Introducing Poker Plays with PokerPeaker
Apr 8, 2008By: I'm going to present a hand to you and explain why I played it the way I did. We'll call this Poker Plays with PokerPeaker, and you can expect to see a hand at least once a week.
This is how I've improved over the last year, by examining how I played a certain way and what I could have done better.
Some, of course, will be plays that I liked, but not every hand will show off my awesomeness. I believe I've learned just as much, if not more, by examining my mistakes. Maybe you'll learn from them too. If not, at least you'll get a good laugh.
THE SITUATION -
I'm in a MTT tournament on Full Tilt, and there are 40 players left out of 80. I have about 1,500 more chips than the average stack. I have 9-3 off suit on the button.
I raise three times the big blind to 900 chips.
WHY DID I DO WHAT I DID HERE?
One thing I'm working on is looking for opportunities to steal the blinds in the later stages of the tournament. The thing is, I'm a tight player, and I realize that I need to open my game in tournaments to stay alive until the cards come - and so I can get paid when they do come.
The flop comes 9♦-8♦-Q♠.
My opponent checked. I bet near the size of the pot, 1,800 in chips.
WHY?
My opponent is an aggressive player who defended his big blind often. I've had a lot of success this tournament with continuation betting, and if I win the pot here I'm in good shape.
My opponent pauses and shoves the rest of his 5,435 chips into the pot. If I call and lose, I'll have only 500 chips left and essentially be out of the tournament.
I folded, of course, and I was knocked out of the tournament 10 plays later when I could not recover from the hit to my stack.
WHAT MISTAKE DID I MAKE HERE
Good, aggressive play wins tournaments, but so does preserving your chips, and in this case, I should have checked the flop. I might consider betting on the turn if he checks again, but it was an incredibly dangerous flop, and any continuation bet required a serious commitment of chips to make it believable.
A better move here would have been to understand you've been caught stealing, fold the small loss and try again later.
WHAT DID I LEARN?
Stealing always looks suspicious from the button, and it's always better to pick on tight players, not loose, aggressive players who will defend their big blind. In this case, my opponent showed me Q-8 for two-pair. That's a loose call on his part but that's the kind of player he was.
Plus you don't have to continuation bet every time you raise. On such a scary board, the check should have set alarm bells off.
