Monday, June 12, 2006

My favorite hand

The most amusing hand of my tournament occured with about 30 players remaining. The SB in this hand has done absolutely no slow playing during the 1 hour that I sat with him, and had previously open pushed for a big overbet about 1 orbit before. 2 orbits earlier, he open completed/mucked from the SB to my push.

hand #1
7 seated, blinds 300/600/75, avg stack ~T$12,000, SB has a slightly below average stack. Hero is in BB with $T3875.
- preflop: folded to SB, SB min raises 1200, BB raises all in for 3800 total, SB calls. BB quickly turns over 9s6s, SB sheepishly turns over 9c5d.

As the dealer was dealing the hole cards for this hand, I had told myself that I would call an all in from a steal raiser with all but the bottom 10% of all starting hands. The SB's min raise was quite a surprise, but based on his previous play I did not put him on either a pair or 2 big cards. I considered mucking for about 2 seconds, but felt that 2 suited mid cards should be close to 40% against his range. Given the pot size and the metagame considerations of showing I could not be pushed off my blind with a short stack, I pushed expecting to be immediately called.

SB tanked for about 60 seconds before calling. At the end of the hand, the Dealer commented he had never seen anything like it (although he might have been referring to the board as well which came T9678). I commented that I was not ashamed of my hand, and someone else at the table commented "No kidding! You turned your hand over proudly like it was Aces."

I suppose a better way for me to have played the hand would have been to call preflop, and push if checked to me on the flop if I missed. Like I said earlier, I was pretty tired during this MTT.

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