Sheriff Equity - patent pending

I tried a move last night. I had been stealing the blinds from button/cutoff fairly often, I knew someone was going to get sick of it pretty soon. Then I got AKo on the button, and it folded to me. I decided to raise again, really big this time (5x), to make it look like I was trying to steal again, but this time with some garbage that I didn’t want called.

As I thought might happen, the small blind shoved all in. I nearly had 2-1 odds (1.9, actually), meaning I had to win 34% of the time to make calling correct. The only way calling with AK wasn’t correct was if he held AA or KK (and KK was close). I called – he turned over 88 and won the race.

This is an interesting move. Of course you have lots of fold equity if the blinds have nothing. Add onto the fact that you’re almost no better than 55-45% for all but the 2 biggest hands, and the fact that someone may decide to play sheriff with something you dominate (AQ/AJ/AT) – and I think this is a strong play. One might argue that it's just another race for all your chips, but I think the fold equity and the "sheriff equity" more than compensate for the time he's holding a pair like this time.

After my race, bombed out of that tourney in 6th (which was a a $20), then took 3rd in a $30. Net result – minus 1 dollar. Hah!