Hand

[tdomeski]

$5 Rebuy on Stars down to 28 players.

Blinds are 10K/20K going up in 3 minutes.

I have 8 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] in SB with 290K in chips.

Folded to me.

It's folded to me in SB a couple of times against this particular BB. 1 time I raised 3X BB he pushed I folded he showed QQ. 1 time I raised and he folded. 2 times I've just folded to him.

He has me covered by like 100K.

I complete small blind, he raises to 60K after about 7 seconds or so, I push.

Discuss.

[Exitonly]

i probably raise to 50k and fold to a push.. but i think i like you're line too, an induceed blind steal. definitely looks like a strong hand, and shouldnt be in too bad of shape if called. Oh, adn the raise is big enouogh to have a good amount of FE.

I like it. With the action that set this up, he "knows" you're a sensible player (if he's good enough to pay attention), and this gives you more FE. Also, these are live nine-tenths of the time.

I like it, what do others think?

Nice agressive line.

[ajizzle]

I personally don't like the play. If I had a little more info on two things, (1) How the rest of the table was playing, and (2) How the BB played his hands from other positions, then the decision would be easier to make. Also, knowing what the avg stack at that point would be nice. For the sake of my response, I will assume it is between 400k-450k, as are most tournies on PS at this juncture.

But here's why I don't like the play. The BB hasn't shown any aggression in the BSB unless he held the goods. What makes you suspect he doesn't have a good hand now, and how big of a holding do you think he is willing to laydown to a re-raise? If he is a skillfull tricky player, then it would not surprise me that he would make this smallish raise on a bluff. However, if he is your avg. $5 rebuy player, then he is making this raise for value, and there is no evidence to weak-tight play, thus if his hand is worth a value raise in a heads up pot, then logic dictates that he will play for all of his chips.

Here are conditions that I would advocate this play however.
(1) He is a weak-tight player who is afraid to put his tournament life at risk.
(2) The rest of the table has been particularly hard to steal from.
(3) You have a very tight image AND have shown down some big holdings while making tricky plays.
(4) Blinds are going up soon, thus turning a smallish but healthy stack into a small stack with <10bb.
(5) You have NOT made a play like this earlier in the tourney.

I'd like it more if you were a little shorter. I still basically like it now.

[KneeCo]

If the situation has come up 4 times and you've folded twice, and he's only defended with Queens, I don't see any reason to believe a conventional steal won't work, and even if it doesn't you've got a fair hand to play a flop with, so why not go for that?

This isn't a criticism of your line, I'd just like to hear the advantages over the standard move (#1 is of course that it *isn't* the standard move, but there must be more to make it the right move for this spot).

Also, was the re-raise all-in your plan from when you called?

[tdomeski]

He called with KK flopped a set but I managed to turn a gutshot straight draw plus flush draw and river was a red card but not a heart. I was out in 28th. I got berated by everyone at the table for "blowing" my chance at $7K.

I think I probably could have just raised to like 60K and taken it a fair number of times. . .Also I had been stealing fairly frequently but only 2 times did I do it with my whole stack (which were called) was with AA and AK. So when my tourney was on the line my opponents only saw good cards. .that went through my mind too. Also there were like 10 million chips or something, I was like 14th in chips maybe. .Figure if he calls it's no different than when we get to top 18 and I get all in with AK vs someone's 99. Sucks he had a real hand this time.

[Exitonly]

yep, and that makes me happy that i would hav ejust gone with the 50k steal.

yeah, I guess so. I would still use this line, but it would be read dependant.