Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Dazed and Confused (not the Led Zeppelin song)

I got knocked out of the $60 Moose Sunday tournament in 6th place and they only paid 3 places at that point as no deals had yet been made. Was it my own fault? You decide. Blinds were 1,000-2,000. I only had 11 big blinds or 22,000. The chip leader was Tall Jeff with over 50,000. Unknown Guy went all-in for 8,500. Everyone folded to Tall Jeff on my immediate right. He called. My thought process was that if he had a great hand or even a medium pocket pair he would raise to isolate. He didn't do that so when I looked down at pocket queens I moved all-in over the top, hoping to isolate also. Tall Jeff insta-called with A-J. His called confused me for 3 main reasons. First, I would think that he would know that I had to have a super good hand if I was going to move all-in. Second, he called off half his remaining chips without even thinking about it and he was chip leader and didn't need to do that. Third, it was a crappy hand to insta-call with. He was beat pre-flop if I had AQ, AK or any pocket pair. Naturally, there was an ace right in the door on the flop and yours truly was history. Was I wrong to move all-in? Hindsight tells me that I could have simply called and still had 6 big blinds left, but I think I did the right thing. Was Jeff wrong? I think so. What do you think?

1 comment:

Phil said...

O.K., Jeff is officially a donk, which I knew anyway, but that said, I think that he had too much pot equity to fold to your reraise. His call of an all-in with AJ is o.k. in his chip position it was the right call. With your all in the was 39,000 in the pot and he needed to add 13,500to call your bet. That is 3/1 on his money with over 1/2 his stack still intact if he loses to you, and a 5000 win net if you both lose to the unknown guy. I would say that under the circumstances his call was justified, but had to think he was probably behind someone.

I think in that position your best play would have been to just call and see what the flop brings. You know you are beaten if either a king or an ace flops and can fold, or if it is jack high you can shove and get Jeff's chips in with him drawing very thin. I think the key is determining if the opponent has any "fold equity" or not. In this case he did not. This has happened to me in a couple of big tournaments with lose caller limps, my AA shove of a short stack, one lose call begetting another, which begets another, etc., until everyone is in to the river and aces lose to rags.

Good luck in Pendleton, I am leaving for Vegas Monday so won't make it.