Big Slick In Action
Another Damn Poker PostJaxia of Steal The Blinds was kind enough to usher readers here during a small hiatus. Unfortunately, she neglected to inform her readers that I was in the midst of an even larger hiatus. If you've arrived here from her site, I apologize for, well, everything.
I promise that I'll make up for my extended vacations and my lack of posts about relevant topics very very soon. Until then, here's another headscratcher for you online tourney afficionadoes:
Unlike my last minisatellite experience, where I was merely grinding and surviving just to try to qualify, on this night I was doing exceptionally well. The top 5 players would receive the $535 superbig satellite buy-in, with the next three finishers cashing for a slight profit. Through solid play and some luck, I'd been dancing in the Top 5 for most of the tourney; however, the cards had been running pretty thin, and I lost about a third of my chips on a blind steal gone awry.
I was unconcerned, though, knowing I was overdue for a big hand, and I got it in the form of Aª/Kª, at the cutoff position. There were 16 players left. The player two seats to my right, the shortest stack at the table, went all-in immediately. I figured him for a small pocket pair and just hoping to double up; I intended to oblige him, except that the player on my immediate right went all in himself. He had exactly 55 chips more than me. This is trouble.
BUT: if either one of them had A/A or K/K, chances are they would have played it slower. At this point in the tourney, nearly every hand was an attempted blind steal, so if either one of them got their hands on bullets or cowboys, odds are they would have slowplayed pre-flop just to get action. Therefore, the player on my immediate right had, at best, queens. Far more likely was that he had two big cards, just as I did, and was staking his claim to busting Short-Stack by pushing all his chips in and forcing everyone else to fold.
No matter what, I'm around a 37% favorite to double up plus half again. I didn't know this exactly at the time; I'm running the scenarios through a hand simulator. But I did know that I almost certainly had better than a one-in-three chance of winning; this gave me what poker nerds call a pot equity advantage, meaning that mathematically, getting all my chips in was the correct play.
Unfortunately, poker isn't played on paper; this meant my entire tournament, my best chance thus far of qualifying for a WSOP satellite on the supercheap, was riding on the line if I called all-in.
What's your move? Decide quickly! You only have 15 seconds. My play and the results of the hand are in invisible type below. Click and scroll to read:
When in doubt, put it out: I called.
Short-Stack had pocket sixes, as I expected. Claim-Staker had pocket queens, again not really a surprise. One of them was a spade, though, decreasing my odds slightly because one of my flush cards was out of play.
His queens held up: the board had two 8's, a queen, and two blanks. IGHN, in 15th place, with diddly squat for a prize.
If there's one thing that I am relieved about, it's that the river queen gave Claim-Staker the second nuts with queens full. Even if I had aces or kings, I would have lost the hand; the only hand that would have beat queens full was pocket 8's, and I certainly wouldn't have called holding that hand, with two all-ins in front of me.
How will I do next time? Stay tuned: same loser-time, same loser-channel!
posted by Marsh @ 3:25 AM
<< Home