The Shark Tank

In my brief tourney career, I’ve managed to get away from QQ only once when it was an overpair. In that case, I raised and there was a big re-raise that pot commited the player and a push. I knew both of the players to be quite tight and I was pretty sure I was facing at least one overpair. It turned out to be AA and KK, so I was very, very happy to have escaped.

In the most recent ITH event, I was not as lucky. It was in the very early going and a solid player made a standard raise from EP. Looking at QQ, I made a decent re-raise. I don’t remember the exact amounts, but I think he raised to about 90, I re-raised to about 200 and he pushed it up to 400. I just called that, because I didn’t want to push into AA/KK and I figured I didn’t need to push against AK — he would call anyhow, getting 3:1. I’m pretty sure I would have called if he had pushed there, so I don’t know if the fancy play was required, but it might have been something he needed to do against a better player.

The flop was all undercards and he checked to me. I pushed and he insta-called with AA. I was thinking that I didn’t want to let AK get a free shot at the turn. I only had about 500 chips and the pot was already around 850, so I couldn’t really make a smaller bet that would do any good.

I’m still not sure how to handle this differently. In hindsight, I see that his small re-raise pre-flop just screams strength. Should I just lay down QQ getting 3:1 to his re-re-raise? I don’t think I can do that, although I guess that was where I should have known I was in big trouble. Should I check behind on the flop and refuse to invest any more without hitting a set? I’m going to hate myself if I let him hit his AK.

If we had 10,000 chips and the blinds were low, I could get away. With 1,000 chips I’m clearly not good enough to do it. I think I’ll post it on ITH and get the tourney peeps to tell me what I should have done.

I’m still in relatively fine shipe in that I’m still in the top 10 in the overall count, but I had a chance to be among the leaders in the Tuesday night league and I’ve pretty much blown that up. I’ve noticed I tend to go deep or bust early. The method used to score the ITH leagues punishes me for that, since two finishes of 40/100 are worth more than a 2/100 and a 97/100. A lot of the really tight players seem to make mid-field every time. My ROI is still good and I’m still having some fun. A buddy of mine has offered to sweat me on the phone and give me some pointers in a future tourney. He’s a ton better than I am, so I think it will be very instructive.

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