 people left. First to act before the flop with pocket queens. What would you do? I bet $1000 of my $2500 everyone is about even in chips. 1 guy calls me flop is A K Q all off suit. This guy has been bluffing all night and gloating I've been dying for a good hand to catch him on. I have 3 Q's I know If I check he's going all in to buy the pot with the big cards out there. I know he doesn't have J 10 ( Big bet Pre flop ) I put him on A K or A J or something. I do check and he immidiatly goes all in almost before I'm done saying it. I call. He flips over pocket Kings. Can anyone tell me where I went wrong? I know there were 2 over cards but this guy is super aggressive and I expected a reraise before the flop if he had something. I also know he had me beat all the way and didn't out draw me but it still sucks.

[lork]

You played it right, there was nothing you could've done in that place. Hard to put someone on pocket Kings or Aces, specially if they've been bluffing all night and no re-raise pre-flop. I don't think there was much you could've done differently to win that hand...unfortunately there was nothing you could've done to get away from the hand either. I would just consider that a bad beat and move on.

[pritz]

a bad beat can be two things...

A. getting your money in with a hand that is a heavy favorite to win and having an opponent draw out and win the pot.

B. Being in a situation where no matter what you do you will get broken or lose a significant amount of your stack. Being on the bottom end of two extremely powerful hands. e.g. quads over full...straight flush over quads etc...

In this case it was a set over set situation and the pot size was larger than his remaining chips, he did nothing wrong and still got broken.

[razor]

this didnt affect the outcome, but you bet quite a lot (more than 1/3 of your stack) under the gun, most of the time everyone folds and you get to take the sb and bb, i wouldve raised less hoping to get one caller with like ace jack or an underpair, just my 2cents

[chris]

The pre-flop bet seems a little huge. What were the blinds? In a tournament, I'm not hoping for callers here with queens, I want the blinds. I prefer to pick up more small pots either before the flop or on the flop, I don't like to go to the river with a hand. You need to raise about 3-5X the BB. It's a big enough raise to drive out most of the hands and give you a good chance of taking the blinds, but if you are called you are not pot committed. If you bet huge, the pot will be bigger than your stack, and if you bet, you have to push it all in.

In the end though, this was a hard flop to get away from, I would have put him on AK or AQ and pushed here too and lost. That's poker.

[louis]

Not a lot you could have done really - you both had big hands, and you both played them hard. You unfortunately fell into the trap and assumed he could well have been bluffing.

The big bet preflop kind of committed you to the pot though, I feel, and had you raised lower or even just called the BB, then perhaps you would have been in a position to pull out after the flop had hit having seen him go all-in.

Bad luck really, 3 Queens after the flop is usually a pretty good hand.