|
|
 Tournaments: Fold a Better Hand to Survive?
Hey- this post is partly the result of a bad beat, part the result of a genuine interest in your opinions. Anyway-
Im playing an online MTT in which the top ~10 get entries into a tourney with a sub. larger payout. My goal is (was) merely to gain one of these entries.
Okay, there was like 150 people left (field was large) and I had a NICE stack. I was either outflopping or outplaying donks all night. Sometimes both (when I slowplayed and got stacks). I was in the top 20, on pace to make it to the final 10.
I bullying my ring of shorties pretty profitably until a player with a larger stack than mine (1.5x my stack, almost) appeared at the table. It was my presumption that this guy had accumulated his chips mostly by luck- i saw him push AI with pocket 4s, and also play a monster pot to the river with nothing but AA. No expert in NLTH.
Anyway, me and this guy are seeing a lot of flops and bullying, mainly staying out of each other's way until the fateful hand appeared. This is what happened: Rival large stack limps. (remember this, it is a testament to his poor play). One MP shorty limps behind. Me, on the BB, stare down at KK. Well hell when you're ahead you raise the stakes- maybe you'll get some action going- I raise to 2x BB. (i really badly want action, you see, this might be a poor move, but the table was pretty passive IMO).
Suddenly, the rival monster stack (1.5x my stack) RE-raises to 150x BB. MP shorty quickly folds (he was irrelevant anyway). Im like damn what an obscene raise. Yes AA crossed my mind immediately (the secret insecurity of everybody with KK, no matter how stupid). The guy's donkishness convinced me to call. I've seen him push shorties with worse, hes probably just being stupid. Plus if he has AA thats poker.
He had 'trapped' my kings with AJ suited.
Well, it seemed I was sailing into the finals, on my way to poker val hala, but suddenly a pair of unfoldable pocket cowboys put me in a position where I'm a goner 1 outta every 3 times.
On one hand, it's like, why play for stacks Preflop when you have no need to, you have a commanding lead in the tourney. On the flip side, you feel like you're sinning against the Poker gods or going againt all logic when you fold what you almost KNOW is the better hand. Yes in a ring game it would be right to call in this situation every time, it's +EV which means profits over a lifetime of evened-out probability. But in tournaments like these, its all bout surival- the decison is rougher.
Basically, I knew I'd be unnessarily playing for stacks with this guy, but would you fold to a donk Allin with KK? Or slap 'im with 'em?
Should I have folded..?
|
Reply With Quote
