Dealing with frustrating middle/late stage suckouts

[faithful_13]

Im fairly new here, well at posting n e ways i have been reading for a while. Well lately i have been trying my hand at $4 180 sng on pokerstars and almost every tourney make it to about the top 50 with a medium sized stack usually, but have had a terrible time with some suckouts. Yesterday i was about 10th place after over 2 h in a tourney out of about 25, i get 10 10 on the button with about (10K) and raise 2k ( blinds 400/800) and the large stack makes a 5k raise (he had been trying to put moves on me all day and i had been getting hands when he was in bb and he was getting frustrating thinking i was stealing). So i think for a minute and realize he doesnt have it. Move in for the rest of my stack. He doesnt even pause, calls and flips over Q3o and hits a Q on the river. And i have played about 10 of these sngs and they have all finished about this way with obvious bad beats. Except for 1 which was a bad play on my part.

Again today i get this after grinding it out with no hands for about 1h 20 mins

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t150 (9 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: FlopTurnRiver)

Button (t2960)
faithful_13 (t3463)
BB (t6612)
UTG (t3605)
UTG+1 (t2330)
MP1 (t7780)
MP2 (t445)
MP3 (t4325)
CO (t3317)

Preflop: faithful_13 is SB with 7, 8.
6 folds, Button calls t150, faithful_13 completes, BB checks.

Flop: (t450) 7, 7, 3 (3 players)
faithful_13 bets t150, BB folds, Button raises to t2810, faithful_13 calls t2660.

Turn: (t6070) 2 (2 players)

River: (t6070) T (2 players)

Final Pot: t6070
Yes u guess it he had 22
N e wayz back to my point how do u deal with the idiots that play in the smaller mtt's during the middle portion of the tournement, because ive taken so many bb its terrible. I think i am playing the hands correct but i seem to get sucked out on every tournement in a decent position fairly late into it. Any advice?

[Sprayed]

Here's some advice, keep doing what you’re doing. Get your chips in with the best hand and in the long run you will win. These hands that you mentioned will go the other way eventually. In each one of them you would have been a dominating force. Remember to play within your bank roll and realize that the beats will come. If you stay in your roll you will be able to absorb the beats. In the $4.40 180, you need to play your good hands hard because of the soft field. You will get stupid calls like you mentioned, and this is what you want. You want donkey to push Q3o when you have TT.

[Madizm]

yeah ... no one likes the suck out, but like Sprayed said ... this is actually what you want to be playing against. I might suggest that if you have the bankroll to try the $10 + $1 MTT's ... they play much like the micros at first but if you can manage to get past the bubble, the large marjority of donks will have been phased out and more descent players will be left wanting to win a descent cash prize. Again, this isn't really a good thing though

[Fimanoid]

Suckouts are a part of poker. They are frustrating, but if you play tournaments, you have to be able to take them in stride. It is very frustrating to go out on a bad beat, especially if you go deep, but it happens, and it WILL happen again and again in the future. Accept it, and continue to put your $ in with a best hand.

Another way of dealing with the suckouts (not for me, but it works for some) is to loosen up during the early stages, see a lot of flops cheap and try to build a big stack early or bust. This way you either chip up and should be able to absorb the bad beats when they come (and they will), or just bust early without investing too much time into the tourney. This strategy doesn't work for everybody - since you end up playing more marginal hands early, you need to be able to get away from dangerous flops, or be able to read into the situations where your hand, although weak, is still better then your opponent.

[gus27]

N e wayz back to my point how do u deal with the idiots that play in the smaller mtt's during the middle portion of the tournement

You call their all-in.

[thenonsequitur]

Another way of dealing with the suckouts (not for me, but it works for some) is to loosen up during the early stages, see a lot of flops cheap and try to build a big stack early or bust.

It occurs to me that this strategy might decrease your ROI% without decreasing your win-per-time-invested rate, because you probably end up playing more tournaments in the same amount of time using this strategy (and thus are "investing more", making up for the lost percentage return). This is just a thought, I have no data to back this up.

[faithful_13]

Thanks alot for your posts everyone i had just been running a frustating couple of days of unbelievable suckouts and just needed to vent a little. But i have been contining to make it deap into these tournements and hope to make it deep into a final table soon.

[jdubs]

it will happen...just be patient. sounds like you just need to keep playing the way you have.

[PokerBarney]

The first hand you described with the TT is unlucky, but I'm not surprised he called your shove. The pot would've been ~18K and another 3K to him to call - I would've called in that spot with 72o with odds of 9-1. Not that I'm saying you shouldn't have shoved (you definitely should), but that you would have to expect a call and be prepared for the (inevitable) suckout. And that he didn't play it that badly - he thought he could take it off you with a raise, it didn't work, but then he had great odds for his hand (considering he only needed just ~3-1).

I like Fimanoids strategy of loosening up early on to get a big stack so you can suffer the suckouts later on. I do the opposite, but for the same reason. I play very tight aggressive in the early stages, pushing over raises with my premium hands. Playing in low limit SNGs, I'll normally get a call from a guy who thinks his AJo is good against my AKs, and that sets me up nicely.

Of course sometimes you go out, but hey, that's poker right?

[ShortPoolGuy]

What about super-donkaments (dollar tourneys and big prize qualifiers), where the other players eat each other so quickly and call so much that you invariably find yourself pushing in against bigger stacks.

What I mean is, I wait for a decent hand (not great, just decent enough)and get all my chips in, usually dominating or facing one over. I'm a 70-30 favorite, and I win. But, the donks merge together like some anime-super-monster, and one orbit later I'm in the same situation.

70-30 is great, but to win two of these in a row is only 49%. To win three in a row is only like 34%.

I keep getting in with a huge lead, but it's just a matter of time before I'm sucked out. Am I doing anything wrong? Is there a way to avoid this cycle?

[thenonsequitur]

The trick is to get lucky several times in a row, while mixing in avoiding getting unlucky several times too. Seriously, luck is the answer. The easiest way to give yourself a lucky streak (bar cheating) is to play a lot of tournaments.

[Phantaroth]

This works for me, I dunno about for you.

If I do good in a MTT and score a top 3 win, I usually take the rest of the day off to re-focus.

After a really bad beat, I do the same.

For instance I was in a MTT down to the final 17 and got busted by a 2 outer on the river when I was about to triple up into the chip lead. I was steaming but i knew I played my game as well as I could have, and decided to call it a night.

Next day I wake up and take down 1st in a PL Omaha tournament.

[soupie]

It never gets any better. You will always take loads of bad beats at lower levels. You will take terrible, wretched, rotting, gut-wrenching, filthy, stinky, decrepid beats from know it all piss ants at the bigger levels too.

Its all just a numbers game. When you dont take the beats and you have a good late game/final table strategy, you wll be given a pile of money which makes the world alright again for a few hours.

The best MTT's i know dont make in the money much more than 20% of the time. In other words, 4 out of 5 times they are shaking there head just like you.

Specifically, in the situations you brought up. A LAG/maniac in your vicinity. My advice is too gamble with them at the first opportunity you are probably ahead. Dont let them grind you down to point you have to gamble with really bad hands. If it is apparent that you will be heads up all in with a maniac, the sooner the better. Win/win for you, you get a big stack or you save time.