11- 3-06, LearnTexasHoldem:
Pocket Eights
Top 3 Beginner Rooms
A hand like 88 has to be played with care, when it misses the flop, especially with over cards on the board. I like the fact that you raise with your pockets preflop. Even though it is a bit early to steel the blinds you take the initiative in the pot by raising. But I would say that it is enough to raise about 3-4 times the big blind. A pocket pair like 88 either wants many callers (in which case you usually fold if you don't hit a set) or one opponent (in which case you are the favorite as long as your opponent doesn't have a higher pocket pair).
You make a pretty strong raise UTG which usually indicates a rather strong hand; therefore you have to be careful when someone calls. You have to ask yourself what kind of hand you will get called by here - this off course depends a lot on your opponent and your image at the table. In a tournament I usually would need to have a very strong hand to call your UTG raise, when the blinds are so low.
When the flop comes J73 with one overcard you should definitely make a bet to see where you stand. With 345 chips in the pot I would advice you to bet between 2/3 of the pot and the size of the pot (there is no reason to make an over bet here as you do). It only make you pot committed and you risk more if you are already beat, some players also see over bets as a sign of weakness. When you get re-raised all-in here you should definitely fold, there is no point risking your entire stack on such a weak hand so early in the tournament. To make a call here you need to be very sure that your opponent is bluffing, because if you are wrong you have virtually no outs. If you had folded here instead you would still have had 1200 chips left, which is not too bad with the 15/30 blinds. But your first mistake was risking too much playing 88 out of position. If you had started out betting four times big blind instead (120) there would be 255 in the pot on the flop and you then bet around 180. In this case you would have lost 300 instead of 700 when you are forced to fold.
I have to point out though that the thing I find most questionable here is the fact that your opponent calls your pre-flop raise with KJo, in my eyes that hand is way too weak to justify a call. But hey, that's poker.
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