Results and comments
Thank you for the comments. Here are the results and an explanation of why I did what I did:
PREFLOP:
There were 3 reasons why I min-raised:
1. There was 1900 in the pot. A 1200 chip raise doesn't even need to work half the time to be +EV. Based on their previous play, I knew there was a >50% chance that the blinds would fold.
2. I wanted an all-in by the short-stack button to re-open the betting. If I made a standard raise, his push would not allow me to re-raise. I wanted to be able to re-raise all-in if he pushed and one/both of the blinds called since their range of calling hands to my 3-bet re-raise would basically be only AA/KK or QQ.
3. I would have to fold all but the best hands to a re-raise by one of the blinds, and a min-raise would accomplish everything I needed preflop while minimizing my loss if the blinds woke up with a big hand.
FLOP:
Not much to talk about. I rated to have the best hand and bet enough to make him want to fold. The fact that he had to check his cards before calling my bet with a red flop led me to believe that he had a heart, and there was a good chance it was the ace of hearts. He didn't have AJ, so AQ and AK were most likely. He could also have a pair smaller than JJ.
TURN:
Everybody likes a bet here. There was 8000 in the pot and I had 10,000 or so left. He had a little less. Betting and folding to re-raise would be horrible, so an all-in bet would probably be the best bet size. I thought about it. But here was my thought process: I wanted to get paid off if I made my flush. I wanted to give him a chance to bluff with ace-high on the river. I didn't want to blow my whole stack if I was wrong about my read. I decided that by checking behind I could satisfy all of these. It turns out that a push on the turn would have taken down the pot. But I wasn't sure enough at the time.
RIVER:
When he made his bet I replayed the hand again in my mind. Deliberating over the preflop call... looking at his cards before calling me on the flop, checking the turn, and that weak-sauce bet amount on the river. He had ace-high and I was pretty sure of it.
The problem I had was that I was going to have to show down 2-5. We were about ready to reach the point of this tournament where the correct play would be to push preflop. I rated to understand this portion of the tournament better than everybody else because I play primarily SNGs and am familiar with ICM and Eastbay's SNGPT. So, soon I would be pushing correctly while everybody else made betting errors and passed on pushing opportunities. The problem is that I needed folding equity to get maximum value out of the end of this tournament and showing 2-5 wasn't going to help.
I figured that there was a very good chance that my opponent held exactly A-Q with the ace of hearts. If I said that out loud and was lucky enough to be right... I may be able to dazzle the table enough to dissuade them from calling my pushes in a few minutes. Those of you that play primarily on line will think that this is a bunch of crap. But in live tournament play the meta-game dynamics at the table influence people's decisions more than you may think. Especially push/fold decisions on the bubble.
So, I said "I think you have the Ace of hearts and the Queen of diamonds. I call."
He showed exactly those two cards, I pulled in a nice pot, and the table was so spooked about calling his cards that they just may have forgotten that I raised preflop with 2-5.
I'll post another key hand that occured a few orbits later if I get a chance later today.
Thanks again for the comments.
Irieguy
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