Rounders Radio Freeroll

This Monday night tourney only pays 1st place but it`s for a $60 coupon to the Sunday $20k GTD. I managed a respectable (but unprofitable) 5th place from 124 entrants. I probably wouldn`t even have bothered posting this except for a couple of hands that happened during the game.

Hand No1-For simplicity I`ll call SB seat 1

I`m in the cut-off seat with AA

Blinds 25/50
3)UTG Raises to 150
4)Fold
5)Fold
6)Calls 150
7)Calls 150
8)Calls 150
9)I raise to 500 (Hello I have a VERY strong hand)
10)Fold
1)SB calls (he only has around 100 chips left)
2)BB Folds

3) calls 350
6) calls 350
7) calls 350
8) calls 350

Ok no-one believes me

Flop 8d-3c-6h

Action is checked to me. I push all-in for 1330 chips
Everyone folds except for seat 7 who calls with his remaining 1325 chips
He turns over 10-10

Turn Qd
River 7s

DM wins 5305 chips (look no suck-out, this is not a bad beat story :D)

In certain respects I can understand the player who called my all-in, he did after-all have an overpair and I suppose it was possible that I was making a move with AK.

What mystifies me more are the other 3 players who called my significant re-raise in the first place. It wasn`t like I`d been playing loads of hands and although I`d certainly raised before at no time had I come over the top with a re-raise. Certainly no-one had AA,KK,QQ,JJ,88,33 or 66 (all these hands would surely have called- either that or someone made a great laydown) So I can only presume that 1 or 2 had an ace with whatever kicker, maybe the other/s had a small pp or KQ, KJ something in that range. Certainly it seems unlikely anyone had a hand I would consider worthy of calling a re-raise with.

It must be said I was a little worried to get so many callers, obviously not because I was worried over the strength of my hand, rather more about the possibility of being out-flopped. Once I saw the flop I knew that unless someone had flopped a set I was ahead which is why I elected to push and either take the pot there and then or at least narrow the field to 1 or 2 opponents.

Hand No2

This was at the final table with 8 or 9 players remaining. I was short-stacked with only around 7 or 8 BBs

UTG min raises
UTG+1 re-raises all-in (he has me covered but not by much)
I`m next to act and I have 10-10

Normally this is an insta-push hand given my stack size but with the action before me I go into the tank and virtually run the clock down before deciding to fold.

Everyone else folds round to UTG who calls, he has AA vs the UTG+1`s 33. No help from the board and the aces hold up and there is one less player at the table.

I commented to the table that I`d folded 10-10 and one player asked why?

It`s a reasonable enough question, my answer was a min-raise followed by an all-in was too much action for me to push against. I then jokingly replied that my Mousey sense was tingling.

Joking aside there was a certain amount of logic in my decision. Firstly people at final tables are usually pretty decent players. They`ve survived the minefield of maniacs and obviously haven`t made too many mistakes during the game.

Secondly play changes a little at final tables, more than ever players are looking to get paid off for their good cards and early position minimum raises are often the sign of huge strength. If someone sees it as weakness and re-raises they can either come over the top and either take a large pot uncontested or end up HU as an 80% favourite.

Thirdly the player who did go all-in had done so before a hand or two earlier and had turned over AQ. If I called I was likely to either be racing or either a massive favourite or dog against him. Normally I`d probably take that chance but there was the initial raiser to take into account.

If I had called there would have been 400+800+1600+6223+6100 = 15,123 in the pot, the initial bettor would have been calling 4623 chips to win that. That`s odds of 3.27 to 1. Given he raised from UTG we would have to put him on a decent hand, either a big pp or AK, AQ, AJ. With the size of the pot vs the amount he had to call and given that he knew he would see the turn and river for free he almost had to call whatever hand he had,we know of course he had AA.

Now I`m not saying that I worked all this out before making the decision to fold, much of this is post hand analysis. What I`m trying to get across is that although some decisions seem obvious it`s always worth thinking before you make your final decision and listening to those gut instincts. I`ve no doubt my mind had done some of this analysis even though I didn`t consciously realise it at the time.