Friday, October 2, 2009

Tony's revenge (a bit).

Tony and I joined an 18 man tourney online tonight, and he was seated two to my left.

At the proper time, I raised from the button with Ah8h, and he defended. We got a 2 heart board. He checked, and me, thinking he might have called with strength (like I did to him the night before), went for the check behind and a free shot at the flush.

The turn paired the top card, a nine. Tony lead out. His bet was on the stronger end, which made me think weak. I thought I could represent the 9, and if he called, I could river him with a flush. I went all-in, and he called pretty quickly - with QQ. I missed my 12 outs and Tony sent me to the bottom of the chip leaderboard. I was knocked out an orbit later with A9s vs. a donkey call by Q9s, who rivered a flush. Ugh.

Well-played by Tony - he defended with a strong hand, avoided danger when his queens stayed an overpair, and got his money in as a 4-1 favorite. Not so good by me - I thought I had some fold equity but did not, though he did admit to me after the hand that I made him sweat with my shove. That's worth something, I suppose.

Played one more tourney after the 18 man- this one a nine man - no luck there either. Dude to my right kept limping, limping, limping, and I raised over him (with cards) at least three times. He kept folding, and I figured he was going to call me light pretty soon. The fourth time, he minraised (not the first time he had done that, either), and I shoved over him one more time with AQ. Bullets for him, 5th place for me.

SNGs are trickier to analyze than cash games. In a cash game, you get your money in as a dog, then you probably made a mistake, easy as that. The rising blinds of the SNG increase the danger and get you desperate - you have to take chances. If someone wakes up with a giant hand while you're taking a necessary chance, then whoopsie, you got your money in bad, but it still doesn't (necessarily) make your play a bad one.

I had raised this limpy-limperson up so many times, I figured he was ready to play sheriff with plenty of worse hands than AQ. His aces gave him a final revenge on me, the pest to his left. I still like my play there.

1 comment:

bastinptc said...

See Mojo's blog. Not only are you quoted, you might look at MTTs of size.