Top pair headsup on scary board.

[nicky g]

Heads up in 6-hander $10 NLHE SNG The blinds are at 50-100. Ihave 4000ish to my opponent's 2000. It was interesting to watch my opponent's play develop. He started the heads-up confronmtation very weak-passively, letting me totally run him over. We'd been even in chips and I'd got to about 4000 when he started playing back a bit, though his main strategy seemed to be to simply call all my raises, rarely rasing himself. He called a massive prelop raise from me with Q2 (i had A7s) and then check called my all-in bet on the ragged flop having hit a queen. That put me down to 2000 but I pulled my way back to my 4000-2000 lead. At this point he was starting to raise a bit more, though always making them min raises, and making biggish bets when I checked to take down the pots. In this hand, he made a min raise preflop and I called in the BB with Q8s. Comments? The flop came Q109 rainbow giving me top pair and a gutshot. I checked and he overbet the pot, about 500. I raised him all-in. Thoughts?

[nicky g]

I think I played this very poorly. I definitely had the beating of this guy if I remained calm but he had repeatedly called large raises of mine from the BB with crap like the Q2 (when I'd had quality hands eg 88, AQ), and forced me to let them go when scary boards (high 4straights etc) came down which was frustrating me. I'd run out of patience and though I had the feeling I was losing if called here, I felt I couldn't get away from top pair now that he'd started to treat a lot of my bets as if they were bluffs. Anyhow, he turned over pocket kings, which was the last thing i expected to see, and an 8 rivered giving me the win but the feeling that I didn't deserve it.
I've noticed that though I've had a successful run at these games and am very far ahead on my buy-ins, I do win win all-in with the worst hand/put beats on my opponents a significant percentage of the time. Have I just been lucky or can I afford to take the worst of it every now and again when I'm the big stack thanks to a lot of aggression?

[Prickly Pete]

I'm guessing he turned over KJ since the post is here. But, I'd do just as you did. That's a pretty strong hand heads up and he's known to overbet as a bluff.

[fnurt]

I think you played it fine.

[Jon Matthews]

I still think you played it fine. I also think your opponent played this hand well though, making you think he's bluffing and getting all the money in - but you won with a lesser hand so it's natural to feel slightly guilty /images/graemlins/wink.gif

You seem to be running good, you can run bad just as easily in sit n go's, I've done it myself but I think it's easier to keep running good as a smart player as there is more dead money involved due to the inevitable 1 or 2 people going out early with marginal hands.


Jon

[cferejohn]

I would have played it just like this. You can take that as saying you played it fine or as "my god you played it as badly as cferejohn would have".

[nicky g]

Lol. I'll take it the first way /images/graemlins/wink.gif.