Thursday, March 20, 2008

What Would You Call With?

While I was multi-tabling 4 NLHE SnG's yesterday at Full Tilt and interesting hand played out. Here is some of the background:

I am just under the starting stack of 1500 at this table because I have been folding nearly all my hands. Anyone who is observant would see this and peg me as a tight player. I haven't shown anything to define whether I am passive or aggressive. In the cut-off I am dealt AQ and bring it in for a standard 3X raise. The small blind raise back pot. I think about it for a second and realize that there are two other big stacks at this table and if I have any chance to compete in this SnG this is going to be as good a time as any. I push and my opponent calls. Before you read on, think about what my opponent has and venture a guess.

HIGHLIGHT THIS AREA --->Pocket 3's! <--- TO SEE THE RESULT. Identifying a bad play is almost as valuable as performing a good one so I'm spending a lot more time analyzing some of the more interesting hands that I come up against. There are some key points that I want to outline that I feel are important:
  • I was the one who pushed all-in. It's one thing to push all-in but it's another to call an all-in, especially pre-flop. Since I push all-in I can add some fold equity to my hand giving me the edge versus a small pair.
  • With my hand I'm only worried about 4 other hands. Aces, Kings, Queens and Ace-King. With every other hand out there I am either a coin flip or I'm dominating them.
  • My image, even though it doesn't really matter at these limits, is that of a very tight player, and with the push all-in I can now be classified as Tight-Aggressive.
  • My opponent is at best, 50/50, but it's just as likely that they are dominated. Even though I was only afraid of four hands there is only one hand I can hold (deuces) where my opponent can be confident.
My opponent still called, even though they had all these factors against them. We both still had playable stacks and there was still plenty of time to build a stack in a better situation. I consider this call to be a very bad play, one I don't think I would make if I was in the same situation. What I notice, at every stake I play at, is that once a person places chips into the pot, they put a lot more into the pot to try to get them back. This ends up being a huge leak in their game.

By the tone of the post many would think that I lost the hand. They would be wrong. I won the hand with a straight but that really doesn't matter. I feel that I still made the right play and even if the pot got pushed to my opponent I would still feel good about pushing all-in.

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