I ran into an interesting situation last night that ended up costing an opponent his “tournament life”, his profit and the sad thing is, it could have been avoided.
Here’s the scenario. I was playing a 6 person 1,500 chip sit and go, we were down to 3 players (top 2 make money) and I had roughly 5,500 of the 9,000 chips in play. The short stack had 1,000 and the other guy who should have gotten a walk to second had the remaining 2,500 chips.
On the hand in question I picked up A 9 of clubs in the big blind. Blinds were 300-600, the short stack folded on the button and would have 60% of his chips in play on the very next hand, and the player with 2,500 chips raised my big blind to 1,200. You know, nobody likes being raised when they are in BB but most of us acknowledge that it happens from time to time. The problem is that this guy had raised my BB way too often - I haven’t gone back to look at the logs but he raised my big blind and I folded way more often than I am cool with.
Before we get to how the hand played out I’ll explain the point of this blog. Be aware of who you’re picking on and how often you’re doing it, and be aware of the situation. It seems this guy wasn’t aware of either. Why would he continually want to push the big stack around when he was one spot away from finishing in the money AND the guy in third was just about broke, nearly all in on the next hand and had shown no signs of being a very good player? The other very basic poker lesson here is this - by raising too often pre-flop any decent player will conclude you’re capable of raising with any two cards, because nobody is dealt premium hands that often.
So, I was tired of him stealing my blinds, I concluded he will raise on position only with disregard for who he is raising and his position in the tournament. Nobody had looked him up on any of the previous raises so his strategy had been profitable, it was time to put an end to it, put him in his place, remind him that he was pushing around the big stack who could end his tournament life and hopefully he would realize that in all likelihood we would be playing heads up for first soon. He called. J J WHOA! Had I been wrong about this guy? Actually – not a chance. He had raised WAY too often and I decided to push back at one of the wrong times. I flopped an Ace, turn and river drew blank-blank and he was out of the game. Next hand I won the tournament.
I realize I got lucky on that last hand and my opponent couldn’t lay down JJ but it's the hands that preceded this showdown that ended up costing him his tournament life.
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1 comment:
Well played. I agree with your decision to fight back. Even had he won that hand, you still would have been in a fine position to win some money. I also agree that when it gets close to the bubble, you need to play more aggressive as others always tighten up. What buddy should have been doing is raise when he was on the button (SS would be BB), and mix up his play when he was in the small blind (and you in the BB). This would have given him a better chance to finished in the money and be HU with a bigger stack to try to win it. In a way you want him to learn from this, but also you hope he doesn't so the next time you see him, you can use this against him.
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