JJ on bubble in Satellite

jwp · #1 01-11-2005, 12:53 AM

I was recently in a satellite where the top 9 places all qaulified for Round 2. With 10 players left the following hand came up and I welcome all comments. A poker playing friend (who was sweating me) and I disagreed on the post-flop play on this hand. He believed it was a "check/fold" or "weak-bet and then fold to a raise" situation, so I am particularly interested in post-flop analysis (I know my pre-flop bet was probably too small).

The situation and my read on the opponent: with 10 to go we were on two tables of 5 players each. Noone was significantly short-stacked and the play was tight with no real chip movement. The other table was borderline colluding to not be eliminated (and talking about it in the chat!).

My stack was slightly above average. The MP player playing the hand against me was somewhat loose but had only once shown down a poor hand (after he bluffed me out of a dry sidepot against a small stack's all-in and lost it where I would have won). He was generally playing decent starting hands. My friend believes he was more of a calling station than I do and could possibly be playing A8 or something with an 8 in it.

My basic read on the hand pre-flop was that he was not holding QQ-AA because he would have reraised me on the flop. I did not think he would be trapping with a big hand at this stage of the tournament because he really doesn't need to risk losing nearly his whole stack to get all my chips in a situation where 9/10 people are winning. So, I thought he was playing 22-TT or Ace-face or face-face (more likely the unpaired hands). After the flop I am only losing to QQ-AA, x8, or 22. I did not think he would call my preflop raise w/ A8 and especially thought he would not bet out with it to my check (trying to trap in *this* situation), 88 was unlikely because of the flop, but 22 was a possibility.

Anyway, on to the hand...

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t1200 (5 handed) converter

SB (t12890)
BB (t9088)
Hero (t13500)
MP (t17363)
Button (t17986)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with J[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img].
Hero raises to t3000, MP calls t3000, Button folds, SB folds, BB folds.

Flop: (t6300) 2[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 8[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], 8[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets t4800, Hero raises to t10425 (all-in), MP calls t5625.

Turn: (t27150) 5[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] (2 players)

River: (t27150) K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] (2 players)

Final Pot: t27150

Results in white below: 
Hero has Js Jh (two pair, jacks and eights).
MP has Th Td (two pair, tens and eights).
Outcome: Hero wins t27150. 

Thanks,
JWP