You remember how I’ve been stressing to play tight in the early stages of a Sit & Go match?
Well, the other day I was playing a fairly small, single table, NL tournament. In the early stages everybody had some 1500 in chips, as did I, and the blinds were 20/40. I picked up pocket Aces in middle position so I open-raised to 100, 2,5 times the big blind. All players folded to the big blind, who called to see a flop of A92 rainbow. A perfect flop, I held the nuts with trip Aces and with no straight- or flushdraw out there there, if he held any part of that board, he was destined to lose a considerable amount of chips to me.
The villain checked out of position and I made a small bet of 100 chips into a 220 pot. He raised to 520, making the pot 740 and leaving him with just under 900 in chips. By now it was obvious he has a good Ace or maybe even smaller trips, and I figured I could play this hand for all his chips. So I min-raised him to 940, knowing he would be left with some 500 chips which he would have to move to the middle within the foreseeable future. He did just that by moving all-in, I called, he showed AK and the turn- and rivercard, a Q and a T, left me with a doubled-up stack. Had I moved all-in after his re-raise I would have given him a chance to demonstrate a great laydown, hence the minimum raise for which I knew I was going to get him to call.
This is actually one of the very few times I would get all of my chips in pre-flop in such early stages!
Note that he made a crucial mistakes during this hand: He should have re-raised me pre-flop. After his re-raise I would have moved in on him and he could have folded his AK, living to see another hand.
While some might argue that you should call the all-in with the AK in that situation either way, you should respect the fact that it’s not the right play in the early stages of a tournament where it’s all about survival. Knowing there’s a good chance you’re up against a pair, you will get a coinflip at best, and you should safely fold your AK.
But actually that’s not what I wanted to share with you. What I really wanted to share is that after I had doubled up, I had some business to attend to. I’ll not get too deep into what I was doing but let me give you a hint; it involved a role of paper and a very small room…
So I went downstairs, did what I had to do, got myself distracted by my cat and before I knew it I had forgotten about my Sit & Go for over 15 minutes! So I rushed back upstairs to my computer to find out that already three players had been eliminated and I had lost only about 300 of my 3000 stack. Half-way closer to the money at a cost of only 10% of my stack. If that isn’t ’seriously advanced’ I don’t know what is!
I guess this illustrates that there’s no need to get all crazy early in the tournament. Just fold, fold and fold until you find a killer hand. The actual poker only get’s started when there’s only six or five players left!
By the way, haven’t you gotten started playing online already? Just click on one of the banners to the left for a killer bonus when signing up for the first time. It’ll help me out a bit too, so I can keep on helping you up your game.
