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View Full Version : Short-stacked and heads-up against bad opponent


robertsonjohn
01-12-2005, 03:44 PM
Sorry for the longish post, but this more a question of reads rather than cards:

Started as a live 8 person winner take all tournament. It’s down to me and villain heads-up. I haven’t had any cards the entire time while villain has gotten very lucky several times. Out of the eight of us, villain is almost assuredly the worst player (as his play below will suggest).

I don’t think villain is capable of any tricky or deceptive play, but he does overvalue his hand a lot and play it aggressively post-flop (even when it’s obvious he shouldn’t).

I have a mostly tight image, but villain has seen me push all my chips without a made hand – once early on a semi-bluff Ace high straight draw on the flop that got called by a smaller stack (I took a hit), and later on a pure blind steal with J8o (the board came out A2345, giving me a very lucky tie). If villain was paying attention at all (which I can’t be sure he was), he would probably see that if I have a good hand, I tend to make bets that are sizable, but callable in order to extract against the opposition, but that if I’m not comfortable with my hand, I’ll push in hopes of a fold (obviously, this isn’t my normal strategy, but playing with such a short stack throughout, I didn’t have much of a choice).

Villain has around $125
I have around $35
Blinds are $1.50 - $3.00 and going up around every 20 minutes or so

Hero has 77

I complete and mini-raise another $3.

[Heads up, a mini-raise has been strong enough to make him fold when he doesn’t like his hand – if he doesn’t fold, I can then judge post-flop how strong his hand really is]

He re-raises another $3.00

[His mini-re-raise only means that he likes his hand preflop. He doesn’t really understand how to put pressure on someone preflop, and he actually thinks this mini-raise could induce a fold]

I re-raise $10.

[I like my semi-high pair heads-up, but moreover think that this will almost certainly cause him to fold. Bets this size usually scare him away pre-flop unless he already has a made hand (any pair)]

He thinks for a while, then calls (gulp).

Flop is Q 3 6 rainbow.

He checks to me.

[Since he is incapable of deceptive play, I know for a fact that he does not have Q or an overpair. He also probably doesn’t have a 3,6, or pocket pair as I think he would bet those too, but it’s possible he’s just scared of the Q].

I push all-in.

[My hand isn’t getting any better, and I’d like to win this pot now. My only concern with this is that my earlier pushes may signal to him that I have nothing and that this is a total bluff. Despite being favored to what I assume are two overcards, I do not want a call].

He thinks, then calls and turns over A4.

As you can imagine, I’m pleased to see he only has the one overcard – at least until the ace falls on the turn – and know that I probably would have played the hand the same way even if I could see his cards face up.

My point in posting this isn’t to question the strategy of this hand so much, or even to lament the bad beat – my question is, if I’m in a heads-up situation like this with a small stack, but I’m playing against an opponent who is much worse than I am, and who does very little pre-flop raising, should I have made a stand on a hand like this, or should I have waited and picked a moment when I had a really big hand? (i.e., should I have just limped in hopes of making a set). Normally, I know this is really weak-tight, but this opponent’s play is so obvious, that I feel I could probably hang around for a while as he never puts pressure on you unless he makes his hand.