[addam00]

Well this  in the begging of the  tournament..  we  all started with about 2000  chips    I  forgot of the blinds stareted  at 10  20 or 20  40 but id  was the  first hands of the tournamnet..  I AK hearts  I  raised  it about 350   got 2   callere..  the  flop came  6d 9s 2H     so I check the next guy bets about half or little more than half  so  the other guy folded  and then I fold..they guy who did they big bet had won the chips had  KJ  and the other guy who folded  had  pocket 55.. I did cash in the toiurney tho on the bright side not much was like one of  teh last to cash and then i busted..  but this  in the begiing of  the tourney  I mean wanted  to reraise becasuse he made such a big over bet to mee  he   seemed like on he had nothing and i knda  put on too face card but Iwasnt sure....  my question should I have  rasied or  was  checking the best  thing to do... remeber this is  a tournamnet, and it was  the first hand..  but it just stuck in my mind  the whole touramnet and dont why it did.. becasue it diddnt reaaly affect me during the whole tournamnet,

[Know-nuffin]

[DangerMouse]

Why raise so much? Even if blinds are 20/40 360 is 9xbb. That`s a very big raise for what is essentialy a drawing hand. I know it can be annoying when you make a small raise early on with a good hand and pick up 4 or 5 callers but that`s just a part of the toruney I`m afraid.

My advice would be smaller raises. I tend towards 3 1/2xbb early on although I`ll sometimes start at 5xbb if blinds are 5/10. If you`d rather not play too many flops make it 4xbb as a standard. Adding 1 extra bb per person already in the pot.

Remember, you can`t win a tourney in the first hand but you can certainly lose it. Try and exercise some control over the size of the pot especially with drawing hands.

It sounds like you were in early position too. That`s another reason not to make the pot huge. The size of your continuation bet, presuming you make one, is related to the size of the pot. And if you don`t hit, which will happen most of the time, you can afford to check-fold if you miss.

For this specific hand you were probably right to fold. The only thing that might make a difference is how many chips you started with. There`s a ton of difference between losing 360 chips from a 1000 chip starting stack and losing 360 chips from a 5000 chip starting stack.

The real lesson here is don`t overplay AK out of position early in a tourney.

[Arjonius]

If you're going to play fit or fold, then it seems even more like you would want to keep the pot small.  You're only going to make a pair on the flop about one time in three, so by opening big, you give away more chips two-thirds of the time.