Pokerstars $5 SnG hand

[cferejohn]

I've gotten my girlfriend setup on pokerstars (next week, I'm going to get her hooked on heroin and child pornography). Here is a hand she played that I thought was interesting:

NL Hold 'em. Blinds 100/200. 3 players.
Button folds. She has A9o in the SB and completes. The big blind checks. Looking over the hand history, the opponent has played very tight; he pretty much doubled up twice, once with JJ and once with AA. He's started stealing a little now this it is 3-handed. She has T3670. He has T5210.

Flop is 5h As Td.
She bets 400. He raises to 800. She re-raises to 1200. He calls.
Turn is the 7c. She bets 200. He raises all-in for another 3600 (putting her all-in). She calls.

Results and the feedback I gave her in another post.

[cferejohn]

He had KTo. River is another 7 and she doubles up and goes on to win the tournament (her second online sit-n-go and her first win!). Here is was I told her:

Preflop:
I would have raised this. That's a pretty big hand at this point.

Flop:
You bet, he raises, you reraise and he calls. I have to say it is unlikely you would have gotten this much money off of him if you had raised preflop, since then he would have suspected an ace.

Turn:
Turn is no help and you make a minimum bet. Was this intentionally done to show weakness and induce him to come over the top? If so, well done and it worked perfectly.
You did well in this hand because you played it decptively. Most players are raising any ace out of the small blind at this point, and because you didn't do that, he never put you on an ace.

Deception becomes more and more important short-handed, but I'm kind of curious whether you thought you were being deceptive when you just called preflop.

Thanks for any comments.

Chris

[SossMan]

Good analysis.
It worked this time, but it's dangerous to not raise preflop, since you have zero information on what he could have. It's a good change of pace play if you have been pretty aggressive so far, but if you haven't, I would just as soon raise for value/info preflop.