bad play or bad luck?

To be quite honest, I am about to lose my mind with online poker. I just can't manage to put anything together for a consistent run especially on Fulltilt. So anyway this hand came up and I want to know if I could/should have gotten away with some chips or would you guys have done the same thing.

100 players remaining of 400 in a tourny. Chip average is 7k, blinds 80/160.

I am on the button with 6710 in chips

The player 2 off the button with 8390 in chips limps in.

Action folds to me and I raise to 415 with :Qh: :Qs:. The blinds fold and the limper calls. I previously doubled through this guy about 8 hands earlier with AA when he called me down with K8 on a 6 10 8 2 7 board. I checked his OPR and he has a 30% rating and is a "maniac" according to Poker-edge.com

Flop comes a beautiful :3d: :Kd: :As:.....perfect for my QQ against a guy who will apparently hold on to a face card for dear life (sarcasm). He checks and I check behind him not wanting to get check raised with his garbage K5 or something like that.

The turn is :Qd: and he bets out the size of the pot which was ~1000. I am now convinced he called me preflop with a weak A or K and is bad enough to call me down yet again so I push. He calls immediately and flips over :8d: :6d:. And I am out of the tourny.

I need help because I don't know what to do anymore. I have tried tight play, loose play, passive play, aggressive play......I can't get it together. I know I should want people calling me OOP with 86 when I have QQ but I feel like I am always messing it up. I almost never build a chip stack in a tourny....I just survive until a coinflip comes up or a 60/40. I NEED HELP!!!!! Sorry for the rambling, but I just can't stand it.

You have got super unlucky with that turn card, but with the flush and straight draw possibilities I dont think I go broke here, I flat call the bet and see what happens on the river. You like me though take notes on your opponents and found it hard to believe he had the made flush so you cant be too hard on yourself. Bad players can be very dangerous and hurt us all at one time or another, keep your head up:)

IMHO I may have bumped that preflop raise up just a bit more...maybe to 640 or so...with queens in a loose tourney, i make them pay to see the flop...the rest of the hand is just unfortunate...

I don't mind the smaller raise pre-flop - I myself feel the majority of my edge over opponents (particularly with them OOP) is post-flop. Considering the stack-sizes, you either wanna put in a big raise to get him out or a small one to assert ur betting lead going to a flop that you may not like. The big raise to 800 puts in too large a % of my stack than I would like against a loose-passive opponent who will be a station if he has top or middle pair to my overpair on the flop. Therefore, I totally agree with your pre-flop play.

Your check on the flop is prudent.

Your turn raise was not. With a big made hand like that that is not the nuts, you are either way ahead or way behind. There is no sense in putting your tournament on the line to what is in my opinion a negative freeroll (albeit with redraw outs of about 22%) Why not smooth call the turn, giving yourself a chance to make a boat. You are in position so the power is with you on the river. If you miss and a blank comes and he leads into you on the river, you can just smooth call. If you miss and a blank comes and he checks, you can value bet. If you miss but a diamond, jack or ten comes and he fires big, you can fold. If you miss but a diamond comes and he checks, you can check behind. If you miss but a jack or ten comes, then you might have to call a medium-small bet but not a big one. If you make a boat, then you are either going to bet when he checks or re-raise him.

I don't think there is enough value in him making a bad call with one pair on the flop to your shove (even if he is a donk).

Remember:

You have position so play the hand in such a way that you use it.

Lappin, those are some pretty good points. I decided to clear my head with a workout and give it another shot. I played another $5 45-man after my workout and felt like things when pretty well. Until......

With blinds at 600/1200 I am in 5th place of 7 remaining with 6406 on the button. The table has been really tight with nobody making too many crazy plays. The chips leader has 26k after sucking out with AK to eliminate 2 players (1010 and 88) a couple hands ago.

He min raises UTG to 2400 and the table folds around to me holding :Ad: :Kd:. The two shortest stacks are in the blinds with 3360 and 5514. I push all in and the blinds fold. The big stack calls and shows :As: :Qs:.

MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have him crushed....good job, me.

The flop comes :8s::9s::10h:......great, here we go
turn :Jd:......perfect
then, fulltilt, not wanting me to think I am getting screwed, decides to throw out the :Ac: as a little pat on the back just to say "Hey, we appreciate the rake and we're more than happy to allow you to waste an hour and 15 minutes of your life on hour site, but we want to make sure you got your $5 worth so here's a worthless pair for your efforts..........but hey, at least you got you money in good. We play at fulltiltpoker.net."

Regarding the first hand, because there's not much to say about the second one...

I guess maybe I'm in the minority here, but I think your tiny preflop raise was by far your biggest mistake in the hand. I hate a tiny raise like this with QQ because you are giving away that you have some kind of a hand anyway, but then giving the limper over 3 to 1 to call. Now if the stacks are really short and your goal is to just go with the hand and double up, I'm all about trapping in the way you did (say if the starting stacks were 1,000 rather than 7,000) But as it is, you can't narrow your opponent's range at all, and you're going to have to play poker postflop (and possibly back down on a lot of flops) In a situation like this, I'd rather put some pressure on and inflate the pot a bit when I'm most certain that my hand is best. Also, when you want to steal the blinds, do you raise 2.5 times the BB with a limper and expect them to fold? If you're going to eventually want steal attempts to be respected, you need to do the same thing with garbage that you do with queens. (at least in my opinion)

That being said, I think the turn raise was the best play. Though I agree with some of the points that Lappin made, to me the arguments FOR raising are

(a) you are most likely ahead, and might lose your customer on the river if a diamond or other scare card comes, so it's better to get money in now
(b) your opponent might catch up with a hand like pair and a draw if you DON'T raise

The only conceivable argument AGAINST raising that I can see is

(c) you might get called by a flush or straight,

and to me the odds of this are sufficiently slim that the reasons to raise outweigh this risk. I think that a raise to 4,500 or so is better than pushing though. That way you might get called by some 1-pair hands which are drawing almost dead, but combo draws and pair + flush draw type hands are still not getting the right odds to call. If he calls your raise and a diamond comes on the river, you can check behind and still have at least 2,000 chips or so left. This way you are maximizing the proportion of the time that you get called while ahead, giving your opponent a chance to make a mistake on the turn, AND giving yourself a chance to keep some chips if you get sucked out on on the river.

But again, if you had made it something like 600-650 preflop, this all seems like it would have been a ton easier. At least it would make it a lot more likely that villain has a one or two pair hand like you want, and less likely that he has 8d 6d.