PLO tourney hands

[Hofstra]

$10 + rebuy PLO tournament on UB. 90 entrants, 10 places pay (but the real money is in the top 5).

After the rebuy period I had about 10K in chips, including an addon. This was a bit above average. Second hour I am on a table with mainly smaller stacks who play tight, and I get to steal a few pots. I'm up to 20K and get moved to the other table. Here are 5 players with a bigger stack than me and a few shortstacks.

I play very tight for about 20 mins, getting no hands, but I'm not worried since I should be able to make the money if I can pick up one or two rounds of blinds. The player to my left has almost 10K left, and when I'm in the SB I find A9TJ suited to the ace. Blinds are 400-800. It is folded to me, and since I haven't played a hand in 3 orbits I raise the pot. To my dismay the SB calls and the flop is 479 rainbow. It is very hard to imagine this flop hit him, so I bet 3K in the 4800 pot. BB moves in and I fold.

Again no hands for a few orbits. There are 13 players left now. Play is tight now. Only the big stacks are bullying and everyone else hopes to make the money.
In the SB I get AAT9 once suited. I have 11K left, with which I might be able to fold into the money if others bust themselves (which is not unimaginable).
The big stack in MP (35K) raises the pot and it is folded to me. What do you do? I moved in, got called and got busted.

Pieter

[briachek]

sounds fine to me. When playing a tourney, I'm not there to make the money but make the significant money. If you try and fold to the money, you might get there but pretty much have no shot to make it further. If you win the hand, you are in the money (barring something huge) and in decent position to make the real money. So yes, I push.

[Felonius_Monk]

Depends on the payout structure to some extent. If places 8, 9 10 etc pay crap money and it's very top heavy (with all the big places paying out most of the cash) then take a shot now with a hand that's liable to be maybe 60% equity on average, as you're liable to have to take a shot sooner or later anyway. If the payout for 10th is pretty good (perhaps not really any worse than 6th or 7th), it might not be a bad idea to play a limping and folding game here and either get in when you're a bigger favourite (i.e. once you see a big flop) or try to conserve some chips to coast into the money.

I think in 95% of tourneys, however, the payout is such (and the chance of finding a BETTER spot low enough) that you can shove it in here. PLO tourneys need a lot of luck, just the nature of the game I think, so you might as well play when you know you're ahead. On the brightside, possible raising hands are either high pair based (maybe KK) or may include an ace; you're better off against those hands than you are against low semi-coordinated ones like 5679.