[Pokey]

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When you have a hand that is rooting for a call, you should not try to make your opponent fold by betting an exorbitant amount in a no-limit or pot-limit game. Such a situation came up one day when I was playing no-limit hold 'em. There was one card to come, and I had a straight which, at that point, was the nuts....I bet something like $50, the player to my left called, and the player behind him called the $50 and raised the rest of his money, which was about $200.

Since I had the best possible hand, the question was, should I raise or just call? There was something like $500 in the pot. Because the third man was all-in, I only had to think about the man behind me. I knew if I reraised, say, $400, making it $600 to him, he definitely would fold; in fact, if I raised almost any amount he would fold. But if I just called the $200, he would probably call.

What did I want him to do? I was pretty sure he had two pair. If I called the $200, there would be about $700 in the pot, which would give him 7-to-2 odds on a 10-to-1 shot. So I just called the $200, and as I expected and wanted, he did too.

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If we put this in the context of a SnG, does the reasoning change? It seems to me that, while the argument is still sound, the "out of chips = out of tournament" nature of a SnG means that we should aim to trim outs whenever we can. Is this one of those advantages that the peculiarities of a tournament require us to forgo? Should we be raising to win what's already in the pot instead of taking a (positive expectation) chance at a somewhat bigger score? Without stack sizes, remaining players, and blinds we can't actually ICM this, but intuitively it seems like tournament scenarios would require a closeout raise here.